Humans are still evolving. Faster in fact. Where are those mutant powers damn it.

Cremlian

Human Evolution Speeding up

I thought this article was pretty fascinating. (though it doesn't go into a lot of detail) Especially since it's a common folk wisdom that humans have stopped evolving or are not evolving as fast because of our use of technology. Now with this speed up in human evolution, when are we going to see those mutant powers.

HMTKSteve

I have seen some rather interesting mutations in pictures and videos.

Some time ago I recall seeing pictures of people with dual sexual organs (yes, one on top of the other, both sexes) but the quality of the images/video were never good enough to determine if they were legit or special effects/photoshoped.

Every few years you read an article about a person with 6 fingers on each hand, webbed toes, etc... I think even Don Imus has a third testicle.

Mutations are out there, just not the real cool kinds (unless you count double sexual organs, talk about having a job for life!)

Page

Cool, though I can't say that I'm surprised by this, as I remember as far back as elementary school having arguments with people over evolution, and whether people were evolving more slowly now or not, as I recall I would always make the argument about population, and the bigger the population the more likely it was to happen.

Further I remember Rym mentioning something about the milk in Europeans.

HungryJoe

Every few years you read an article about a person with 6 fingers on each hand, webbed toes, etc...

I actually had a social security client once with six (6) fingers on each hand. I wondered how that might help her with typing, but I soon saw that the sixth finger on each hand just kinda hung there like a dog's dewclaw. I don't think they were functional.

Her daughter had four (4) fingers on each hand. They were in better shape. Each finger was functional and the hands didn't look like there was a missing finger. They simply looked like cartoon hands. I was still wondering about the typing though: Do you think she may have had any special problems with typing?

It's not really a mutation, but have you seen this kid with the Shiva-like appendages?

HMTKSteve

I remember reading an article about a guy who worked in a bar with 6 fingers on each hand. The story pointed out that he could carry one more beer bottle (between fingers) per hand than the other waiters could.

chaosof99

I actually had a social security client once with six (6) fingers on each hand. I wondered how that might help her with typing, but I soon saw that the sixth finger on each hand just kinda hung there like a dog's dewclaw. I don't think they were functional.

But that might be because the keyboard we use is optimized for a five-fingered hand.

Anyways, you guys make me wonder how well I could play Guitar Hero if I had a sixth finger.

Apreche

Anyways, you guys make me wonder how well I could play Guitar Hero if I had a sixth finger.

Oh mans, that's like cheating almost.

Viga

I was always interested in this type of stuff. I almost wish mutations was more common than it is now. I also wish it was similar to Heroes, but that's my geeky pipe dream.

Great article too.

Jason

Anyways, you guys make me wonder how well I could play Guitar Hero if I had a sixth finger.

Oh mans, that's like cheating almost.

About 1 in 200,000 people is born with a sixth finger on the left hand. It is never independently controllable, though, because it does not have musculature of its own.



Hound Dog Taylor had one, but of course it was no use to his guitar skills. In fact, he tried to amputate it himself with a knife.

HMTKSteve

About 1 in 200,000 people is born with a sixth finger on the left hand. It is never independently controllable, though, because it does not have musculature of its own.

Is it similar to the way that when you move your pinkie your ring finger moves too?

...

Is it similar to the way that when you move your pinkie your ring finger moves too?

Probably. From what I know the pinky can't be moved alone due to the way the eh... damn, don't know the word. The unstretchable piece connecting your muscles to your bones. Due to the way those are laid out in your hand. I imagine a third one there would really clutter everything up.

Ilmarinen

Is it similar to the way that when you move your pinkie your ring finger moves too?

Probably. From what I know the pinky can't be moved alone due to the way the eh... damn, don't know the word. The unstretchable piece connecting your muscles to your bones. Due to the way those are laid out in your hand. I imagine a third one there would really clutter everything up.

Tendon?

Apreche

Tendon?

Ligament?

Norvu

I think the biggest thing playing a role in our rapid evolution is the fact people aren't dying any more and people who have multiple offspring when, before, they'd die too early to have as many children as they do. But, yeah, a huge population will speed up evolution and you'll see more noticeable genetic mutations. It's sort of worrying though, most people imagine evolution as making us stronger and more advanced... giving us logical improvements, whereas evolution is more like "I wonder what would happen if we changed this?", kinda.

