Evolution, Morphology and Exobiology

I was wondering why certain bugs seem to be the only animals on the planet that evolved compound eyes, and I'm guessing luck did play a big role in it, but I was also trying to think of where a large non-bug animal would ever need to have that exception kind of resolution and field of view at the expense of a greater complexity of a delicate organ. One possible environment I was thinking is a thriving ecosystem in a constantly snowy arctic environment. In an environment like that with lots of animals around but also lots of irrelevant snow, a predatory animal would need to sort out lots of tiny minute details in a short span of time, distinguishing between the fast-fall…

This is a resource page for anyone who engages anti-evolutionists. It is a list I have compiled from the literature of observed speciation, both in the lab and in the wild. It is not by any means complete. There are hundreds more references out there: General 1. M Nei and J Zhang, Evolution: molecular origin of species. Science 282: 1428-1429, Nov. 20, 1998. Primary article is: CT Ting, SC Tsaur, ML We, and CE Wu, A rapidly evolving homeobox at the site of a hybrid sterility gene. Science 282: 1501-1504, Nov. 20, 1998. As the title implies, has found the genes that actually change during reproductive isolation. 2. M Turelli, The causes of Haldane's rule. Sc…

Let's agree, for the sake of this discussion, that UFOs are very definitely not alien spacecraft. Let's further consider that the answer to the Fermi paradox is that we have been visited, in the past. In that context, what sort of evidence might there be of such past visits? How would we go about searching for that evidence?

Excluding pro-creation of the species, ….. the majority of all evolved physical attributes in all animal species can be directly attributed to their, per se, “choice” or “selection” of a food type, class and/or source. Thus, the different “survival-of-the-fittest” physical attributes of the predator and prey species have evolved. The questions of evolution: Did a few early terrestrial living bird species evolve to become aquatic animals living, birthing and feeding in the water …… and then re-evolve back to living on the land but still feeding in the water. NO, they did not. Those early terrestrial feeding bird species simply evolved physical attributes fo…

Here is a simple “test” that attempts to prove that your “conscious mind” don’t know feces from shinola iffen your “subconscious mind” doesn’t tell it everything it needs to know whenever it needs to know it. Following is a list of twelve (12) commonly used words with some of the letters out of the correct sequence. So, take this simple “test” by quickly glancing over the following list …… just to see if you can correctly pronounce them without too much hesitation, …… to wit: ltteer mses wouthit iprmoetnt istlef raed bcuseae wrod porbelm frist huamn lsat Are you done yet, …….. or are you still trying to figure them out? It shouldn’t have taken anyone more…

Hi. Animals use vision, smell, hearing when looking for their meals. Never seen reference of a predator tracking prints in the snow, which seems a smarter/simpler/easier way to follow 'a meal passed here' Can smell the scent left in the snow, but seems that visually, print paths are not a clue to follow. Do you know anything about ?

My name is Daniel Friedrich and I'm a Czech high student. I'm working on a project about the origin of language and I'd like to conduct my own experiment on the word symbolism (how do the words resemble their meaning). For that, I need random people to guess the meanings of words in a different language, which is why I'm here Could you please take your 5 minutes to fill in my survey? https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScn0KZ5GZyGwFyNtMJgex5rAlvTyHjWwKMq_DN__wACCtV_yA/viewform Thank you very much

In On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life?

Hypothesis: There is some mechanism that functions to control the rate of mutation for DNA. Certain regions of the genome are allowed to mutate at a higher rate than other regions. Possibly in the proof-reading mechanism. More proof-reading versus less proof-reading. This would allow highly conserved areas to remain nearly intact generation after generation while other regions would change at the natural rate. Any ideas or data?

I was thinking, assuming an organism could get oxygen, how would an organism have to adapt to swimming through a very dense liquid, like mercury? If they were made of mostly air and organic fluid like fish already are, they'd have a lot of trouble diving below the surface. But, if say they had bones composed of a dense metal like iron to help them control their level in the water, they would need a lot of energy on a daily basis.

Simple question... Are humans and bees the only animals able to directly communicate to another the location of a food source. I'm thinking of direct communication - rather than scent trails which I believe ants and termites use.

