Evolution

I know I'm not supposed to talk about the video, but I am, because that's what I found the most interesting. I found the video very interesting because there was many things I had no idea about and would have never thought possible. When I first heard what they were talking about, "Phantom limbs, alien parents, but they're not crazy," I was totally like, they're crazy. But while watching they explained what was wrong, but I still didn't really understand until the example of the brain. My most successful learning methods, are literal visual examples, I do not learn from metaphors. It was extremely interesting how the brain could do things like that. I assumed that if there was a problem or connection in the brain it was just done, but this video just brightened my eyes to new possibilities.
So about the readings, those I did not find as interesting. Mostly, they're were uninteresting because I didn't understand it very easily. It was difficult for me to read, when they were talking about the different evolution and scientific findings of alleles and things. The example of the dark/light moth, and the "keep it in the family" example was fascinating to me. Because I realize that animals just naturally came up with this method of passing on their golden genes by keeping their family around to carry it out in some way. I learned many things from these articles and their were many that I already knew. I knew about the alleles and evolution and history of evolution through biology and health classes. It was a great brush up on the subject though.

Grr, Sniff, Arf

Out of the last few articles we have read, I found Grr, Sniff, Arf by Cathleen Shine to be the most interesting to me. What first caught my attention was the part about the rose. To most people, it is a beautiful flower with a great scent while to dogs, if roses were to disappear all of a sudden, it would not make a difference to them unless it had the scent of urine. I had never realized that the scent of urine determined time to them. I did not know that the types of noses on dogs had such an impact of their vision. It made more sense that the dogs with smaller noses tend to be the small lap dogs which focus on what is right in front of them while dogs with larger noses have more of a panoramic view. Their senses are so much greater than a human's, with having three-hundred million receptor sites compared to six million. I also found it interesting how dogs pay attention to the very small amount of time in between a human's blink and our facial expressions. I work at a kennel so I spend all of my time around dogs, and I also have two at home. After reading this article I've noticed how much they respond to my facial expressions and my movements. Overall, I found this article to be enjoyable and informative.

Katie C.

I found the video, reading the two articles “What is evolution” and “Introduction to evolutionary biology” very interesting because it made me understand more about the species that surround us. One thing that was more interesting to me and that I noticed the most, was that humans are not that different from species and animals, because we all need a partner to help us pass our genes to our offspring. I loved the revolutionary theory, and how evolution occurs though the action of natural selection. I never thought that species, especially the youngsters, inherit things from their parents like humans. I have always heard my mum saying that my eyes looks just like hers, and that I inherited her beauty. But I never thought species could inherit genes from other species. Perhaps take hummingbirds for example, when two parents have long beaks, their offspring will have a long beak. One of the processes of natural selection that was interesting was struggle for existence, because it made me think of humans. The way we struggle to survive. It made me think of crimes, death , day to day life. I have heard of people who were willing to kill each other because of hunger. Why do people commit robbery? People commit robbery for varieties of reasons, like trying to survive, and greed. People try to kill each other for money, and we see the same behavior in animals where they try to kill each other for food instead of money.



Istar Abu

reading response

Reading response

While reading these articles and watching the video i couldn't help but being skeptical. Science and the different theory's of evolution are constantly changing so why ever take anything to heart? I mean even with the recent discovery of Ardi a big portion of Darwin's theory of evolution has been discredited. Don't get me wrong  its obvious evolution exists, their is no arguing that fact. 

While reading the Introduction to Evolutionary Biology i got three basic facts out of it. The first, what exactly evolution is. From my understanding evolution is the changing of a species according to their environment over may generations. Its not a slow process, but a very long intricate one with many factors. One of those factors being sexual selection. The idea "survival of the fittest" does not always apply and sexual selection is proof of that. Your genes cant be passed on without a mate, so if your not chosen to mate with your genes dye out. The more attractive you are to the opposite sex the more likely you will be to procreate. To be high in success on the evolutionary chain you do not need to only be strong and beat out your peers but attractive to the opposite sex so you can pass your genes along. So being big and strong is not the key factor in your personal successful evolution but weather you are considered attractive by the opposite sex.

Another factor in the success of a species evolution is the possibility of genetic mutations. If an animals gene is changed something that could have been a positive evolutionary trait could be changed for the worse. A random change in an animals genes is rarely beneficial. 

