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Category: Evolution

Humans are 8% virus. How the ancient viral DNA in your genome plays a role in human disease and development

Humans are 8% virus. How the ancient viral DNA in your genome plays a role in human disease and development

Pandemics over the course of evolution have led to the integration of viruses into our genome. Westend61via Getty Images By Aidan Burn, Tufts University Remnants of ancient viral pandemics in the form of viral DNA sequences embedded in our genomes are still active in healthy people, according to new research my colleagues and I recently published. HERVs, or human endogenous retroviruses, make up around 8% of the human genome, left behind as a result of infections that humanity’s primate ancestors…

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How xenobots reshape our understanding of genetics

How xenobots reshape our understanding of genetics

Philip Ball writes: Where in the embryo does the person reside? Morphogenesis – the formation of the body from an embryo – once seemed so mystifying that scholars presumed the body must somehow already exist in tiny form at conception. In the 17th century, the Dutch microscopist Nicolaas Hartsoeker illustrated this ‘preformationist’ theory by drawing a foetal homunculus tucked into the head of a sperm. This idea finds modern expression in the notion that the body plan is encoded in…

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What animal intelligence reveals about human stupidity

What animal intelligence reveals about human stupidity

By Rachel Nuwer, August 26, 2022 The German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was, by all accounts, a miserable human being. He famously sought meaning through suffering, which he experienced in ample amounts throughout his life. Nietzsche struggled with depression, suicidal ideation, and hallucinations, and when he was 44 — around the height of his philosophical output — he suffered a nervous breakdown. He was committed to a mental hospital and never recovered. Although Nietzsche himself hated fascism and anti-Semitism, his…

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Revelations from 17-million-year-old ape teeth could lead to new insights on early human evolution

Revelations from 17-million-year-old ape teeth could lead to new insights on early human evolution

Fossilised jaws from the 17 million-year-old Kenyan ape Afropithecus turkanensis. Tanya M. Smith/National Museums of Kenya, Author provided By Tanya M. Smith, Griffith University and Daniel Green, Columbia University The timing and intensity of the seasons shapes life all around us, including tool use by birds, the evolutionary diversification of giraffes, and the behaviour of our close primate relatives. Some scientists suggest early humans and their ancestors also evolved due to rapid changes in their environment, but the physical evidence…

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Electric fish genomes reveal how evolution repeats itself

Electric fish genomes reveal how evolution repeats itself

Joanna Thompson writes: Along the murky bottom of the Amazon River, serpentine fish called electric eels scour the gloom for unwary frogs or other small prey. When one swims by, the fish unleash two 600-volt pulses of electricity to stun or kill it. This high-voltage hunting tactic is distinctive, but a handful of other fish species also use electricity: They generate and sense weaker voltages when navigating through muddy, slow-moving waters and when communicating with others of their species through…

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Octopus brains are nothing like ours — yet we have much in common

Octopus brains are nothing like ours — yet we have much in common

James Bridle writes: It turns out there are many ways of “doing” intelligence, and this is evident even in the apes and monkeys who perch close to us on the evolutionary tree. This awareness takes on a whole new character when we think about those non-human intelligences which are very different to us. Because there are other highly evolved, intelligent, and boisterous creatures on this planet that are so distant and so different from us that researchers consider them to…

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The problems of seeing evolution as a ‘March of Progress’

The problems of seeing evolution as a ‘March of Progress’

Alexander Werth writes: Herschel Walker, the former football star–turned–U.S. Senate candidate from Georgia, made headlines when he recently asked at a church-based campaign stop, if evolution is true, “Why are there still apes?” This chestnut continues to be echoed by creationists, despite being definitively debunked. Anthropologists have repeatedly explained that modern humans did not evolve from apes; rather, both evolved from a shared ancestor that fossil and DNA evidence indicates lived 7 to 13 million years ago. But Walker’s question…

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No music training? No problem: Even novices intuit complex music theory

No music training? No problem: Even novices intuit complex music theory

Science reports: Your co-worker’s annoying humming may be more virtuosic than you think. People without musical training naturally improvise melodies that have hallmarks of tunes composed by professionals, a new study shows. It seems that most individuals follow the arcane rules of music composition, even those who are unaware those rules exist. “It’s cool,” says Samuel Mehr, an expert on the psychology of music at Yale University who was not involved in the work. The study offers an “elegant” way…

