Evolution, Morphology and Exobiology

I've noted that many people that is extremelly gifted (like 180- 190 or 220), Often believes that is an elf an alien a devil... everything except an Homo Sapiens. When i was a child, in sometimes believed that i was a macaw or something, specially in front of a biologist to avoid getting a label that begins with the word "Homo". Anibody will doubt that a child with a lot of iq, is very different than others (unless for negligence reasons), the DSM is not valid for him, a normal personality test is not valid for him, a mainstream school should not be considered valid for him, an encephalogram will show a constant and hugue epilepsy attack if understod as a normal human br…

Where did the creativity to build the tools come from in the first place?

Hello everyone! I had an argument about evolution with someone I know and they claimed that efficiency is a criteria of evolution (as in evolution drifts towards more efficiency). I then pointed out that our very first ancestors (single-celled organisms) were technically already the most efficient organisms and evolution doesn't drift towards more efficiency or less efficiency, it's all about survivability, efficiency really doesn't matter. I mean if efficiency truly was a criteria wouldn't we have to be able to set a minimum standard for how efficient an organism has to be in order to survive? Can we even quantify efficiency in organisms? ps: I'm not a biolog…

The behavior of fish never ceases to amaze me... These fish actually crawl out of the water and lay around on the bank...

Man did not evolve from fish, and apes, and it a ridiculous notion. You people that believe in this non-sense should be ashamed of yourself. when you order fish you are eating your relative, and don't you feel bad to see your relative in a zoo locked behind bars? Maybe you people are animals, after all. Let get one thing clear there's three life forms on this planet human, animal, and plants. The one, and only thing human, animals, and plants have in common, we are all from the same planet, period. The reason human, and animals share the same genes, and / or DNA, because we are from the same planet. and that is as close as we will never get to animals. The ge…

Man has ruled the Earth for hundreds of thousands of years, and to this very day is still the supreme ruler of the planet. Not only that, but in the past hundred years he has been trying to conquer and subdue neighboring planets. How did man rise on top of all food chains? How was man able to bestow himself as a god among other animals and nature ? How did man advance ? A very short answer to these questions is : Tools. A tool is a physical object that can be utilized for a certain purpose. We use tools in our everyday lives for almost everything from soap to satellites, soap is a tool that helps us kill bacteria and live longer by not contracting diseases, while the l…

As I understand, the underlying mechanism of the formation of new genes must first consist of a gene duplication event. This results in one gene constrained to its original function whereas the other gene is removed from the pressure of selection thereby allowing it to drift/be selected for change either to produce a specialised but similar function or a entirely new function. Where often this is followed by exon shuffling. I understand this at a protein level. New kinases for instance or the evolution of haemoglobin. However, when trying to apply this idea to the macro view of evolution, confusion arrises. Take the evolution of the mammalian ear bones. These originall…

A tiny, furry-tailed creature is the most complete picture yet as to what the ancestor of humans once looked like. These new findings also suggest this forerunner appeared shortly after the catastrophe that ended the age of dinosaurs, scientists added. http://news.yahoo.com/meet-mama-first-ancestor-placental-mammals-revealed-191137721.html

This article reminded me of how difficult it would be to actually find life that operated on some system other than the one we are familiar with. http://www.the-scientist.com//?articles.view/articleNo/34328/title/Ice-Lake-Home-to-Life/ The deep antarctic lakes have finally been penetrated and the life forms that exist there will soon be under our scrutiny, such environments may be the best place to look for life forms not part of our "normal" biosphere, how would we go about detecting a life form that didn't use DNA?

The genetic creation of homosexuality is a mystery to me. Although I believe there is a genetic component to same sex attraction, I have not heard any valid explanation for its existence. One of the purposes of heterosexuality is to pass on genes and reproduce. Thus, it makes sense that the male-female attraction is in part due to the need for the human species to procreate. Some scientists have made the conjecture that perhaps homosexuality was a means of population control. However, the most logical orientation in that case would be asexuality(lack sexual desire at all). If nature knew there was no possibility to procreate under same sex attraction, it would be equal…

how can i match a plant twigs photograph to identify it's binomial with website?

how can i identify a mycorrhiza?