Muriel Smith

RR 2 Dog's Umvelt

I found the material this week not quite as interesting as the weeks prior because I’m not big on the biological standpoints. I understand that they are necessary to have a grasp on all of the course content but I much preferred the nonfiction articles we were reading before. That aside of the more recent articles I found the one about Dogs to be the most interesting, probably because it wasn’t something I had read much about before. The other readings had me feeling like I was back in my freshmen year biology class, but the refresher was helpful. The Dog’s Umvelt reading really brought out the point that many humans take animals for granted. I didn’t know all of the differences that dogs had, how superior their sense of smell is allowing them to tell a lot about the world past present and future based on the smells around them. Many knew that they had a better than average sense of smell but until reading this article I didn’t realize how much better it was or how exactly it helped them. It relates back to the articles on evolution, and how citrine traits help animals to survive. Having a keen sense of smell helped them to survive by informing them of their surroundings. Because these traits were helpful to them they survived leading to off spring that had the similar traits for a good sense of smell and other key traits. Dogs who didn’t have the superior sense of smell may not have known predators were in the area and missed out on the possible dangers that were around them leading to them being killed off over others who could better grasp their surroundings.

Ariel M.

Grr, Sniff, Arf

I found this article interesting because it demonstrated that dogs are not just adorable, furry pets, but living creatures with reasons for doing what they do. For example, the author implied that lap dogs are lap dogs not because of their size but because, similar to humans, they are good at seeing things right in front of them which as Cathleen Schine said “makes them seem more companionable”. It goes to show that dogs, like people, have personalities and reasons for doing what they do.

Reading response- Hauser

In “Origins of the Mind”, Marc Hauser suggests that the human brain posses four traits that separate us from the rest of the animal kingdom. Hauser postulates that the human brain in uniquely capable of generative computation, promiscuous combination of ideas, use of symbols, and abstract thought.
As I read through the examples that Hauser presented for each trait, it was easy for me to understand the concepts of symbols and abstract thought. However, it was much more difficult to understand recursive thinking, combinatorial thinking, and promiscuous combination of ideas. I understand recursive thinking to be the use sequence and repetition to create new meanings. Quantum Physicists believe that there are an infinite amount of outcomes that can come of something that is performed infinitely. If an action is repeated an infinite amount of times, new meaning may eventually come of it. To me, this is recursive thinking at its best. Combinatorial thinking refers to the combinations of ideas to create new meanings. The German language, for example, uses compound words made up of smaller words that may hold different meanings once taken out of context.
I found Hauser’s paragraph on the promiscuous combination of ideas to be unsatisfactory. The way it was worded was confusing and hard to grasp. However, I understood the concept to be the combination of ideas from different aspects of our culture. Hauser refers to these aspects as “domains of knowledge”. This is easily explained with food culture. We take aspects of art and promiscuously combine artistic beauty with cuisine. We alone create beautiful cakes and artfully arranged platters.
Hauser’s concepts of symbols and abstract thought were mostly self-explanatory. Humans alone use written word, pictures and numbers to create meaning. We also conjure up notions of monsters, deities and myths.
All in all, I agree with many of Hauser’s notions and beliefs. This is not to say that I believe that these four traits are the only traits that separate us from other animals. However, Hauser’s ideas are presented in a way that is mostly understandable and easy to conceptualize. I’d be interested to see what else Mr. Hauser has to say about the individuality of the human mind.

Elena H.

Elephant Article

The reading on elephants was a very interesting one. It discussed to the social structure of a herd of elephants. It went as far to say that a herd is basically one elephant; as if one could not survive without the other. The entire herd revolves around the "mother matriarch" because she is the center of all knowledge. There are parallels between our society and that of elephants because we often use the term "Respect your elders." and "With age comes wisdom." and that is exactly how elephants function. The article also discussed the violence of elephants and how it was related to the detrimental effects that poaching has had on them. When the younger elephants lose the mother, or other significant figures of the herd, they have no guidance. They no longer have the close bonds to family and they become, for lack of a better way of saying it, cold and bitter. The younger males who don't have family ties end up causing the most damage. This article showed me that creatures can be complex beings as well, and the best way that we can understand them is to compare them to ourselves and find parallels.
Andrew Van Horn

Family Connections

The reading on elephants was a very interesting one. It discussed to the social structure of a herd of elephants. It went as far to say that a herd is basically one elephant; as if one could not survive without the other. The entire herd revolves around the "mother matriarch" because she is the center of all knowledge. There are parallels between our society and that of elephants because we often use the term "Respect your elders." and "With age comes wisdom." and that is exactly how elephants function. The article also discussed the violence of elephants and how it was related to the detrimental effects that poaching has had on them. When the younger elephants lose the mother, or other significant figures of the herd, they have no guidance. They no longer have the close bonds to family and they become, for lack of a better way of saying it, cold and bitter. The younger males who don't have family ties end up causing the most damage. This article showed me that creatures can be complex beings as well, and the best way that we can understand them is to compare them to ourselves and find parralells.