Questions tagged [evolution]
Changes in the heritable attributes of populations of organisms over time. The mechanisms of evolution are mutation, migration, drift, and selection.
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Why are so few foods blue?
Although blue foods exist, they're rare enough compared to other foods for food preparers to use blue plasters as a convention. The natural colour of a given food is due to pigments that have some ...
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How many times did terrestrial life emerge from the ocean?
Evolution is often mistakenly depicted as linear in popular culture. One main feature of this depiction in popular culture, but even in science popularisation, is that some ocean-dwelling animal sheds ...
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Why do plants have green leaves and not red?
I know plants are green due to chlorophyll.
Surely it would be more beneficial for plants to be red than green as by being green they reflect green light and do not absorb it even though green light ...
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Why do some bad traits evolve, and good ones don't?
If a trait would be advantageous to an organism then why hasn't it evolved yet?
Conversely, if a trait is not advantageous or mildly disadvantageous, why does it exist?
In other words why does ...
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How could humans have interbred with Neanderthals if we're a different species?
To be clear, I'm not doubting that Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis did interbreed: of that much I'm convinced.
Within the past few years I've seen an upcropping of pop-sci articles discussing ...
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Why did the process of sleep evolve in many animals? What is its evolutionary advantage?
The process of sleep seems to be very disadvantageous to an organism as it is extremely vulnerable to predation for several hours at a time. Why is sleep necessary in so many animals? What advantage ...
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Are humans the only species who drink milk as adults?
I was drinking a glass of milk the other day and that got me thinking that no other animal to my knowledge drinks milk past their infant stages. One could argue that cats might but it isn't good for ...
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Why is the heart not in the middle of the body?
All mammals that I can think of have a high degree of bilateral symmetry (In fact, almost every animal I can think of is like this).
So why is the human heart not exactly in the middle of the body? ...
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Why 20 amino acids instead of 64?
This question got me thinking about amino acids and the ambiguity in the genetic code. With 4 nucleotides in RNA and 3 per codon, there are 64 codons. However, these 64 codons only code for 20 amino ...
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Why are there no wheeled animals?
In physics, "almost everything is already discovered, and all that remains is to fill a few unimportant holes." (See Jolly.) Therefore, on Physics SE, people are veering off into different directions: ...
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What is the evolutionary advantage of red-green color blindness?
Red-green colorblindness seems to make it harder for a hunter-gatherer to see whether a fruit is ripe and thus worth picking.
Is there a reason why selection hasn't completely removed red-green ...
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Is there any evidence that sexual selection may lead to extinction of species?
Darwin suggested that sexual selection, especially by female choice, may counter natural selection. Theoretical models, such as a Fisherian runaway process, suggest that evolution of preference and ...
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Why does evolution not make our life longer?
Why does evolution not make life longer for humans or any other species?
Wouldn't evolution favour a long life?
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Why don't mammals have more than 4 limbs?
Arthropods have 6 or more limbs and arthropods with 6 limbs appear to move faster than arthropods with 8 limbs so I wonder whether this might have something to do with fast and efficient locomotion. ...
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Why are there no organisms with metal body parts, like weapons, bones, and armour? (Or are there?)
Reading this question, Why are there no wheeled animals?, I wondered why no organisms seem to make use of the tensile and other strengths of metal, as we do in metal tools and constructions. I am ...
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Why do men have nipples?
I'd be tempted to call nipples in men vestigial, but that suggests they have no modern function. They do have a function, of course, but only in women. So why do men (and all male mammals) have them?
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Why do human females have periods?
Why do human women have periods when most animals don't? It is known that the unfertilized egg needs to be shed from the uterus. But why shed the whole endometrium? Why didn't evolution put ...
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What is the function of epidermal ridges on human fingers (that produce fingerprints)?
What function is served by the epidermal or capillary ridges on human fingers, the supposedly unique impressions of which are known as fingerprints?
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Why is polyploidy lethal for some organisms while for others is not?
Polyploidy is the multiplication of number of chromosomal sets from 2n to 3n (triploidy), 4n (tetraploidy) and so on. It is quite common in plants, for example many crops like wheat or Brassica forms. ...
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What is the difference between orthologs, paralogs and homologs?
These three terms are often misused in the literature. Many researchers seem to treat them as synonyms. So, what is the definition of each of these terms and how do they differ from one another?
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Why do eukaryotic organisms have introns in their DNA?
We touched on introns and exons in my bio class, but unfortunately we didn't really talk about why Eukaryotes have introns. It would seem they would have to have some purpose since prokaryotes do not ...
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Why would a plant evolve to produce an addictive chemical?
It seems kind of anti-productive in terms of survival for a plant to produce an addictive chemical as that plant will constantly be sought after by animals that ingest it. In this instance, I'm ...
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If evolution is not about increased complexity, why does so much complexity evolve?
In my last question I asked why we don't see increased complexity in artificial life simulations of evolution. It seems I had fallen for a common misconception, that evolution was about improvement by ...
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Why did life not evolve to use radio?
We use electromagnetic communication everywhere these days. Cell phones, wifi, old-school radio transmissions, television, deep space communication, etc.
I'm curious about some of the possible ...
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Why Is Most Life Symmetrical Externally But Not Internally?
Mammals, reptiles, arachnids, insects, etc are all as far as I am aware symmetrical in appearance.
