What is Evolution?

Excellent video from Stated Clearly explaining just what evolution is … using great illustrations from Rosemary Mosco’s Bird and Moon comics.

This is a great video to share with friends/enemies/confused relatives that might have trouble accepting evolution and how simple it can be to understand. 

I’d like to add one thing to this video. Single amoebas, pairs of parents and a few children are used in these evolution illustrations to simplify the concept of evolution, but it’s important to remember that evolution is something that happens to populations, not individuals. The changes within a generation are random. It’s only after those changes have been passed on for several generations that a survival advantage or disadvantage (followed by either more or less individuals carrying the trait) occurs. That’s where evolution happens, it’s not in the change itself. And sometimes even harmful traits can become frequent in a population, like we see in diseases that are prevalent among isolated ethnic groups.

Bonus: I’d also recommend Understanding Evolution’s “Common Misconceptions” FAQ for those who want to dig deeper.

Source: youtube.com

Allie Brosh and Hyperbole and a Half are back after a year and a half of internet silence. That’s incredibly good news for people who like awesome things. I point this out for two reasons: It contains one of the best evolutionary biology illustrations of all time (above), about how we are at the end of a long line of things that successfully avoided getting chewed to death. It is one of the greatest explorations and personal stories of depression and mental health that I have ever seen, and should really be read by every single damn person on Earth.
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Allie Brosh and Hyperbole and a Half are back after a year and a half of internet silence. That’s incredibly good news for people who like awesome things.

I point this out for two reasons:

  1. It contains one of the best evolutionary biology illustrations of all time (above), about how we are at the end of a long line of things that successfully avoided getting chewed to death.
  2. It is one of the greatest explorations and personal stories of depression and mental health that I have ever seen, and should really be read by every single damn person on Earth.

Why does music make us feel happy or sad? Or angry or romantic? How can simple sound waves cause so much emotion?

First things first, this is the best t-shirt I’ve worn in any episode.

I went from my comfy chair to the streets of Austin to investigate whether it might be written into neural evolution. Modern neuroscience says our brains may be wired to pick certain emotions out of music because they remind us of how people move!

Humans are the only species we know that creates and communicate using music, but it’s still unclear how or why we do that, brain-wise. Is it just a lucky side effect of evolution, like Steven Pinker says? Or is it a deeper part of our evolutionary history, as people like Mark Changizi and Daniel Levitin argue?

Some brand new evolutionary psychology research says that we may read emotion in music because it relates to how we sense emotion in people’s movements. We’ll take a trip from Austin to Dartmouth to Cambodia to hear why music makes us feel so many feels. The connections between movement and music go far beyond dance moves!

Mike over at Idea Channel has a different opinion, that our emotional reactions to music are purely learned and cultural. Head on over and check it out. Do you agree?

For more reading on this awesome topic, check out these references.

How did feathers evolve?

Carl Zimmer, an elegant peacock among science writers, delivers this lesson on where bird feathers came from. The shared anatomy between dinosaurs and birds extends beyond the wishbone to their equally functional and extravagant plumage. Recent fossil finds give us hints about the colors and forms that adorned some prehistoric reptiles, from frilly crests to fuzzy proto-wings.

Dinosaurs didn’t take to the air for tens of millions of years after the first feathers showed up, and we don’t yet know exactly how that happened. But we know that the evolution of these delicate, beautiful and functional forms carried some dinosaurs aloft to a higher branch on the tree of life, and from that branch lept the first bird.

(view the full lesson at TED-Ed)

Source: ed.ted.com

Help Boing Boing and the Encyclopedia of Life catalogue the grandeur of life and you could win fantastic prizes! If you’re a lover of interesting creatures, or an armchair biologist, or a teacher looking for something fun to do with your class, or maybe you just want to try your hand at some science-y writing, this sounds like fun. So much species information isn’t openly accessible to the public, and EOL is trying to change that. Every species deserves an entertaining and rich description of its place on Earth. Even the weird ones.  Visit the link above for more information! I know quite a few of you have written me looking for ways to sharpen your science writing chops, so here’s your chance.
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Help Boing Boing and the Encyclopedia of Life catalogue the grandeur of life and you could win fantastic prizes! If you’re a lover of interesting creatures, or an armchair biologist, or a teacher looking for something fun to do with your class, or maybe you just want to try your hand at some science-y writing, this sounds like fun. So much species information isn’t openly accessible to the public, and EOL is trying to change that. Every species deserves an entertaining and rich description of its place on Earth. Even the weird ones. 

