Tag: Biology

Intelligent Crows Flunk Causality Test But Babies Pass

You drop a block onto a box, and a toy pops out. If a baby was watching you, she could deduce that your action caused the happy arrival of the toy, because she understands cause and effect. She’d also realise that she could trigger the same event by placing a block on the box herself, … Continue reading Intelligent Crows Flunk Causality Test But Babies Pass →

Ants, the brain, cancer, and the internet

Deborah Gordon gave an interesting TED talk on ants.  Regular readers have seen posts from me before on ants.  An ant colony seems to operate as a type of superorganism.  I used to wonder if colonies were conscious.  (Although I now doubt it since I see consciousness requiring a model of an system's attention, and that … Continue reading Ants, the brain, cancer, and the internet →

Evolution of animal intelligence | Machines Like Us

Mano Singham has a interesting post up on a large scale review of animal intelligence studies.   Animal intelligence is a fascinating topic and there have been many attempts at studying it. Many of the individual studies look at one or other specific trait that we associate with intelligence in one species and the traits … Continue reading Evolution of animal intelligence | Machines Like Us →

BBC – Future – How human culture influences our genetics

BBC has an interesting article on the effects of culture on evolution. You shouldn't be able to drink milk. Your ancestors couldn't. It is only in the last 9,000 years that human adults have gained that ability without becoming ill. Children could manage it, but it was only when we turned to dairy farming that … Continue reading BBC – Future – How human culture influences our genetics →

Ants Build Complex Structures With a Few Simple Rules

Give a colony of garden ants a week and a pile of dirt, and they’ll transform it into an underground edifice about the height of a skyscraper in an ant-scaled city. Without a blueprint or a leader, thousands of insects moving specks of dirt create a complex, spongelike structure with parallel levels connected by a … Continue reading Ants Build Complex Structures With a Few Simple Rules →

Humans and Neandertals interbred, new method confirms — ScienceDaily

  Technical objections to the idea that Neandertals interbred with the ancestors of Eurasians have been overcome, thanks to a new genome analysis method. The technique can more confidently detect the genetic signatures of interbreeding than previous approaches and will be useful for evolutionary studies of other ancient or rare DNA samples. via Humans and … Continue reading Humans and Neandertals interbred, new method confirms — ScienceDaily →

The difference between life and machine

Addy Pross has an interesting post up at HuffPost looking at what actually makes life...life. Most of us recognize that there is a fundamental difference between mechanical objects designed and created by man, no matter how sophisticated, and the naturally derived complexity of living things. In fact, my granddaughter, when she was just 2, already … Continue reading The difference between life and machine →

The importance of (experimental) design — ScienceDaily

One of the hottest debates in evolutionary biology concerns the origin of behavior: is it genetically encoded or do animals and birds copy their parents or other individuals? A classic experiment published in 2000 seemed to provide overwhelming evidence that a particular behavioral choice (whether individuals of a species of swallow breed in a small … Continue reading The importance of (experimental) design — ScienceDaily →

The scope of objective facts and morality

Our recent discussions, particularly on the thread about Jonathan Haidt's response to Sam Harris's challenge, left me thinking about the various scopes of objective facts.  In retrospect, it's a bit obvious to me now that a key question in moral philosophy is, if morality is objective, at what scope is it objective? Haidt used the … Continue reading The scope of objective facts and morality →