Evolution
124 articles-
Where Did the Brain Come From?
600 million years ago, the sea sponge had a dream.
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Elephants Never Forget War
Violence is written in their genes.
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Wildfires Are Changing Animal Evolution
Adaptations that once saved creatures are now putting them in peril.
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Animal Sex Determination Is Weirder Than You Think
Parasites, weather, and luck can play a role in determining whether some animals are male or female.
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The Spiritual Materialist
How transcendent feelings arise from the forces of Darwinian natural selection.
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Why Is That Funny?
How evolution made us laugh.
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The Wizards of Mind Control
How parasites manipulate the behavior of their hosts.
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Another Path to Intelligence
Octopus brains are nothing like ours—yet we have much in common.
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The Evolutionary Mystery of Menopause
New studies reinforce the hypothesis that grandmothers fostered our evolutionary success.
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The Giraffe Neck Evolved for Sexual Combat
Discovery of a previously unknown ancient giraffe species offers a new look into sexual selection and evolution.
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E.O. Wilson Saw the World in a Wholly New Way
“Did you like the grenade I tossed in their midst?” the biologist asked me.
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Humans Are One Mixed-Up Ape
If you look at every ape protein, they have every bone we have, every muscle we have, the same type of hair, and on and on. They’re just better adapted to their tropical rainforest environment.Illustration by BRO.vector / Shutterstock Recent fossilized bone discoveries in China and Israel support the exciting possibility of new, previously unknown […]
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The Human Family Tree, It Turns Out, Is Complicated
How the story of human evolution continues to branch out.
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Harnessing the Power of Evolution in the Battle against COVID-19
Decades of basic science research have helped us to understand this evolutionary arms race and stay one step ahead of the pathogens in our midst.
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Life Beyond Human Has to Play by the Rules
A zoologist explains why complex life anywhere depends on natural selection.
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How Intelligent Could Life Be Without Natural Selection?
Don’t be surprised if alien life forms are a lot like us.
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How Coronavirus Mutations Arise and New Variants Emerge
This piece was produced in cooperation with the Nib.Maki Naro is an award-winning feral cartoonist and science communicator. You can reliably find him online, where he tweets from the handle @sciencecomicDiana Kwon is a freelance science journalist based in Berlin, Germany. She primarily covers the life sciences and health, and her work has appeared in Scientific American, The Scientist, Nature, Knowable Magazine and many […]
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Playing Go with Darwin
New research elevates evolution from a tactical process to one of strategic possibility.
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New Clues to Chemical Origins of Metabolism at Dawn of Life
The ingredients for reactions ancestral to metabolism could have formed very easily in the primordial soup, October 2020 work suggests.
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The Human Error Darwin Inspired
How the demotion of Homo sapiens led to environmental destruction.
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Just Because It’s Natural Doesn’t Mean It’s Good
We are well advised to not lose track of evolution’s dark side.