Without people dying through Natural Selection and said people passing on their DNA, genetic mutations are bound to pop-up more and more and I'm not talking about the super-power kind, more like cancer or down syndrome and an increase in infant mortality because their body was just simply built wrong because of disadvantageous DNA mutations.

Plus, randomly, I always thought humans evolved from light skin pigment to dark, rather than dark to white (like the article implies), since apes have no skin pigments under their fur. With my limited knowledge, I figure gaining a lighter skin pigment would be easier than evolving right to dark pigment and then back to white. It doesn't matter too much, I'm hardly a racist who runs around saying "I ain't gonna be no evolved from them darkies!", it's just one of those "Huh? Would-a-ya know" type of moments.

HMTKSteve

The idea of black to white comes from the fact that human civilization began in Africa.

Yes, the fact that many bad (genetically) offspring are allowed to live (and breed) does have an overall negative effect on the species. I find myself reminded of the movie Idiocracy.

spiritfiend

Extra limbs can also grow because of chemical exposure during development. These may affect *genetic expression*, but are not mutations as they are not inheritable.

Ametto

Every few years you read an article about a person with 6 fingers on each hand, webbed toes,

Sounds like we have a another whale evolution on our hands/flippers.

Norvu

The idea of black to white comes from the fact that human civilization began in Africa.

Yes, the fact that many bad (genetically) offspring are allowed to live (and breed) does have an overall negative effect on the species. I find myself reminded of the movie Idiocracy.

Yeah, Ethiopia is where most believe we first started popping up from, I think. But, even still, I would've figured paler skinned humans would've come about, spread around and then because of black skins advantages over white skin in places like Africa, black skin would become dominate, because all the white skinned people would've died off because of the skin cancers, which isn't a problem in Europe.

...

The idea of black to white comes from the fact that human civilization began in Africa.

Yes, the fact that many bad (genetically) offspring are allowed to live (and breed) does have an overall negative effect on the species. I find myself reminded of the movie Idiocracy.

Yeah, Ethiopia is where most believe we first started popping up from, I think. But, even still, I would've figured paler skinned humans would've come about, spread around and then because of black skins advantages over white skin in places like Africa, black skin would become dominate, because all the white skinned people would've died off because of the skin cancers, which isn't a problem in Europe.

It's called evolution. From apes we've become human, with black skin, and we start to travel north, where it is colder and there is less sun and less hot, yet there is enough food. However, due to less sun we make less vitamin D, so every human with a lighter skin tone would produce more vitamin D, which was beneficial. Thus we eventually evolved to have white skins to accommodate for the fewer hours of sun up here in Europe.

Andrew

The idea of black to white comes from the fact that human civilization began in Africa.

Yes, the fact that many bad (genetically) offspring are allowed to live (and breed) does have an overall negative effect on the species. I find myself reminded of the movie Idiocracy.

Yeah, Ethiopia is where most believe we first started popping up from, I think. But, even still, I would've figured paler skinned humans would've come about, spread around and then because of black skins advantages over white skin in places like Africa, black skin would become dominate, because all the white skinned people would've died off because of the skin cancers, which isn't a problem in Europe.

It's called evolution. From apes we've become human, with black skin, and we start to travel north, where it is colder and there is less sun and less hot, yet there is enough food. However, due to less sun we make less vitamin D, so every human with a lighter skin tone would produce more vitamin D, which was beneficial. Thus we eventually evolved to have white skins to accommodate for the fewer hours of sun up here in Europe.

I see a lot of conjecture but no evidence in this thread. Fail.

Norvu

Yeah, I read wikipedia too. I'm just saying my perception of human evolution thus-far was a little skewed, but now is a lot better.

However, this does bring up a good point of human evolution becoming more of a problem rather than the thing that pushes all life forward, meaning we may be having to force ourselves to understand our own DNA better and begin genetic modifications so that various hard-coded diseases do not occur in offspring, such as having an arm coming out of your forehead.

merry_minstrel

I see a lot of conjecture but no evidence in this thread. Fail.

Signed. The problem with articles and discussions like these is, that people think scientists know a lot about how genes and evolution work. Wrong. Things are not as simple as you learn them in your high school biology class. What you learned there was a very simple model, that is outright wrong but somehow works in some cases.

Also:

The researchers analyzed the DNA from 270 people[...]

270 people? Are they serious? Does the word 'significance' hold any meaning to these people?

It's like in physics: Classic mechanics is a model used to describe and predict things in the real world. The theory of relativity is a newer, more accurate model. The old model is still useful, but you have to know when you're allowed to use it.

