Examples of Species Evolved through Human Artificial Sele...

The dog can stand for the success of other breeding programs. As Darwin noted in The Origin, “Breeders habitually speak of an animal’s organization as something quite plastic, which they can model almost as they please.” Cows, sheep, pigs, flowers, vegetables, and so on—all came from humans choosing variants present in wild ancestors, or variants that arose by mutation during domestication. Through selection, the svelte wild turkey has become our docile, meaty, and virtually tasteless...

 Nature VS Nurture in Child Development

When a three-month-old, a one-year-old, and a four-year-old look at the same event, they seem to have very different thoughts about it. They seem to transform the light waves and sound waves into different representations, and they use different rules to manipulate those representations. Children don't have just a single, fixed program that gets from input to output. Instead, they seem to switch spontaneously from using one program to using another, more powerful program. That makes babies an...

 Breast Feeding is Unsanitary

Twenty-six years ago I noticed that our clearheaded, undrugged mothers, who were not strapped down or restrained in any way, eagerly, with mothedy murmurs of joy, reached out to grasp and hold their babies as I placed them on their abdomens. Why not let them hold their babies? I have heard many absurd objections over the years. "The mother's hands and breasts are not sterile!" I personally feel that nonsterility is one of the greatest benefits of breast-feeding. Bacteria are essential to the ...

 Humans are a Self-Domesticated Animal

Mankind is a self-domesticated animal; a mammal; an ape; a social ape; an ape in which the male takes the initiative in courtship and females usually leave the society of their birth; an ape in which men are predators, women herbivorous foragers; an ape in which males are relatively hierarchical, females relatively egalitarian; an ape in which males contribute unusually large amounts of investment in the upbringing of their offspring by provisioning their mates and their children with food, p...

 Why Women Store Fat in their Hips and Breasts

Low was looking to explain why young women have fat on their breasts and buttocks more than on other parts of their bodies. The reason this requires explaining is that young women are different from other human beings in this respect. Older women, young girls, and men of all ages gain fat on their torsos and limbs much more evenly. If a woman of twenty or so gains weight, it largely takes the form of fat on the breasts and buttocks; her waist can remain remarkably narrow. So much is undispu...