Visit the link above for more information! I know quite a few of you have written me looking for ways to sharpen your science writing chops, so here’s your chance.

Sex with Other Early Species Might Have Been Secret of Homo sapiens Success Just a few tens of thousands of years ago, Homo sapiens existed next to several close evolutionary cousins, including Neanderthals and Homo floresiensis. But shortly after our human species migrated out of Africa, we were left as the only hominin species on Earth. What was the secret to our success? Did we out-compete the others for resources? Did we just flat-out kill them? Did we reproduce faster? All of those theories have some merit, but thanks to DNA analysis of ancient human and Neanderthal genomes, a new idea is emerging: We may have interbred our way to the top. By analyzing how much of our genomes (nuclear and mitochondrial) we share with these other species, it appears that there was significant “genetic mixing”, if you know what I mean. Many of these hybrid gene mixes could have added new tools for our early immune system, leading to tougher, more survivable humans. We still lack many details in this story, and lots of questions remain. But it’s pretty clear that human evolution does not follow a single line out of Africa. Instead, it’s a web that stretches first across Europe and then into Asia, mixing and branching along the way into the global population that today we see mixing in entirely new ways. Check out the wonderfully detailed full story by Michael Hammer at Scientific American.
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Sex with Other Early Species Might Have Been Secret of Homo sapiens Success

Just a few tens of thousands of years ago, Homo sapiens existed next to several close evolutionary cousins, including Neanderthals and Homo floresiensis. But shortly after our human species migrated out of Africa, we were left as the only hominin species on Earth.

What was the secret to our success? Did we out-compete the others for resources? Did we just flat-out kill them? Did we reproduce faster? All of those theories have some merit, but thanks to DNA analysis of ancient human and Neanderthal genomes, a new idea is emerging: We may have interbred our way to the top.

By analyzing how much of our genomes (nuclear and mitochondrial) we share with these other species, it appears that there was significant “genetic mixing”, if you know what I mean. Many of these hybrid gene mixes could have added new tools for our early immune system, leading to tougher, more survivable humans.

We still lack many details in this story, and lots of questions remain. But it’s pretty clear that human evolution does not follow a single line out of Africa. Instead, it’s a web that stretches first across Europe and then into Asia, mixing and branching along the way into the global population that today we see mixing in entirely new ways.

Check out the wonderfully detailed full story by Michael Hammer at Scientific American.

Source: scientificamerican.com

  • 1,893 Plays
  • EvolutionJill Sobule

Original post from the awesome literaryjukebox:

Think of it: zillions and zillions of organisms running around, each under the hypnotic spell of a single truth, all these truths identical, and all logically incompatible with one another: ‘My hereditary material is the most important material on earth; its survival justifies your frustration, pain, even death’. And you are one of those organisms, living your life in the thrall of a logical absurdity.

Robert Wright in The Moral Animal

Song: “Evolution” by Jill Soubule

What if we could become the first species with sufficient intelligence to rise above, or beyond, or at least side-step this evolutionary imperative? What if we said “no” to:

‘My hereditary material is the most important material on earth; its survival justifies your frustration, pain, even death’ 

It’s a beautiful thought. And a realistic one, even if it’s not universal. We are the most intelligently social animal ever to exist. As Steven Pinker reminds us, fewer people will die violent deaths in this modern era than ever before in human history, and our taste for the evil that remains is a bitter one.

There are better angels in our nature than justifying the pain of others for our own genetic benefit. This exception is not yet the rule, but hey … rules were made to be broken.