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Why humans have more voice control than any other primates

Why humans have more voice control than any other primates

Science News reports: A crying baby, a screaming adult, a teenager whose voice cracks — people could have sounded this shrill all the time, a new study suggests, if not for a crucial step in human evolution. It’s what we’re missing that makes the difference. Humans have vocal cords, muscles in our larynx, or voice box, that vibrate to produce sound. But unlike all other studied primates, humans don’t have small bits of tissue above the vocal cords called vocal…

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The deep mystery at the heart of life on Earth

The deep mystery at the heart of life on Earth

  Viviane Callier writes: All living cells power themselves by coaxing energetic electrons from one side of a membrane to the other. Membrane-based mechanisms for accomplishing this are, in a sense, as universal a feature of life as the genetic code. But unlike the genetic code, these mechanisms are not the same everywhere: The two simplest categories of cells, bacteria and archaea, have membranes and protein complexes for producing energy that are chemically and structurally dissimilar. Those differences make it…

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The human mind is not meant to be awake after midnight, scientists warn

The human mind is not meant to be awake after midnight, scientists warn

Science Alert reports: In the middle of the night, the world can sometimes feel like a dark place. Under the cover of darkness, negative thoughts have a way of drifting through your mind, and as you lie awake, staring at the ceiling, you might start craving guilty pleasures, like a cigarette or a carb-heavy meal. Plenty of evidence suggests the human mind functions differently if it is awake at nighttime. Past midnight, negative emotions tend to draw our attention more…

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Dolphins make peace and love — not war — when they encounter strangers

Dolphins make peace and love — not war — when they encounter strangers

Science reports: In the summer of 2013, dolphin researcher Nicole Danaher-Garcia spotted something rare and remarkable in the animal world. As she stood on top of the bridge of a sport fishing yacht near Bimini in the Bahamas, she spied 10 adult Atlantic spotted dolphins she had never seen before—speeding into the waters of another group of dolphins. Most mammals attack intruders, but war wasn’t on the menu that day. Instead, the newcomers—eventually 46 in all—joined up with the resident…

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Viruses can change your scent to make you more attractive to mosquitoes, new research in mice finds

Viruses can change your scent to make you more attractive to mosquitoes, new research in mice finds

Mosquito-borne diseases are estimated to cause over 1 million deaths a year. mrs/Moment via Getty Images Penghua Wang, University of Connecticut Mosquitoes are the world’s deadliest animal. Over 1 million deaths per year are attributed to mosquito-borne diseases, including malaria, yellow fever, dengue fever, Zika and chikungunya fever. How mosquitoes seek out and feed on their hosts are important factors in how a virus circulates in nature. Mosquitoes spread diseases by acting as carriers of viruses and other pathogens: A…

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Explosion of life on Earth linked to heavy metal act at planet’s center

Explosion of life on Earth linked to heavy metal act at planet’s center

The Observer reports: At the centre of the Earth, a giant sphere of solid iron is slowly swelling. This is the inner core and scientists have recently uncovered intriguing evidence that suggests its birth half a billion years ago may have played a key role in the evolution of life on Earth. At that time, our planet’s magnetic field was faltering – and that would have had critical consequences, they argue. Normally this field protects life on the surface by…

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Do we need a new theory of evolution?

Do we need a new theory of evolution?

Stephen Buranyi writes: Strange as it sounds, scientists still do not know the answers to some of the most basic questions about how life on Earth evolved. Take eyes, for instance. Where do they come from, exactly? The usual explanation of how we got these stupendously complex organs rests upon the theory of natural selection. You may recall the gist from school biology lessons. If a creature with poor eyesight happens to produce offspring with slightly better eyesight, thanks to…

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How the brains of social animals synchronise and expand one another

How the brains of social animals synchronise and expand one another

Sofia Quaglia writes: Humans are not the only creatures that show a refined grasp of social norms. If a group of adult male rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) find themselves sitting around a turning table set with food, they will display an ‘I scratch your back, you scratch mine’ ethos of reciprocity. One monkey will offer another one a piece of fruit and, what’s more, will expect the gesture to be reciprocated. If the offer isn’t forthcoming, the first monkey is…

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