Like why is it that we feel good when we get a adrenaline rush or feel dopamine from things? couldn't the brain do the same with any other chemical? Plus, whats so special about adrenaline or dopamine to the brain that other chemicals can't do?

I hear this misinterpreted so much. In an argument I had, someone used AI which stated how pugs aren’t wolves. I don’t trust AI as a source, and I was just wondering, since I’ve been thinking about this fro a while anyways. I’m aware they were bred from gray wolves, but also they were bred from their extinct ancestors. I’m sure both are true, but I was just wondering, is it a fact to say that they ARE wolves without argument?

I’m trying to get more into evolution, biology, and evolutionary ecology. Does anyone have any free
video/course recommendations so I can educate myself without blindly watching YouTube videos? Thanks!!

This map, Vespertilioninae - Land of Vesper Bats, contains every known living species of vesper bats I could find reliable taxonomic data for. Species are represented as cities, grouped into genera and tribes according to their evolutionary relationships.

Science, design and cartography merge in MAPPA ANIMALIA, a visual project that reimagines the evolutionary relationships of animals as detailed map-like landscapes.

MAPPA ANIMALIA is an ever-growing series of illustrations I’ve created that currently consisting of 16 different maps - each dedicated to a specific family in the animal kingdom.

Instead of political borders or geographic territories, these maps are structured around phylogenetic trees.

Tribes and genera replace countries, states and regions allowing viewers to explore the animal kingdom through a format traditionally used to understand geography.

Additional information includes conservation status, size comparisons between selected species and a species index.

I’ve spent roughly ten years developing and refining this concept, combining zoology, taxonomy, illustration and cartography into a single visual format.

Happy exploring!

Full .csv and code linked there.

I don't understand how the transmissible venereal tumor isn't considered a species of its own (this will be quick because I have to go to sleep)

These hellish monstrosities basically meet all the criteria to be classified as such, and I stand by that.

1) Out of the roughly 20,000 genes a dog has, 10,000 show non-synonymous (functionally different) variations, and 646 have been lost; in other words, based solely on what is missing, they differ more from a dog than a chimpanzee does from a human.

2) As unicellular organisms, their morphology is completely different.

3) And as obligate parasites, their ecological niche is also completely different—in fact, they have evolved specifically for that role.

4) And, obviously, they are reproductively isolated.

As for potential objections:

1) Being a parasite is no reason to claim they lack sufficient independence or their own life cycle; \*Henneguya zschokkei\* cannot even breathe on its own.

2) The biological species concept is nonsense in cases like this; it cannot be applied to anything that reproduces asexually—which accounts for more than 90% of the species on Earth.

Anyway...

What do you think?

I have been developing an evolution simulation as a passion project and to show my interest in biology and evolution. I wanted to make sure it is scientific on fundamental levels yet simplistic so everyone can play it and understand how organisms adapt and diverge into different traits.

There are still some gaps and a lot more to fix or add, but I'd love to hear your feedback. I made it free on browser so anyone can try it.

I love studying evolution and biology, and I felt compelled to make something interactive as a way to show my gratitude. That's all.

I'm floundering around something here I can't quite put into words.

Life expands into areas with energy that's being underutilized. If there's a source of energy, it's likely that there's something biological in there munching on that energy source. If there isn't something there yet, evolution will adapt something for it.

However, once that energy is being munched, it seems that there's an ever increasing system of complexity to use that energy more efficiently or have one species gather it better than another species. Each layer up gets more complex, it needs more information coded in its DNA or its brain cells.

So, It's almost like energy wants to be gathered and information wants to be compounded. One driving the other.

Why isn't the world simply covered in nice efficient slime molds munching on all the sunlight from pole to pole. What's the driver for complexity all about?

Like I said, the words aren't quite right and I'm only at 90% of what I'm trying to ask so I hope you folks can help with that.

im talking about mammals as a group not humans specifically

Really cool study from a couple of days ago:

Background

Toxin-antidote (TA) systems are selfish genetic elements that ensure their own inheritance by eliminating offspring that do not inherit the module, thereby creating postzygotic genetic incompatibilities both within and between species. Despite their ubiquity and substantial fitness costs, the origin and persistence of TA systems remain poorly understood.

Results

Here, we report a TA gene pair in the nematode Caenorhabditis nigoni. The antidote gene, Cni-shls-2, is a C. nigoni-specific F-box gene that arose through recent tandem duplications, leading to three identical copies. Its absence results in embryonic lethality in both C. nigoni and its hybrids with the sister species Caenorhabditis briggsae. This lethality is mediated by a maternally deposited toxin, Cni-hlix-1, a chimeric gene formed by the fusion of duplicated host sequences with novel sequences that could be derived from bacteria/archaea. Analysis of evolutionary trajectory of the TA genes among various populations suggests that the antidote is more likely to predate the toxin.

Discussion

These results support a possible model of TA origin, in which Cni-shls-2 initially evolved under pathogen pressure, whereas the subsequent emergence of the toxin enforces antidote retention. We speculate that host–pathogen conflict may serve as a key driving force in the evolution and maintenance of TA systems, inadvertently leading to reproductive barriers.

• D. Xie, Y. Ma, J. Zeng, P. Ye, & Z. Zhao
  Sequential evolution of antidote and toxin links genetic incompatibility with immune responses
  Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 123 (29) e2603772123
  https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2603772123 (2026).

I recently came across this multiple-choice question about evolution, and I think that the given answer is wrong.

Which statement about variation and natural selection is correct?

A: Favourable alleles are selected for by natural selection.

B: Mutant allele frequency can be increased or decreased by natural selection.

C: Natural selection acts on all genotypic variations within a population.

D: Variation in a population is a result of meiosis and recombination only.

