Paralith

Me too. Seriously - for any big dog that could be dangerous, I think owners should have to prove they can competently control their animal. It's their responsibility.

Sam, there is a rather large difference between the people you mentioned and yourself. These are practicing research scientists who were working in the field to gather knowledge that was not, at the time, known. From all your examples, once solid supporting evidence for these theories came to light, they were accepted as they should have been. It's only natural to show some skepticism when confronted with a lack of evidence. I agree that complete and utter condemnation of such theories is inappropriate until they have been proven false, and that Dr. Ward's professor's reaction was ill done. However, what you and lucaspa are doing here is very different from the above. You're not out there in the field working on gathering previously unknown evidence and analysis to support something relatively new to science. You are discussing current, known knowledge in a forum, and any new ideas that you may have, unless you're out there scientifically gathering new evidence yourself (as the people you mentioned above most certainly did), must be based on data that is already well supported. If you are making pure conjecture, then you must concede that it is pure conjecture and not try to support your claims beyond all doubt. Some people have difficulty in opening to new ideas. Science itself is merely the process by which new ideas are either supported or disproved, and it doesn't put people "in a box" with it's rules. What lucaspa posted is good scientific method and nothing else. And on a more specific note, if dreaming causes REM, then REM does have something to do with dreams. If one is caused by the other then I think it's safe to say that they have something to do with each other.

At first I didn't think an otter would be big enough to be mistaken for a cat; but I looked it up and the only otters found in Europe, the European Otter Lutra lutra, reach an adult height of 12 inches and a length of 2 -3 feet. You could probably mistake that for a cat. They don't look that different from weasels, though, and if it looked nothing like a weasel then it may not have been an otter. The only other rodent-like animals that are that size that might be found in the UK that I can think of are raccoons, but it's hard to mistake a raccoon for something else. Other than that, all the bigger rodents aren't found in Europe.

Are you sure it wasn't a weasel?

Two different species - their geographical distance from each other presents a pretty firm barrier to gene flow between them.

It's ok, INow - I was going to tell Lance that while I would definitely word it differently, since as you say "under female command" makes it sound like women are telling men to go off and fight each other, he's got the spirit of the law if not the letter of it. Ultimately it is mating opportunities that are the stimulus for within-group male-male competitive aggression. However, when it comes to active female choice, females may not necessarily prefer to mate with males who are simply aggressive. I would say it's more accurate (for humans - this is often different for other animals) that females prefer males who can accomplish a certain dominance rank, who can procure resources and security - and that aggression is one method by which males achieve these things, and was probably the primary method during the earlier stages of hominid evolution. But there are other ways that males can achieve these things, particularly modern human males - through charm and charisma, through intelligence, etc. This can even be true of other apes - though mostly anecdotal, chimp researchers have remarked that some males see to maintain dominance via "force of personality." Another aspect of female choice in this matter is that females may even help their favorites achieve higher status. Even in chimpanzees, during a dominance struggle between males, the females of the troupe may rally around their preferred candidate for the alpha position. As INow said, male aggression has its roots deep in the lineages of sexually reproducing animals, but in more modern and socially complex species, aggression can be modified or even replaced by other tactics. Perhaps competition would be a better word to describe the unchanging pursuit of males after desirable females.

That is much more political theory than it is behavioral evolution. A behavior largely determined by "nature" is an adaptive behavior, and behaviors that are adaptive must, ultimately, bring benefit to the individuals that carry them out. Thus, repopulating the country isn't in itself a concern for the individual; maintaining a fighting force of males that can protect your territory (and resources) and females and offspring from threatening competitors is much more so. During our specie's evolution, males most likely had to fight to protect territory from other groups and to gain higher dominance ranks within the group in order to secure the most mating opportunities. With luck and the right amount of aggression, the risk of injury is well worth the potential benefits. For females the risk of injury is far higher, so direct aggression is usually harmful to their reproductive success. However, should a situation ever arise wherein females can gain great reproductive benefits through direct aggression (perhaps even a culturally determined situation), then you may get your Amazons. In some species of animal, where sex roles are effectively reversed and females compete with each other for males, the females are in fact larger and stronger than the males.

Actually, some people think we have rather clear evidence that humans are still evolving, and faster than ever. After all, any change in gene frequencies from generation to generation in the human population counts as evolution.

