geekosystem

Animals evolve for lots of reasons. Usually to improve methods of finding food, attracting mates, or escaping the notice of predators. We've all done it. Evolved, I mean. One vivid example is the butterfly, the world's most colorful insect. But those vibrant hues and crazy wing patterns were never for our benefit. Nope, they developed to deflect attackers, and we've been assuming since the days of Darwin that the perps were birds. Insect-devouring birds. But it turns out that it was probably the spawn of Ungoliant -- spiders -- who were the villains all this time. And not just any spiders -- jumping spiders! These eight-legged creeps are at least partially responsible for the adaptation of the butterfly.

It's commonly held -- but not universally accepted  -- that evolution is a one-way street. Researchers who deny the idea that evolutionary traffic can only move forward saw their  arguments bolstered this week with the publication of a study suggesting that house dust mites may have evolved from free-living creatures into full-time parasites, only to abandon that evolutionary track and go back the way they came, reverting to the free-living creatures that live invisibly in your carpet, bed, and other places in your home that it's probably best not to think about them living.

A lab at the University of Minnesota is home to a newly created artificial enzyme that could offer researchers new insights into the origins of life on Earth. That's because rather than being assembled by researchers one step at a time, this enzyme was created in a test tube by directed evolution. The result is a loosely shaped enzyme that may resemble the collections of molecules in the primordial soup that preceded life on the planet.

It's a question that many have pondered: Which came first, chicken or the egg? The obvious argument is that the chicken couldn't have been born without an egg, but an egg couldn't have been laid without the chicken. Folks go back and forth, and it typically descends into a cyclical conversation where each side constantly says the other is wrong without being able to really disprove legitimate assertions. It's certainly a quandary when taken at face value, but when you break it down, as AsapSCIENCE has, there's really only one answer.

Among other things our pedantic mothers warned us about when playing around in a swimming pool, getting pruney fingers from staying in the water too long was one of them, as though having one's fingertips resemble tiny geriatric faces was a terminal disease. It's a common experience nearly every human being on the planet has shared and yet science has never quite determined the purpose of this wrinkly phenomenon -- until now. Once thought to have been the swelling of the outer layers of skin caused from extended submersion, a research team from the Institute of Neuroscience at Newcastle University has discovered that pruney digits are an evolutionary response of the nervous system which allows us to get a grip on wet surfaces.

While modern birds have beaks for eating, their ancient ancestors still had toothsome mouths, full of the sharp dental legacies of their dinosaur past. Paleontologists have discovered a new species of early bird, though, and rather than getting the worm, it seemed to prey on hard-shelled animals like snails and crabs. That left it with an evolutionary first -- a mouthful of teeth meant for crushing prey, not tearing flesh. It's an unexpected discovery, suggesting that even as some birds were losing their teeth to evolution, others were developing new kinds of teeth to help them become more specialized hunters.

 

As humans, one of the things that sets us apart from almost all other species on the planet is our sweet hand design, complete with opposable thumb that lets us do everything from input the Konami code to conduct a symphony. We're rightly proud of all the classy, technologically savvy things our hand allow us to do, so it's tempting  to think that they evolved the way they did to allow us access to these higher pursuits. A new study in the Journal of Experimental Biology, though,  suggests that while our hands may have noble ambitions -- like playing a violin concerto, throwing a prefect spiral, or looking up cat videos on a tablet computer -- the evolution of the appendage was largely shaped by one of its most unpleasant, if historically common, uses -- making a fist and using it to whoop the ever-loving hell out of something.

It is at this point fairly well uncontroversial to state that yes, man evolved from apes. What many don't know, though, is that evolution goes much further further back, to when one fish-like common ancestor rebelled against the status quo, hauled itself up onto terra firma, and over the course of generations, grew limbs, consequences be damned. A study led by Dr. José Luis Gómez-Skarmeta and Dr. Fernando Casares of the CSIC-Universidad Pablo de Olavide-Junta de Andalucía in Seville, Spain, suggests that the administration of an extra copy of  the gene Hoxd13 in the fin of an embryonic zebrafish yielded the same sort of fin-to-limb development that would likely have seen during the evolution of ancient fish into land-based vertebrates.

If you're a tiny, single-celled animal like a protozoan, photosynthesis is a pretty neat ability, as being able to make food just by laying in the sun is significantly easier than going out and hunting down your own meals. Unfortunately for protozoa, photosynthesis is also a rather tricky proposition, requiring millions of years of evolutionary practice to evolve. One species has developed its own workaround for that small problem, though -- it got the best of both worlds by absorbing algae cells and stealing the genes that control photosynthesis right out of their DNA.

A new study of priapulids, commonly referred to as "penis worms," may have just unraveled a large part of what scientists have believed about evolutionary history. The priapulid belongs is a member of the protostome family, a sub-set of living species defined by the fact that they develop a mouth and anus as embryos. After doing some genetic testing, it seems that priapulids don't actually do this, which means the whole group will need to be redefined by other common traits.

Don't take this wrong, but humans tend to live a lot longer than they're actually needed, biologically speaking. Our longevity has puzzled researchers. We live decades longer than our closest primate cousins, and much of that long lifespan is outside of our prime childbearing years. New research from the University of Utah this week provides support for one theory to explain unexpected human longevity: It's because having grandmothers around is evolutionarily advantageous for future generations. Basically, the whole point of humans living longer is that your children are so terrible and uncontrollable that it takes a team spanning two generations of people just to keep them alive.

An international team of scientists has achieved one of the holy grails of evolutionary biology, documenting the creation of new genes in a living organism for the first time. After introducing a gene engineered to be beneficial to protein synthesis into the DNA of salmonella bacteria in their labs, researchers from the University of California Davis and Sweden's Upsalla University have shown that strength in numbers may be the secret to success for mutant genes that stick around and become evolved traits of an organism.

A study conducted on young adults has concluded that men and women actually do see things differently. This supports the idea that we evolved to support certain hunter-gatherer roles. Men were able to better track fast-moving objects while women distinguished shades of color far more capably. This should provide a decent excuse for husbands when their wives ask for their opinion on a bunch of paint swatches.

Why is it that we, as a culture, find babies so absolutely adorable? This often extends to things like puppies, kittens, and other furry little balls of youth. That's what the SciShow has tackled with their most recent video. The origins of cute, as broken down in the video, basically comes down to the fact that we, as a species, are required to look after our babies. By evolving to consider a baby's collective traits to be ridiculously cute, we then are less likely to just drop them off on their own whenever we feel like. Not that this doesn't happen, of course, but it's not like it's a regular occurrence.

Man, if we ever get absolutely torn a new one for saying something stupid, we really want the totally excellent > Bill Nye to be the guy who does it. Not because we want to upset Mr. Nye, a personal hero (and, yes, brain-crush) who ran the best children's show about science ever -- sorry, dude who played Beakman -- but just because he can apparently reduce someone's world view to utter shambles without so much as raising his voice or saying an unkind word. Case in point: this video from Big Think in which Bill (we can call you Bill, right? If so, we can die happy) lays out just how much more complicated a creationist viewpoint is, because of all of the really important evidence-based science you have to walk around ignoring every day. He makes the further point that, people believing whatever they want, no matter how silly it is, is totally your right -- but that willfully raising children to be ignorant is another matter entirely. And how important a public understanding of science is for the country going forward. All of this without so much as a sneer, a snicker, or a disrespectful syllable. Man, who are we kidding though? We could watch Bill Nye talk about absolutely anything and be happy campers. The man is that good. Plus, he can just wear the hell out of a bowtie.