Science!: Hammerheads, Fly Sex and Evolution

Inside: A tip from flies: How to get your chick to do more chores.

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1. Will show this article to my wife so that she will appreciate me more. "At least I don't make you do chores after sex!"

2. As everyone that has seen a children's cartoon, hammerhead sharks obviously only hammer in nails with their heads. Thus the name "hammerhead". DUH.

3. The image you used showing the crowd of Carolina Hurricane hockey fans is simply hilarious in terms of evolution.

hammerhead sharks rule

Just as long as we don't start using Thunder Stones to evolve, i'm good with whatever happens.

I'm pretty much not adding myself to the gene pool anyways. I have terrible genes. But if someone gets stupid and clones me the world is doomed. Just letting everyone know in advance.

That was really a great article. I was looking for something to use for my presentation on current advancements in life sciences, and the fruit fly and hammerhead research are perfect candidates. Thanks!

I think that, given a fairly loose interpretation of the term "evolution", humans are still evolving- only in, for the most part, an environment of our own choosing rather than the external environment of nature.

LTK_70:
That was really a great article. I was looking for something to use for my presentation on current advancements in life sciences, and the fruit fly and hammerhead research are perfect candidates. Thanks!

Be sure to credit Lauren in your notes!

If i could hug my Y chromasome right now...

Humans taking controll over there development seems, to me, to go against everything that evolution is. I thought it was 'random traits perpetuated by non-random conditions' or something to that effect.

I don't think humans are evolving anymore. And we'll all die miserable deaths because of it! :)

Does the guy from the Wisconsin University who was quoted in the last part of the piece know anything about speciation times? It takes alot longer than 14,000 years to speciate. For example, polar bears and brown bears (i think, it could be grizzlies though) sepparated some 200, 000 years ago, and yet they are not individual species as when they crossbreed they have viable young (ie young that can have kids). Maybe we shouldn't be so worried about our evolution yet as our species is very young (i think it's like 50,000 years old or something) and only has just speciated away from apes.

This was all fascinating! I am quite interested to see what scientists can do with gene splicing and mixing up DNAs. As for Evolution... Humans may be getting tech smart, but they seem to be getting socially stupid. Not directed at anyone in general, just an observation.

I agree with the first theory more than any. We have removed all factors that would cause us the need to adapt (predators beyond our species are below us on the food chain, germs and viruses can be combatted by conventional medicines, etc.). In the human quest for knowledge/power/riches(of any kind) we have removed ourselves from the evolutionary chain. I agree that we can make those changes ourselves, but that really does defeat the purpose of evolution, you might as well sit back and accept that the human race as a species is on the backslide in that area.

Every offspring is an evolutionary offshoot of its parents. Despite all the differences between humans and flies and fish (notably the lack of i's and f's), there are some startling similarities. I have no idea what these guys were thinking of when they said 'evolution', but numbers 2 and 3 made the most sense to me (still evolving, transhumanism as more selection criteria).

Frizzle:
Humans taking controll over there development seems, to me, to go against everything that evolution is. I thought it was 'random traits perpetuated by non-random conditions' or something to that effect.

I don't think humans are evolving anymore. And we'll all die miserable deaths because of it! :)

Humans take control of their evolution every time they have sex. As does every other species. The traits aren't random, either; the more people with diserable traits have children, the more prevalent those traits become. If the circumstances in the environment require different survival skills, organisms with those skills will survive in that environment while others will not.

Specialisation of the two sex cells into sperm and eggs (one motile, and the other containing an energy store) would eventually lead to hermaphroditic organisms (making both sperm and eggs) - which include many still-extant sexually-reproducing organisms. Only after this would the specilisation into male and femal occur.

http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=2236872

Hammerheads rule. :) And they don't have a blind spot in front of their heads - they use Lorenzini's ampules instead of sight. :)

Oooh, a five pager, exciting!
Btw, excellent piece on human evolution, definitely worth the extra page.

Agreed! The evolution article was definetly an interesting read! So much in that field its always nice to see new, and alternative view points :)

The evolution article was interesting, but I think the theorists have the direction of our evolution entirely backward. The intelligent people aren't actually reproducing more, they are actually reproducing less. According to "Misdiagnosis and Dual Diagnosis of Gifted Children and Adults," high IQ people are statistically likely to have children later in life, and have fewer children overall, than less-gifted folk.

Nice. I liked this article a lot. :D It pertains heavily to my Biology class which I just started. XD

Archon:
According to "Misdiagnosis and Dual Diagnosis of Gifted Children and Adults," high IQ people are statistically likely to have children later in life, and have fewer children overall, than less-gifted folk.

This is interesting! Couple this with the fact that older paternal DNA equals lower IQ performance and you've got idiots running all over the place. Lovely.

As i see contemporary evolution of human race is more like "guided" evolution than blind "natural" evolution that's based on random changes. Humans becoming intelligent enough to undestand and tamper in genetics to adjust needed and important traits in living organisms. But "survival of the fittest" will always be in effect just in a lesser degree.