I agree that people most certainly have genetically determined variation in brain structure that influences things like personality, intelligence, etc. However, going as far as to say that people with, say, autistic spectrum disorders, are actually normal, is a pretty big stretch. They may be "normal" in the sense that mutations and outliers of various kinds will always be found in animal populations. However, they are significantly different from the average range of variation that is found in the majority of the population. They also definitely possess maladaptive traits compared to most humans - the lack of social ability, in particular. Human society is complex and a certain degree of social ability is necessary in order to function well within it. And most autistic spectrum disorder people cannot do that. Now, whether or not it is right or wrong for an autistic person to remain autistic (should a "cure" ever be found, for example) is entirely a personal value judgment. it's always important to accept who you are, but it's also understandable that you would want to be able to interact well with the rest of the world.

Female, with a paying job in biomedical research, and applying to get a PhD in animal behavior. And to stave off those PMs, I'm already taken.

All that proves is that you boys talk about science more on an internet forum than girls on average. Whether or not you're significantly better at it, based only on what's here in this forum, is highly debatable.

I wrote a paper once on the evolution of eusociality, and as I understand it the current theory revolves around the "choice" of the potential worker. The eusocial ancestor was most likely some kind of parasocial insect, where the females were capable of polymorphic behavior. An individual female is face with a "choice" when starting a new nest; either form a multiple-foundress nest with relatives, where they stand of a good chance of never being able to have their own offspring (as only one or a few of the females will probably gain that privilege), or form a single-foundress next where they can be sure they will have their own offspring. (There are several species of insect alive today that are like this as well.) As I mentioned in an early post, a lone foundress will often face a good deal more challenges than multiple foundresses. Getting the material for and building a nest will take time; foraging for food and bringing it back to the young will take time. If during any of these trips out from the nest the foundress dies, there will be no one else left to raise the young. In a multiple foundress nest, all of these challenges are reduced by the numbers of additional, helping adults. Participation in a multiple foundress nest will yield more offspring with a greater chance of success. So, given significant selective pressure, the gene or gene suite that promotes the multiple foundress behavior will have more copies in the population's gene pool. Once you have the multiple foundress behavior fixed, then those groups of foundresses with some more specialized individuals may become more successful than those foundress groups that are not. From there you can evolve morphologically distinct castes that include completely sterile individuals.

Like INow said, you're missing the point. If you as an individual can have greater reproductive success by helping to raise millions and millions of sisters and brothers instead of a handful of your own offspring, then why waste the resources on growing reproductive organs when you could instead become morphologically specialized in service of the hive? I think the point of the thread is not to try and anticipate what aliens would look like or think or do, but to discuss what might be more or less likely, and why.

Um - the answers would all depend on the aliens, who at this point are completely hypothetical and we know nothing about them. How are we supposed to come up with answers to questions that would be put to entirely unknown beings? The "advantage" of being human would be relative to the aliens' values. Even the laws of physics - now, I'm not a physics person, but I have heard that for all we know, the laws of physics as they work in our galaxy may only be local effects compared to the universe as a whole. So for all we know, even physics as aliens might know them could or could not be different.

The peptides that we ingest need to be broken down into their basic parts so that we can use them to build up our own proteins etc as needed.

The majority of eusocial insects have an interesting genetic set up known as haplodiploidy. Eggs that are unfertilized become haploid males, and eggs that are fertilized become diploid females. Now, in a normal diploid species where both males and females are diploid, parents share on average 50% of their genes with their children, as was mentioned previously, and full siblings share on average 50% of their genes with each other. In a haplodiploid species, however, full sisters share on average 75% of their genes with each other, but would only share on average 50% of their genes with any offspring might have. So it's actually in their reproductive interest to help their mother make more sisters than it is for them to have their own offspring. However, while this is a convenient explanation in theory, it doesn't quite scan to reality. If a queen mates with more than one male, then her female workers aren't all as closely related to each other. For a queen, it's in her interest to have 50-50 male-female offspring, but it's in the workers' interest for the queen to have mostly female offspring. This is not to mention the fact that there exist eusocial species of insects with non-reproductive castes that do not share this genetic system, and vice versa. The explanation closest to reality, then, is probably one that combines relatedness and ecological factors. A queen with workers around to help her will reproduce more often, and with greater success. A single worker breaking off on her own to reproduce will have much more difficulty in raising offspring, and ultimately may only be able to produce very few if any at all. So by sheer volume she is more likely to pass on more of her genes through contributing to the raising of sisters than by having offspring of her own. Something similar happens in termites - they develop in stages, and their food source, wood, requires a long time to digest for a relatively small amount of energy. It can take years for an individual termite to become a fully mature, reproductive adult. So an individual termite in the middle stages of growth has a choice; they can continue to spend all their resources on their own growth, and in a few years have their own offspring. Or, they can stop growing and spend their energy helping their already reproductive parents have more offspring than they would be able to without help. Once again, the volume tends to win out.