Hello, just joined the site because have been watching the new Brian Cox series and it reignited a problem that I have had understanding an anthropological concept for some time. Some background; I am a veterinary scientist, I remember doing some work at uni on speciation in orang-utans. It was fascinating and what I remember from it was the discussion of the point at which speciation occurs. People have done research into the number of genetic differences between the two major subtypes. Even though when kept together the two still seem perfectly able to breed and produce viable off spring, their differences on a genetic level are greater than between some different s…

This is verbatim from "Primates in Question: The Smithsonian Answer Book" Under the question of "How closely are humans related to other primates?" it says: "Within the order primate, humans and the prosimians have the greatest evolutionary distance from each other and therefore the lowest level of relatedness. In increasing levels of relatedness to humans, the New World monkeys are next, followed by the Old World monkeys, and then the gibbons. The closest relation exists between humans and the other members of the family Homindae, the great apes." I thought chimpanzees and bonobos were Old World monkeys, and a google search shows that they Old World Anthro…

1) what causes a species to change over time? Example: what made the ancestor of the whale develop the rudimentary elements of fins from legs? Mutations?

Do beautiful parents have a higher chance of conceiving beautiful children than ugly parents? Or are the chances about the 50/50 regardless of the level of beauty of both parents?

How does one species branch off into further species (example: humans and chimpanzees),and why? New to the subject of evolution. Thanks

Hello forum, I joined just now to post this question. I didn't see it on a quick search. I've been wondering about this for some time but I'm only on 2 other forums regularly, drag racing and shooting, and those were not exactly the kind of places to get much of a conversation going about my question. So, what I've wondering and I'd appreciate hearing thoughts on this, is the expectation of intelligent extraterrestrial life. I realize that a search for extraterrestrial life should necessarily be focused on that which is intelligent because it's more reasonable to assume that such life would create some sort of detectable signature. My question though is why sh…

Could somebody please assist with some knowledgeable feedback regarding this paper, please: By the way, the paper is from John C. Sanford, an advocate of intelligent design and young earth creationism. So far I have managed to unearth this one comment:

is it possible that we are the only specie on the planet that contrive all of its nutrition it needs to survive from a single source of food. I didn't think that evolution made sustaining life more difficult to achieve from ones natural habitat. Hence " natural selection". And is it likely that our species evolved into an intelect so rapidly. I don't recall any other specie that has evisenced such a rate of change of any kind as quickly as it is thought humans evolved from neandeothol. One minute cavemen with no language known, the next minute we are a civilized population with asolid founsation in mathematics, cosmology, and structural engineering. Samarian accounts …

Please explain the reasoning behind your choice

We in live a universe for which we have been able to create mathematical models to describe & predict its behaviour. Some of those models are quite complex. I can see how we've evolved skills to handle basic maths. But how is it that for some individuals those skills can handle, for example, the Standard Model. That doesn't seem to add much evolutionary advantage. To re-phrase, why is H. sapiens clever enough to understand the universe.

Hello guys. I have watched few videos in Youtube explaining how evolution works. What I understand so far is that DNA gradually change across generations due to: 1-) Genetic mutation (i.e. imperfect copying of parent DNA?) 2-) Recombination if the creature consist of 2 parents. (i.e. because recombining DNA can result in new traits?) Then they stated that: due to these small changes, if you give it a long time, these changes will add up, eventually changing the creature. It does make sense to me so far. However, There are 2 things that I could not find explanation for: 1-) If creatures Had one origin, does evolution explain the integer differences in nu…

Filaments found in bacterial cells-are they part of the chromosome?

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? The egg is just an unborn chicken (same dna), it's like asking "Which came first, the embryo or the fully grown human?" The chicken egg of course came first. I don't understand why this is considered a causality dilemma.

Could land based life exist on a world with high levels of oxygen? At what point would organic matter burst into flames if exposed to air? Would pressure be a factor? My speculation is that water worlds, global oceans no land, would or at least could support very high oxygen levels and or pressures while worlds with a significant land area would not due to oxidation of exposed surfaces. Thoughts?