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University of ZurichMice Change Their Appearance as a Result of Frequent Exposure to Humans
Many tame domesticated animals have a different appearance compared to their relatives in the wild, for example white patches in their fur or shorter snouts. UZH researchers have now for the first time shown that wild house mice develop the same visible changes – without selection, as a result of exposure to humans alone.
NPRAre Butterflies Two Different Animals in One? The Death And Resurrection Theory
Here's a dangerous, crazy thought from an otherwise sober (and very eminent) biologist, Bernd Heinrich. He's thinking about moths and butterflies, and how they radically change shape as they grow, from little wormy, caterpillar critters to airborne beauties. Why, he wondered, do these flying animals begin their lives as wingless, crawling worms? Baby ducks have wings. Baby bats have wings. Why not baby butterflies?
NY Review of BooksEpigenetics: The Evolution Revolution
At the end of the eighteenth century, the French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck noted that life on earth had evolved over long periods of time into a striking variety of organisms. He sought to explain how they had become more and more complex. Living organisms not only evolved, Lamarck argued; they did so very slowly, “little by little and successively.” In Lamarckian theory, animals became more diverse as each creature strove toward its own “perfection,” hence the enormous variety of living things on earth. Man is the most complex life form, therefore the most perfect, and is even now evolving.
WikipediaDarwin among the Machines
Darwin among the Machines is the name of an article published in The Press newspaper on 13 June 1863 in Christchurch, New Zealand, which references the work of Charles Darwin in the title. Written by Samuel Butler but signed Cellarius (q.v.), the article raised the possibility that machines were a kind of mechanical life undergoing constant evolution, and that eventually machines might supplant humans as the dominant species.
![New discoveries about the human mind show the limitations of reason. // “The Enigma of Reason” (Harvard) ... point[s] out that reason is an evolved trait, like bipedalism or three-color vision. It emerged on the savannas of Africa, and has to be understood in that context. // Humans’ biggest advantage over other species is our ability to cooperate. Cooperation is difficult to establish and almost as difficult to sustain. For any individual, freeloading is always the best course of action. Reason developed not to enable us to solve abstract, logical problems or even to help us draw conclusions from unfamiliar data; rather, it developed to resolve the problems posed by living in collaborative groups. “Reason is an adaptation to the hypersocial niche humans have evolved for themselves,” Mercier and Sperber write. Habits of mind that seem weird or goofy or just plain dumb from an “intellectualist” point of view prove shrewd when seen from a social “interactionist” perspective.](/img/lead/why-facts-dont-change-our-minds.webp)
NewYorkerWhy Facts Don’t Change Our Minds
New discoveries about the human mind show the limitations of reason. // “The Enigma of Reason” (Harvard) ... point[s] out that reason is an evolved trait, like bipedalism or three-color vision. It emerged on the savannas of Africa, and has to be understood in that context. // Humans’ biggest advantage over other species is our ability to cooperate. Cooperation is difficult to establish and almost as difficult to sustain. For any individual, freeloading is always the best course of action. Reason developed not to enable us to solve abstract, logical problems or even to help us draw conclusions from unfamiliar data; rather, it developed to resolve the problems posed by living in collaborative groups. “Reason is an adaptation to the hypersocial niche humans have evolved for themselves,” Mercier and Sperber write. Habits of mind that seem weird or goofy or just plain dumb from an “intellectualist” point of view prove shrewd when seen from a social “interactionist” perspective.
CHRONICLEThe Evolutionary Mystery of Homosexuality
If reproduction is key to a trait’s endurance, why has this anti-reproductive trait endured?
POPSCICan Organisms Evolve The Ability To Evolve?
A new study finds that natural selection selected for flexibility in one bacteria species.
AeonThe selfish gene is a great meme. Too bad it’s so wrong
For decades, the selfish gene metaphor let us view evolution with new clarity. Is it now blinding us?
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