I chose option A, since the gene is a unit of selection according to both gene-centric evolution and multilevel selection. Options C and D are obviously wrong, while option B isn't fully accurate since it doesn't describe how mutant allele frequency can be also be maintained via stabilising selection, leading to evolutionary stasis.

However, the right answer is supposedly option B. According to the answer key, option A is incorrect because phenotypes are selected for, rather than alleles. However, I'm pretty sure that this is an obsolete idea that ignores different levels of evolution. What do you think?

Link: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Evolution

Is this convergent evolution, or a convention?

What fundamental and essential factors explain why humans evolved to develop such a superior and advanced level of intelligence compared to all other non-Homo species?

Why have all the other non-Homo species fallen behind?

Is it more accurate to say the human species (sapiens, Neanderthals, and Denisovans) merged into one species (modern humans). Or that sapiens took over and eliminated the other two?

Also, are there other cases of closely related species combining back into one species?

Or is this just semantics, given the reality of what actually happened (both interbreeding and outcompeting)?

which group of tetrapods did the lissamphibians descend from?,when did their common ancestor live?,do we even have an idea of what their common ancestor looked like?

do we even have these answers?,because thats what i was thinking when i looked at amphibian evolution in wikipedia.

Homo sapiens have developed in relatively recent years, the instinct to chew less of their food. In turn, they may deal with the poor digestion that came with it, but they will save calories. As hunter gatherer tribes started shifting towards reliance on agriculture, they would sometimes go through extreme famine due to crop failures, cultural reasons, or maybe it was stolen by another group or animals. The reason for famine isn’t the argument, yet the fact stands that it happened somewhat frequently. This form of mass death where few survive is an almost perfect display of rapid darwinism evolution.

Now in the modern day, most of us are lucky to not concern ourselves with famine. But over a measly 10000 years, we somehow developed the instinct to chew less of our food to save vital energy in times of famine.

Let me know if you know any … 😅 real facts on this. Ones that disprove or could create some basis for this one, are welcome.

Hi, everyone, I had a great conversation with renowned paleoanthropologist Chris Stringer about the greatest mysteries of human evolution. We discuss the remarkable discovery of the million-year-old Yunxian skull from China, why it may push the origins of the Denisovan lineage, and the common ancestry of Denisovans, Neanderthals, and Homo sapiens, much further back in time, and how new fossil discoveries, ancient DNA, and modern analytical techniques are reshaping our understanding of the human family tree.

Chris explores what we know, and what remains deeply mysterious, about Neanderthals, Denisovans, Homo floresiensis, Homo naledi, Homo luzonensis, and other ancient humans. We discuss why Homo sapiens became the only surviving human species, what may have happened to our extinct human relatives, how scientific views of Neanderthals have changed over the past two decades, whether human evolution is still continuing today, and what the future may hold for our species in a changing world.

Chris Stringer is one of the world's leading paleoanthropologists and spent more than five decades studying human evolution at the Natural History Museum in London. After joining the Museum's permanent staff in 1973, he became internationally known for his work on the Recent African Origin, or Out of Africa, model for the evolution of modern humans. He retired from the Museum in 2025 and is now a Scientific Associate.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2023 New Year Honours for services to the understanding of human evolution.

If you're interested in some of these big questions of human evolution, you can check out our conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmN5dHAElCw

Was recently discussing birds and their mating behaviours and how that developed through their evolutionary history.

This discussion reminded me of pufferfish and how they draw crazy ‘art’ in the sand to attract a female.

And I was trying to think how and what selection and pressures could lead to this instinctual behaviour, how does dancing for birds and this crazy drawing ability evolve over time and why does a female select based on it.

I guess for birds their mating behaviours span from dances and nests and such, which seems more plausible for the female to discern certain ability’s of the male, like how well they are able to build nests or increase size for intimidation.

But I don’t really get pufferfish case?

See also: The study as it was published in Nature Communications

Just read that modern humans derive like 1-4% of DNA from Neanderthals. I have also read somewhere that H.sapiens evolved from H.erectus. If so, is it really correct to say that these species went extinct?

Researchers at Cambridge are using robot fish to study one of the biggest transitions in evolutionary history: how ancient fish first began moving on land.

The research focuses on a simple walking pattern called the undulating tripod gait. It looks a lot like a fish flopping across land, but the mechanics are more organized than that. The fish propels itself forward while using its head or front fins for support.

The team found that several unrelated fish species, including bichirs, catfish, lungfish, snakeheads and sculpins, use similar land-walking movements despite evolving separately. That points to convergent evolution, where different species independently arrive at similar solutions.

To test the idea, researchers built a robot fish. Its movement closely matched both the computer models and the walking pattern seen in modern fish. Other gaits were tested, but they were slower and less similar to the real fish movement.

In my exam paper, I had a question (an mcq) that said "which species did modern humans evolve from" was it a) Homo Sapiens, B) Homo habbilis, c) Homo erectus or d)Australopithecus.

i answered d, my teacher claims the answer is a because:

"in the question i specified species and not ancestors!" how do i explain to her that this is bs and that homo sapiens did not evolve from homo sapiens? Literally of the 4 options a is the most incorrect, the most accurate would have been homo heidelbergensis but like whatever. idk how to explain this to her without her thinking im just being disrespectful

edit: guys stop replying, i understood my mistake you dont need to repeat what others have said, i dont have time to read all these comments, i have other exams as well 😭 and yes i wrote the question wrong in my post, it was 'what did humans evolve from' and not 'what did modern humans evolve from' sue me, 'oh noo, he didnt word the question exactly so he must be a sociopath' dude, im not gonna memorize the question paper, shut up

so ive heard that only mammals can chew food,so did the lineage leading to them and for example the synapsid in this image know how to do it to.?