"Reproductive cells and somatic cells are not separated early in development, as they are in animals。 Instead, plant somatic cells that have undergone many rounds of mitosis can undergo meiosis and produce gametes." This is said in my notes under properties of plants that make this mode of speciation possible. Can someone explain this please?

This blog post is about how to respond to creationists. It is full of so much win.

Hey guys, new here and just had I thought I've been curious about. Does anyone believe that our brains can one day evolve to pick up electronic signals. To the point where we could possibly communicate by radio essentially. Pretty random I know, I just like to always think about crazy things. Thanks for any thoughts or comments!

Just an ameuter speculating. My knowledge of evolution isn't that great, so my proposals might have been proposed already. One classic example of supposed irreducible complexity was the flagellum. Since then, we've learned of a simpler structure that could have been a stepping stone to the flagellum. Still, there is probably a relationship between (1) the likeliness of a functional thing evolving and (2) the specifity of the requirements for the function. That's when I wondered what population variables would impact the likeliness of such "complex" structures appearing. First of all, each population of bacteria contains TONS of viable individuals. This could d…

Hi, I would like to know why the evolutionarily stable strategy concept is important in behavioral ecology ? Thank you for your help

Why has the human brain evolved to understand and do math. I see no evolutionary benefit of walking/tree climbing apes being able to do math ? Yet we are quite good at it. Why do we need things like numbers to hunt prey ? Biologically, it doesn't make sense ( to me at least )

The phosphoseryl-tRNA pathway of Cys synthesis is a late energy optimization of the methanogens and not a feature of LUCA or -- How Paralogs Bias Phylogenetic Trees -- Full text (7 pages) with all the references and details ---Start--of--Note-------------------------------------------------------------------- During my text research on origin of life, I often found people claiming that phylogenetic trees prove early origin of some features. In many cases this looked very strange to me. Here I have a case in which – at least from my point of view – evidence is clearly against the interpretation of the phylogenetic tree. Please read through the text provided as l…

Yes, this is a real question, no I'm not trolling. I heard somewhere the reason why there are gay people is because of natural selection's response to overpopulation. I don't know if that's true or not.

AbiogenesisDo Evolutionist believe in Abiogenesis aka Spontaneous Generation? If so, explain why.

would it be possible, if some incentive for higher iq individuals to have more children while dissuading lower iq individuals from having as many that we could create a selective pressure towards higher intelligence? it seems like we should try to better the species and help future generations. **edit "smarter people" the thread name was meant to be "Smarter People?" so if a friendly mod happens to see this please change it.

I had the opportunity to take pictures of a Kingfisher from my living room and was fascinated by its beak design solution and the Japanese Bullet Train which was designed is a form of Bio-mimicry in engineering and the train travelled 10 percent faster, consuming 15 percent less energy and it no longer created a sonic boom after adopting this design into the Bullet Trains. Birds have always been an interesting genera of organisms to study evolution from Ring species on how mating songs among a population change over time and induce reproductive barriers and there by speciation to their adaptations of beaks for different environmental niches. These examples of finches…

I was just curious as to the question stated on whether or not insects develop cancer? If anyone has any information on this topic or has an opinion, it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance!

Hello. I have always been confident in the fact Evolution based on the few bits of evidence I knew about and logical reasoning. However it is only recently it has started to amaze me even more, probably because of my studies of the complexity of the human body at school. And so I have started to read further into it. This is a question focused specifically to the Natural Selection aspect of Evolution. An organism that has a feature better suited to its environment that allows it to function will survive, while an organism that does not will die. And we see this everywhere, it is the whole basis of survival of the fittest. And the fact that the few organisms with thes…