Why the Brain Takes So Much Time and Effort

The brain’s chief job description—yours, mine, and your hopelessly adorable children’s—is to help our bodies survive another day. The reason for survival is as old as Darwin and as young as sexting: so we can project our genes into the next generation. Will a human willingly overcome self-interest to ensure the survival of his or her family’s genes into the next generation? Apparently, yes. Enough of us did hundreds of thousands of years ago that we grew up to take over the Seren...

 Morning Sickness as an Evolutionary Strategy

In fact, some evolutionary biologists believe this is why morning sickness still persists in human pregnancies. Morning sickness, which can last the entire day (and, for some women, the entire pregnancy), makes a woman stick to a bland, boring diet—if she eats much at all. This avoidance strategy would have kept our maternal ancestors away from the natural toxins in exotic or spoiled foods in the wild, unregulated menu of the Pleistocene diet. The accompanying fatigue would keep women from ...

 Parasititic Influence on Evolution

Again and again in recent years evolutionary biologists have found themselves returning to the theme of parasites. As Is Richard Dawkins put it in a recent paper: "Eavesdrop [over] morning coffee at any major centre of evolutionary theory today, and you will find 'parasite' to be one of the commonest words in ti the language. Parasites are touted as the prime movers in the evolution of sex. promising a final solution to that problem of problems.'" Parasites have a deadlier effect than preda...