In honor of H.P. Lovecrafts birthday today, something truly horrifying to some, science fiction to others, and all around awesome. As history shows, whenever we study life, we find again and again that humans are frail little creatures with nothing special. When we study archae, we find that our idea of suitable environments is a fantasy, and that life is much more resilient and flexible than we can imagine. Whether its living in volcanos, sulfuric vents, or eating ice, the domain always reminds us of some archaic life style choices, as illustrated in this recent finding by Montana State University, where archae were found half a mile under Antartic ice, in an area that hasnt seen the light of day for hundreds of thousands of years sciencedaily/releases/2014/08/140820140019.htm It has been know for a while that certain lizards and amphibians can regenerate certain parts of their bodies, as can certain arachnids. But why? Prior studies asked about stem cells, but those studies produced little results. Recent interrogation by Arizona State University discovered over 300 genes lizards use to regenerate that are found in mammals as well. plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0105004#s1 Thats all well and fine, but it doesnt really show much in the way of humans being frail little creatures with nothing special as I stated earlier. At the bare minimum, right now, reading this text in the English language has to be something. Animals can be taught sign language, but they dont really know whats going on, right? Well, recent analysis suggests that animal calls did not generate randomly as we previously thought, and even show rudimentary forms of grammar. The reason your cat may not respond to your baby talk could be that it thinks youre stupid, but if my cat is anything like anyone elses, shed always think shes smarter than me. phys.org/news/2014-08-abc-animal-speech-random.html If anyone is interested, I can try to dig through the internet to find studies Ive read before where certain monkeys and apes were noted to have different calls for different types of food and predators. Not just danger on the ground/over there etc, but actual recognizable differences for particular food items and predators.
Posted on: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 22:53:14 +0000
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