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42Evolution

Near Horizons

How did our stable body temperatures evolve?

Neil Armstrong, first man on the moon, works on the Apollo 11 Lunar Module, after a safe landing in the ‘Sea of Tranquility’. This is the only photograph taken of him on the moon’s surface (Image: NASA)

Neil Armstrong, first man on the moon, works on the Apollo 11 Lunar Module, after a safe landing in the ‘Sea of Tranquility’. This is the only photograph taken of him on the moon’s surface (Image: NASA)

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A tropical ant (Cephalotes atratus) infected with a parasitic nematode (Image: Steve Yanoviak via Wikimedia Commons)

Can an ant turn into a berry?

No, don’t be ridiculous “Ha!  Ha!  Always like a puzzle.  Now then, where’s my Exeter Book of Riddles?  When it…

Der Liebeskranke Antiochus by Johann Anwander (1715-1770), portraying the lovesick king Antiochus; ruler of the Seleucid empire (now modern Syria) from 281-261 BC. In his novel Love in the time of Cholera author Gabriel Garcia Marquez explores the notion that lovesickness is literally an illness whose effects on the body are comparable to those of cholera. The word ‘choleric’ in English means depressed, irritable and angry, and in Marquez’ native Spanish, cólera can also denote passion, rage and ire. The metaphor illustrates the power our emotions have to affect our physical body and mental processes (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

Love in a time of Prozac; how did our emotions evolve?

Our feelings result a fast information processing mechanism found throughout the vertebrates, and which are highly developed in mammals. What then is ‘love’, really, and how did it evolve?

Leonardo da Vinci’s observational skills were exemplary. For instance his diagrams of the developing human embryo (c1510-1513) are accurate enough to be useful as teaching aids today. Through making observations of the structure of the blood vessels, he developed a theory of circulation in the body some 100 years before William Harvey. Many of the discoveries and inventions of later centuries were subsequently found to have been already described in his notebooks (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

More than meets the eye; what is ‘seeing’?

Our minds construct an internal version of the view before us, using a scant set of samples. We then modify this picture with what we expect to see. How does this skewed visual perception allow us to ‘make sense’ of our world?

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