The Purple Koolaid Playtime Show!

Richard Dawkins: "Nice Guys Finish First"

This film explains that "survival of the fittest" does not necessarily mean "...of the strongest", but of the perpetuation of the most successful reproductive strategies.

Impressin' the Chicks

Two fascinating clips from the BBC series "The Life of Birds", hosted by David Attenborough.

Song-and-dance numbers:  male birds of paradise and their elaborate courtship behaviors.

Amazing improv: a male lyrebird sings an elaborate song that includes mimicry of other birds -- as well as camera shutters and chainsaw sounds.

Robert Wright Interview with Steven Pinker

Two authors previously mentioned on this blog, in a 2002 interview: Journalist Robert Wright discusses evolutionary psychology with psychologist and Harvard professor Steven Pinker.

More Robert Wright interviews from meaningoflife.tv

Robert Wright's website, Nonzero.org

The Russian Fox Experiment (and its implications)

Are Humans Just Chibi Apes?

Back in the 1950s, Russian scientist Dmitri Belyaev initiated a breeding experiment with silver foxes, selecting only the most tame individuals for breeding.  After several generations of this selecting for tameness, the resulting offspring showed not only behavioral, but morphological changes associated with a state of "arrested development".  These changes are echoed in all other types of domestic animals. 

The popular press has recently picked up on this story, concluding with implications regarding human evolution.  This theory has been proposed by the science community for years -- but only now has technology become available to study and compare the genes associated with this process.

For readers unschooled in evolutionary theory, this entry is not to imply that the "domestication" process immediately creates brand-new species.  What it does imply is how physiological and behavioral traits are altered within a species (and fits in with certain themes of this blog).  The implications here are that past hominids might have lived a wilder and more primitive existence and have since been supplanted with their brainier and more creative counterparts -- and we are continuing to move more towards that direction. 

And considering that economic success in modern society has depended more and more on cooperation, subordination, and other traits of "tameness", does this imply that populations in more advanced nations are evolving more in the direction of a state of "arrested development?"  Hmmm... :-) 

Regardless of the answer, I'm betting those tame Russian foxes will be on the wish list of many Americans willing to shell out some major capital for the next big pet fad. 

Further reading:

Neoteny and Human Evolution

Social Cognitive Evolution in Captive Foxes Is a Correlated By-Product of Experimental Domestication

Genetic Effects of Domestication

[update]:

Video clips:

Belyaev Experiment:  Docile Foxes

NOVA clip from "Dogs and More Dogs"

Are You An Information Junkie?

Thirst For Knowledge May Be Opium Craving

[excerpts:]

The "click" of comprehension triggers a biochemical cascade that rewards the brain with a shot of natural opium-like substances, said Irving Biederman of the University of Southern California. He presents his theory in an invited article in the latest issue of American Scientist.

[...]

The brain's craving for a fix motivates humans to maximize the rate at which they absorb knowledge, he said.

"I think we're exquisitely tuned to this as if we're junkies, second by second."

Science Again Confirms What We've Always Suspected...

From The Journal of No Duh!? Archives:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/24/science/24find.html?_r=1

Partisan Thought Is Unconscious

By BENEDICT CAREY
Published: January 24, 2006

Liberals and conservatives can become equally bug-eyed and irrational when talking politics, especially when they are on the defensive.

Using M.R.I. scanners, neuroscientists have now tracked what happens in the politically partisan brain when it tries to digest damning facts about favored candidates or criticisms of them. The process is almost entirely emotional and unconscious, the researchers report, and there are flares of activity in the brain's pleasure centers when unwelcome information is being rejected.

"Everything we know about cognition suggests that, when faced with a contradiction, we use the rational regions of our brain to think about it, but that was not the case here," said Dr. Drew Westen, a psychologist at Emory and lead author of the study, to be presented Saturday at meetings of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology in Palm Springs, Calif.

The results are the latest from brain imaging studies that provide a neural explanation for internal states, like infatuation or ambivalence, and a graphic trace of the brain's activity.

In 2004, the researchers recruited 30 adult men who described themselves as committed Republicans or Democrats. The men, half of them supporters of President Bush and the other half backers of Senator John Kerry, earned $50 to sit in an M.R.I. machine and consider several statements in quick succession.

The first was a quote attributed to one of the two candidates: either a remark by Mr. Bush in support of Kenneth L. Lay, the former Enron chief, before he was indicted, or a statement by Mr. Kerry that Social Security should be overhauled. Moments later, the participants read a remark that showed the candidate reversing his position. The quotes were doctored for maximum effect but presented as factual.

The Republicans in the study judged Mr. Kerry as harshly as the Democrats judged Mr. Bush. But each group let its own candidate off the hook.

After the participants read the contradictory comment, the researchers measured increased activity in several areas of the brain. They included a region involved in regulating negative emotions and another called the cingulate, which activates when the brain makes judgments about forgiveness, among other things. Also, a spike appeared in several areas known to be active when people feel relieved or rewarded. The "cold reasoning" regions of the cortex were relatively quiet.

