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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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Odysseus and the Sirens; detail from an Attic red-figured stamnos, ca. 480-470 BC from Vulci. (Image: Wikimedia Commons) We produce many types of sign. The story of Odysseus and the sirens crafts the word ‘siren’ into a metaphor; a culturally coded symbol. For the seafaring nation of ancient Greece, sirens symbolise the ‘inner voices’ familiar to sailors alone on the ocean. The story speaks of how prolonged isolation at sea can trick the mind, tempting a man to destroy himself.

What’s so different about human speech?

Despite a remarkably close genetic heritage, our capacity to articulate sounds and understand complex symbols is a ‘quantum leap’ beyond the capabilities of our chimpanzee cousins. The actions of our vocal Central Pattern Generator circuits therefore underpin how we articulate our thoughts, allocate meaning, and use a communication tool that allows us to think about what it is that makes us human. But can we think without language?

The Califormia Singing fish (Porichthys notatus), also known as the ‘plainfin midshiopman fish’, have two forms of male. The larger males are territorial during the spawning season, and excavate rocky nests along the coast, where they sing to attract females. Their courtship song, something like the steady drone of an aircraft engine, is pitched at around the A flat below middle C (Image: © Andrew Bass & Margaret Marchaterre)

What the fish have to say about how we found a voice

Some fish and many other vertebrates make vocal noises to attract a mate. The neurobiology of sound generation in singing fish shows us how mate selection appears to have driven the evolution of vocal sounds.

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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