Other than the breakdown of digested enzymes, I don't think pepsin has any other (known) function. Is that what you're asking?

I'm assuming you mean sperm and egg, cuz the ovary is the organ that makes the eggs. Anyway, it's more like gamete A + gamete B or C or D or E or F = incoming organism, but yes. As Martin said, different forms of body symmetry are really not that much of a stretch. And like he said, there are several different theories for why sex evolved in the first place, but one of the ideas is that it increases genetic diversity. So, if a species existed in an environment such that a great deal of genetic diversity is highly advantageous, then perhaps having more than two sexes would be adaptive. Until we're more sure on why sex evolved, though, we can only guess.

umm...isn't that what we've been debating this whole time? Exactly what our working definition of "suicide" is? Clearly, different people have different meanings in mind when they use the word.

It caused it's own death. What's so hard to believe about that? That doesn't say anything about why it did so. It may not have realized what it was doing, maybe it was scared or hungry or stupid enough to get tangled up in the rope and just kept pulling on it to the point that it died. That doesn't mean it was thinking, "Man, this sucks. Well, I got this rope around my neck already, I'll just choke myself to death!"

I knew it would. I already said as much previously. I will concede to Dr. DNA that it depends on how exactly we're defining the word choice, and if we're restricting it to conscious choice. INow, there is a difference between simply giving up because you've lost all exterior motivation to go on and finding yourself a 20 story building, getting to the top, and throwing yourself off. Most animals are probably capable of the former. Captive animals, unable to roam a broad range as their instincts tell them to, unable to interact with other animals as their instincts tell them to, unable to feed or breed or do anything in the way that they would normally devote all their energies to - then yes, they may just sit down and do nothing, because they have absolutely no natural stimulation, and eventually die. (Which is why enrichment is so important for zoo animals.) Mortally sick or wounded animals are just too weak or incapacitated to do much of anything but lie there. But you don't see them trying to drag themselves towards the nearest cliff. In these situations, non-human animals (with the possible exceptions already discussed) won't get up and look around for ways to die like we do.

I think that's an excellent addition. In that sense, not only do ants and bees not primarily intend to kill themselves (but primarily intend to defend their kin), but they probably have little personal choice in the matter. If you are a soldier drone, that is probably what you are hardwired to do - similar to the cell that is programmed to commit apoptosis under certain conditions. This does, however, begin to lead us toward the quagmire of choice and free will, and ultimately self consciousness. But it still keeps in line with the previous examples, as elephants and dolphins are the two non-human animals thought to potentially have a human-like form of self consciousness.

While I applaud any efforts to get an early and proactive start on the education you'll need for your career, you're still just in high school. The main purpose of high school is to prepare you to get into a good college. Once you're in a good undergraduate college, you can really get a firm grasp on all the basics and begin to explore more of the advanced concepts. In med school or grad school, you'll get into the real nitty gritty. And even then, nothing can replace actual on-the-job experience. Long story short, definitely try hard and do your best - but don't get down on yourself for not being at the top of the top of the high school class. You're just beginning the long journey it will take to get to your career goals. Don't give up now just because you didn't have some kind of shining perfect start.

It doesn't help that the word is used inconsistently in different contexts. As far as human culture, and even human law goes, words like suicide and homicide and genocide indicate a purposeful and primary intent to kill. Otherwise we call it things like accidental death, manslaughter, self defense, etc. So, when a bee divebombs an enemy many times its size, with skin that will pull out its stinger, is the bee's primary intent to cause its own death, or is its primary intent to drive the enemy away from the hive? When an ant explodes itself to launch its sticky intestines on top of its enemies in order to ensare them, is its primary purpose to die, or is its primary purpose to protect the colony from attackers? The answers are quite obvious, I think, yet these acts are still often called suicide. Even human "suicide" bombers - are they just trying to die, or are they trying to maximally hurt their enemy?

Her father is probably not 100% chinese. At some point in his ancestry there must have been another mixing, because to get light colored eyes requires two recessive alleles. Her mother alone could not have provided that. I, for example, am half German, half Filipino. Both my brothers' and my eyes are dark brown, but I may have inherited the light colored recessive eye gene from my mother, and it's just being covered up by the brown colored dominant gene from my father. My boyfriend has green eyes, so it's possible our children will have light colored eyes as well. As a sidenote, I am constantly mistaken for other ethnicities. Latino, middle eastern, Indian, native american, Italian - I often get people walking up to me and speaking in different languages.