Mind Soup

Illustration of a Human Mitochondria LIVE SCIENCE : A maternal ancestor to all living humans called mitochondrial Eve likely lived about 200,000 years ago, at roughly the same time anatomically modern humans are believed to have emerged, a new review study confirms. The results are based on analyses of mitochondrial DNA. Found in the energy-producing centers of cells, mitochondrial DNA is only passed down the maternal line, and can be traced back to one woman. However, this doesn't mean she was the first modern woman, rather it indicates that only her descendants survive to the present day. "There is always some other female that predated mitochondrial Eve, whose DNA didn't make it up to modernity," said Marek Kimmel, a professor of statistics at Rice University. "So the age of the mitochondrial Eve is always less than the age of the true, first female modern human." A molecular clock While most of an organism's DNA is contained in the nucl...

You’ve heard jokes like these all your life:  What do you get if you cross an octopus with a cow? An animal that can milk itself.  I didn’t find such an animal, but the world has plenty of strange species that at first glance appear to be hybrids of unrelated species because they have attributes that surprise us. However, we are only surprised because our personal experiences don’t encompass all that nature offers. 1. Turtle + Hedgehog = Armadillo Rudyard Kipling wrote the story  The Beginning of the Armadillos , in which the animal came from a tortoise and a hedgehog. They didn’t join to give birth to armadillos; instead, they taught each other their talents. The hedgehog helped the tortoise learn to curl into a ball, and the tortoise taught the hedgehog to swim, which toughened up his spines into armor. Before they knew it, both had turned into armadillos. Here in the real world,  armadillos  are related to both sloths and anteaters and are native to Latin ...

Meet Griffin, the grey parrot, whose astonishing vocal and physical skills are demonstrating just how smart the avian world really is. Griffin has recently begun to play with objects and speaks English in a way that raises fascinating questions about the thought processes going on inside a bird's brain. The parrot will stack different-sized bottle caps in the right order, for example. He will also mix up the English words he has learned, and will say simple phrases, like "wanna green nut". This type of behaviour was once thought to be exclusive to humans, great apes, and monkeys. Griffin suggests Parrots should be added to the list. "Human children start combining their labels at about 22 months," says Dr Irene Pepperberg, who works with Griffin at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "So, they start not just identifying 'cookie' and 'milk', but will say 'want milk' or 'want more cookie'. "And they also t...

November 24 will mark the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s book On the Origin of Species , one of the most influential books on biology ever written, and arguably the most controversial. One hundred and fifty years after Darwin made popular the idea that the diversity of life on planet Earth today descended (or ascended?) from lower life forms over millions of years, the general theory of evolution is still not accepted by vast numbers of people, to the chagrin of large numbers of evolutionary biologists.  Did all of life really descend from one-celled organisms that developed in primordial waters billions of years ago? Is that really what happened? If so, we should see plenty of evidence of it all around us, and there are significant numbers of scientists who argue that we indeed find just that. They argue that there are a sufficient number of transitional forms in the fossil record to support Darwin’s theory. They argue that natural selection, acting to preserve small...

The Peppered moth, which changed its colour from white to black in areas of Britain with heavy pollution, is now reverting back to its original appearance. The moth was white with small black speckles but over time it evolved to being almost black in parts of the UK because of heavy industrial pollution. The change made it less obvious to predators against backgrounds of grime and soot. Having declined by more than two thirds compared to 40 years ago, it is regarded as a classic example of natural selection and has consequently become known as "Darwin's moth." Now in post-industrial Britain, 200 years after Darwin's birth, the moth is changing back to its original white colour. Scientists at Butterfly Conservation, based in Dorset, are now appealing to the public for help in finding out how widespread this change has become. As part of Garden Moths Count 2009 they want people to search their gardens for the moth and log their sightings....

Umbilical Brothers From the DVD 'Speedmouse' performed live at the Sydney Opera House, this is one of their most well-known performances, seen in full. Enjoy! Evolution of Dance The funniest 6 minutes you will ever see! Remember how many of these you have done! Judson Laipply is dancing - http://www.evolutionofdance... - for more info including song list!