05 MAR 2015 by ideonexus
"Bug" is Not an Insult
Look at them, the bugs. Humans have used everything in their power to extinguish them: every kind of poison, aerial sprays, introducing and cultivating their natural predators, searching for and destroying their eggs, using genetic modification to sterilize them, burning with fire, drowning with water. Every family has bug spray, every desk has a flyswatter under it … this long war has been going on for the entire history of human civilization. But the outcome is still in doubt. The bugs ha... 1 
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notes09 AUG 2014 by ideonexus
12X Spiral
The theory is that numbers are self-organized around the smallest, most highly composite number, 12. The number 12 and many of its multiples (24, 36, 48, 60, etc.) are HCNs: highly composite numbers (with lots of divisors), which are extremely useful for measuring and proportions. Why are there 12 eggs in a carton, 12 inches in a foot, 12 months in a year, 24 hours in a day, 360 degrees in a circle, 60 seconds in minute? Because highly composite numbers can be divided evenly in many ways. For... 1 notes
notesBuilding a spiral around a clock, with 12-segments in the rotation, puts multiples of 3 at {3,6,9,12}, multiples of at {4,8,12}, multiples of 2 at {2,4,6,8,10,12}, and primes at {1,5,7,11}.
05 JUN 2013 by ideonexus
Examples of Evolutionary Traps
We have altered the environment in a vast number of ways, both small and large. And when animals try to read the cues from our human environment, they can get tricked. They can end up doing something that kills them, loses them the opportunity to reproduce, or simply wastes their time. Scientists call these situations evolutionary traps.
[...]
Some evolutionary traps, like the Christmas lights, play on the visual strategies animals use to find prey. Albatrosses will peck at brightly colored...Folksonomies: evolution maladaptation
Folksonomies: evolution maladaptation
1 notes
notesFrogs that swallow christmas lights, turtles that eat plastic bags, and beetles laying eggs in timber fallen for lumber are examples of animals falling into dead ends thanks to humans altering the environment.
18 JAN 2013 by ideonexus
When Does Human Life Begin
Careful and reproducible observations and measurements in the bbiosciences have similarly forced us to repeatedly refine our traditional ideas about what life itself is and when it begins. Is a human being first a life when it emerges from the birth canal? Does it have any legal rights is as a person before then? Or is it a life at the stage of development where > it is able to survive independently outside of the womb even if it is removed from there early, as can happen naturally with pr... 1 notes
notesIs it at fertilization, implantation, or after birth?
13 APR 2012 by ideonexus
Plesiosaurs Sucked
There were no real sea serpents in the Mesozoic Era, but the plesiosaurs were the next thing to it. The plesiosaurs were reptiles who had gone back to the water because it seemed like a good idea at the time. As they knew little or nothing about swimming, they rowed themselves around in the water with their four paddles, instead of using their tails for propulsion like the brighter marine animals. (Such as the ichthyosaurs, who used their paddles for balancing and steering. The plesiosaurs di...Folksonomies: adaptation
Folksonomies: adaptation
1 notes
notesWill Cuppy convincingly argues that this reptile was incredibly poorly adapted to life in the ocean.
21 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
Barriers that Keep Different Species from Interbreeding
What keeps members of two related species from mating with each
other? There are many different reproductive barriers. Species might not
interbreed simply because their mating or flowering seasons don’t overlap.
Some corals, for example, reproduce only one night a year, spewing
out masses of eggs and sperm into the sea over a several-hour period.
Closely related species living in the same area remain distinct because
their peak spawning periods are several hours apart, preventing eggs
of on... 1 notes
notesDifferent pheremones, blooming times, geographical isolation can keep members of two different species from breeding.
20 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
Mating Strategies of Males and Females
A vivid demonstration of this difference can be seen by looking up the
record number of children sired by a human female versus a male. If you
were to guess the maximum number of children that a woman could
produce in a lifetime, you’d probably say around fifteen. Guess again.
The Guinness Book of World Records gives the “official” record number
of children for a woman as sixty-nine, produced by an eighteenth century
Russian peasant. In twenty-seven pregnancies between 1725 and
1745, sh... 1 notes
notesA Great summary of the differences between them evolutionarily.
16 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
Mammals Produce Useless Yolks
Vestigial genes can go hand in hand with vestigial structures. We
mammals evolved from reptilian ancestors that laid eggs. With the
exceptions of the “monotremes” (the order of mammals that includes
the Australian spiny anteater and duck-billed platypus), mammals have
dispensed with egg-laying, and mothers nourish their young directly
through the placenta instead of by providing a storehouse of yolk. And
mammals carry three genes that, in reptiles and birds, produce the
nutritious protein...
1 Because they evolve from egg-laying reptiles, they have dead genes for producing yolks and even produce yolks in the placenta.
29 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
The Evolution of the Breast
About sixty-five million years ago, at the end of the Mesozoic era and the beginning of the Cenozoic, the niche once dominated by the dinosaurs was available for other creatures. The opportunistic could move into that niche now empty of large reptiles, and prosper in their place. Among these creatures that flourished were small egg-laying animals. group that had been around for at least a million years and that sported specialized patches on their chests. Sitting on their eggs, the mothers of... 1 notes
notes...and, therefore, the evolution of the mammal.
03 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
A Bizarre Genetic Parasite
Another insect, a scale insect, has an even more bizarre genetic parasite. When its eggs are fertilized. sometimes more than one sperm penetrates the egg. If this happens, one of the sperm fuses with the egg's nucleus in the normal way; the spare sperm hang around and begin dividing as the egg divides. When the creature matures, the parasitic sperm cells eat out its gonads and replace them with themselves. So the insect produces sperm or eggs that are barely related to itself, an astonishing ... 1 notes
notesSomething strange happens when two scale insect sperm fertilize an egg.