Researchers have long known that political decisions are strongly influenced by unconscious emotional reactions, a fact routinely exploited by campaign consultants and advertisers. But the new research suggests that for partisans, political thinking is often predominantly emotional.

It is possible to override these biases, Dr. Westen said, "but you have to engage in ruthless self reflection, to say, 'All right, I know what I want to believe, but I have to be honest.' "

He added, "It speaks to the character of the discourse that this quality is rarely talked about in politics."

Gene Mutation Accounts For "White" Skin Color

Researchers Identify Skin Color Gene

Using the human genome database, the so-called HapMap, the researchers found that SLC24A5 has just two variations. Nearly all humans of European descent have a version of the gene with one type of amino acid, threonine; nearly everyone else has another, alanine. This suggests that a so-called "selective sweep" for the gene, wherein a gene variant confers a benefit and is thus selected for, took place among European ancestors

[...]

Uncovering this gene, however, does nothing to solve the question of why Europeans developed lighter skin in the first place--though it is believed to represent an effort to boost production of vitamin D in sun-deprived latitudes.

The Biology of Thinking and Habit

Two articles on brain research:

Thinking Drains The Brain

Excerpt:

Glucose, found in many foods and supplied from the bloodstream, is the main source of energy for brain.

It has long been thought that, unless a person is starving, the brain always receives an ample supply of glucose.

However, Professor Gold and Dr McNay measured glucose levels in the brains of rats as they negotiated their way through a maze.

They found that in a brain area concerned with memory for location the demand for glucose was so high that levels fell by 30%.

[...]

Brain Researchers Explain Why Old Habits Die Hard

Excerpt:

Habits help us through the day, eliminating the need to strategize about each tiny step involved in making a frothy latte, driving to work and other complex routines. Bad habits, though, can have a vise grip on both mind and behavior. Notoriously hard to break, they are devilishly easy to resume, as many reformed smokers discover.

A new study in the Oct. 20 issue of Nature, led by Ann Graybiel of MIT's McGovern Institute, now shows why. Important neural activity patterns in a specific region of the brain change when habits are formed, change again when habits are broken, but quickly re-emerge when something rekindles an extinguished habit -- routines that originally took great effort to learn.

[...]

...So presumably, the brain retains habitual behaviors because memory storage is more efficient and consumes less energy than actively engaging the mind all the time.

They Never Heard of the Central Park Penguins?

Politicizing Penguins

"At a conference for young conservatives, the editor of National Review urged participants to see the movie ['March of the Penguins'] because it promoted monogamy. A widely circulated Christian magazine said it made "a strong case for intelligent design," according to a New York Times article.

Actually, there is a simple evolutionary reason for why penguins and other cold-climate birds tend towards monogamy: for a penguin chick to be produced, the incubating egg must be kept warm at all times. This means that someone has to be sitting on the nest constantly -- which would prove problematic if only a single parent were there to do it. After all, the parent must eat (usually fish in the case of cold-climate seabirds, which means extended time away from the nest). The way around this problem is to have the parents either take turns sitting on the nest, or one bird helping to feed their partner. As seen with the mourning doves depicted earlier, there are usually some very practical, survival-of-the-species reasons for monogamous partnerships in birds.

And it isn't necessarily lifetime monogamy, either. The emperor penguins depicted in the movie are actually "serial monogamists" -- that is, they tend to change partners after raising the season's brood. Again, this is adaptive to those particular species' lifestyles.

Mewonders what their take would be on a documentary about the garish and polygamous tropical birds of paradise, in which the females raise the young along. Presumably, the climate allows for single-parent nesting.

More excerpts:

Richard A. Blake, co-director of the film studies program at Boston College and the author of "The Lutheran Milieu of the Films of Ingmar Bergman" said that like many films, "March of the Penguins" was open to a religious interpretation.

"You get a sense of these animals - following their natural instincts - are really exercising virtue that for humans would be quite admirable," he said. "I could see it as a statement on monogamy or condemnation of gay marriage or whatever the current agenda is."

Apparently, Mr. Blake never heard of the Central Park Penguins, but I digress. The reason for "following their instincts", of course, is due to the natural stabilizing factors inherent in any wild-living species: successful reproductive strategies survive. Individuals with strong parental instincts raise offspring to maturity. Unsuccessful ones don't. ...They die, or don't reproduce themselves. Hence you get a more uniformly-behaved wild animal population.

Eventually I'll get around to discussing the irony of how religious-based social mandates are actually detrimental to the population in this regard, so... stay tuned!

Well... It *Is* Pretty Funny When You Think About It...

Amazon.com's listing for "The Mating Mind : How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature" by Geoffrey Miller

Customers who bought this book also bought:

Sperm Wars: The Science of Sex by Robin Baker
The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
Silent Power by Stuart Wilde
Comedy Writing Secrets by Mel Helitzer
Radical Honesty, The New Revised Edition : How to Transform Your Life by Telling the Truth by Brad Blanton
Half Empty, Half Full: Understanding the Psychological Roots of Optimism by Susan C. Vaughan

Did I ever mention that I'm a cartoonist?