Take a human for instance, make a line from the top of our head right down the middle. However, ...
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Does it make sense to classify all humans in a single species?
For what biological reasons do we consider that all human beings belong to the same species?
A Thai and a Nigerian share a common ancestor that is 140,000 years old (see Gravel et al. 2010 and this ...
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Is there evidence that some non-human species perform sexual selection based primarily on intelligence? How do they do this?
I'm a biology amateur, but it seems like sexual selection is almost always performed based on physical characteristics, the outcome of physical contests, or some sort elaborate courtship. But do any ...
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Why does a coconut have exactly three "holes"?
Why do coconuts have exactly three "holes", as seen in this picture?
A theory says:
As coconut is a sibling of palm, somehow long time ago, three palms were in a same husk. Based on evolution theory, ...
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Why do parasites sometimes kill their hosts?
It's bothered me for a while now. I understand why a parasitoid would do this, as it only temporarily requires the host, and that not all parasites kill their hosts.
There seems to be no evolutionary ...
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Why is menstruation in wild animals not a disadvantage to organismal survival?
When I watch wilderness specials for more than a few minutes, I notice a familiar pattern: predators are depicted as being alerted by the scent of blood. Wounded animals seem to make the best prey and ...
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Can any animals photosynthesize?
Plants and animals have the following distinct properties:
Plants live from solar energy by photosynthesis, they use solar energy to make sugar and oxygen out of carbon dioxide, which gives them ...
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Why are not all species hermaphrodites?
If a hermaphrodite animal (like slug, snail, etc) finds a partner they can mate immediately.
If another animal with "normal" reproduction (lets say a mouse) finds a partner they can only mate if they ...
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Why are there species instead of a continuum of various animals?
As I understand it, various animal traits have to evolve gradually, but what happens to the species that are "neither here nor there"?
To put it differently, if a species evolved from another, it did ...
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Why are many fruits sour?
Many fruits (like apples, berries, citrus fruits etc.) contain high levels of organic acids, especially malic acid and citric acid. Are there any evolutionary functions of those acids in ripe fruits? ...
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Is evolution a fact? [closed]
Richard Dawkins in one of his videos says that Evolution is a fact and not just a theory.
He goes on to say that man and chimpanzees both evolve from apes.
Is this correct (Is evolution a fact and ...
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Were there any flying dinosaurs?
I've seen some articles which came in contradiction with each other.
The first article was talking about flying dinosaurs, dinosaurs with feathers and so on.
A couple of other articles are talking ...
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Books on population or evolutionary genetics?
I have recently been involved in collaborations that require me to model the population genetics of eukaryotic populations. I fear I may either be "re-inventing the wheel" or making conceptual ...
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Do men have more extreme variations than women?
This question was considered unsuitable for Skeptics and I think it is more suited to BIology than Cognitive Sciences
I was reading this article which I found interesting. It is not supported with ...
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How did viruses come to be?
My question is out of curiosity and got me thinking. How did viruses with the head, tail and tail fibres actually evolve? These viruses look more like machines than biological entities. Are there any ...
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How can homosexuality evolve despite natural selection?
I would imagine that the answer to this question would be population control, especially since even if one sibling is homosexual this does not necessarily mean that the other siblings will be too.
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Human evolution: Where *exactly* did the first human come from, whose parents were not?
Layman here. So I have never really quite understood this facet of human evolution, (or any other for that matter), in that, I understand the evolutionary process, but I get lost on the 'border' cases....
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Does animal blood, esp. human, really have similar salinity as ocean water, and does that prove anything about evolution?
It is an often-repeated claim that human, and in fact all animal blood is salty because we evolved from aquatic organisms, and that blood has a similar concentration of salts as ocean water, or at ...
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Has there been any observation of species adapting the evolution process?
I am very interested in the evolution of the evolution process itself. There are of course a lot of things that influence how evolution will work, but for this question, I am interested in things that ...
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Why did abiogenesis only happen once?
If the "primordial soup" theory of abiogenesis is to be believed, self-reproducing organisms spontaneously arose on Earth at least 3.5 billion years ago, surprisingly soon after the Earth cooled down ...
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Why do we grow so much hair on our heads compared to our bodies?
I've been wondering about head hair, facial hair in particular. Human males can grow very extensive beards should they choose to not shave - however you do not really see this in our chimpanzee ...
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Did predators evolve eyes first?
I'm an engineer and biology is my weakest point, so please forgive if this question is dumb.
Lately I've been wondering, "Why do animals that have eyes tend to have exactly 2 of them?" The ...
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Why haven't prey evolved the ability to always outrun their predators?
I can understand why some prey can't outrun a recently evolved species. However, since cheetahs have existed for so long, why haven't its prey evolved to always outrun it, driving cheetahs to ...
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Why are there exactly four nucleobases in DNA?
Does someone know why DNA is composed of four nucleobases? In particular, is there an explanation for the number? Why four and not two, or eight?
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How is evolution possible in contemporary humans?
I would like to know if evolution is continuing to happen in modern humans, assuming things like existence of the nuclear family structure, fidelity to one partner, etc. It seems to me the answer ...
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Are there life forms that freely fly in the atmosphere?
Are there (unicellular) Earth lifeforms that most of their life fly high in the atmosphere without contact with surface? For instance, in clouds, etc?
If so, at what max altitude have they been ...
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