Cremlian

270 people? Are they serious? Does the word 'significance' hold any meaning to these people?

It's like in physics: Classic mechanics is a model used to describe and predict things in the real world. The theory of relativity is a newer, more accurate model. The old model is still useful, but you have to know when you're allowed to use it.

Ummm.... I don't think you understand significance in scientific studies. When pre-clinical labs do dosage-range studies at a lab they use about 5 "subjects" per dosage group. (usually around 25 subjects) Then for the definitive study they use only around 20 to 25 per dosage group. (usually for a total of 100 to 125 subjects) Not to mention beginning clinical trails only are tested on around 10 or so people. This number is expanded as you go through the process eventually going into the thousands. However you can get a lot of information out of a small sample size as long as you control for many conditions or you make sure it is random and blind depending on the study. Not to mention there are statistical methods that help you test something statistically without a extremely large sample group.

Population studies can have about 100 people and still say something significant, however you usually want to get a bigger number of subjects depending on the population. So 270 people is not bad as long as your population is sufficiently random.

...

270 people? Are they serious? Does the word 'significance' hold any meaning to these people?

It's like in physics: Classic mechanics is a model used to describe and predict things in the real world. The theory of relativity is a newer, more accurate model. The old model is still useful, but you have to know when you're allowed to use it.

I wholeheartedly agree with Cremlian's response. So I won't bother saying more.

I see a lot of conjecture but no evidence in this thread. Fail.

As for the defense of my part in that, sauce is knowledge from Biology class. You can check Wikipedia for Vitamin D and Melanin. Also I was explaining to Norvu how our evolution could've started in Africa. Look at apes these days, most have brown or black fur, and we humans have very little hair on our arms, chests, backs, legs, etc, compared to apes. And afaik the average skin colour or an ape is pinkish. (You can deduce this from their nose colour like you can deduce that a polar bear has a black skin under its white fur. Better to absorb warmth held by the fur.) And as Norvu said, light skin colours aren't that beneficial under Africa's sun. So during the evolving of human from ape to homo sapien along the losing of fur our skins probably became darker since that had greater benefits. Then as we finally stopped hunting elephants and deers in Africa and went to explore the rest of the world we came in colder climates with less sun. At which point my previous post continues.

I won't just shout out "YES WE ARE ALL SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF NEGROS!", but skulls found in Africa show that our ancestors, the period between being like we are now and ape, lived there in Africa. If you want to have linked evidence, go Google it. It's as far as I know generally accepted by scientists that we've all descended from apes and that it all started in what we now call Africa. Also take into account that the world looked a lot different then it does now. From the things I've heard, the native Americans went to what's now called America when America was only divided from Europe, Asia and Africa with a few miles of water/sea/ocean and they travelled over the ice in the north between the continents. Hence why the Inuit are so similar to native Americans.

So I hereby state that my part of the quoted and complained about text is factual and generally accepted by science and is thus not fail. This imo goes for all claims which are being taught in schools and universities as facts, and not for new, unknown claims or claims going against what is generally accepted as being true. Bottom line, whining about widespread knowledge having no sources is just... Eh gad I don't wish to insult you.

I could of course just always give you my knowledge, my brains, as source. Just like every other source out there in existence, you will have to judge it on its trustworthiness by finding other sources yourself. Something similar would be me putting a link to dictionary.com for every word I use to indicate which definition of the word I am exactly using at that moment in that context.

HungryJoe

As for the defense of my part in that, sauce is knowledge from Biology class. You can check Wikipedia for Vitamin D and Melanin. Also I was explaining to Norvu how our evolution could've started in Africa. Look at apes these days, most have brown or black fur, and we humans have very little hair on our arms, chests, backs, legs, etc, compared to apes. And afaik the average skin colour or an ape is pinkish. (You can deduce this from their nose colour like you can deduce that a polar bear has a black skin under its white fur. Better to absorb warmth held by the fur.) And as Norvu said, light skin colours aren't that beneficial under Africa's sun. So during the evolving of human from ape to homo sapien along the losing of fur our skins probably became darker since that had greater benefits. Then as we finally stopped hunting elephants and deers in Africa and went to explore the rest of the world we came in colder climates with less sun. At which point my previous post continues.

I won't just shout out "YES WE ARE ALL SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF NEGROS!", but skulls found in Africa show that our ancestors, the period between being like we are now and ape, lived there in Africa. If you want to have linked evidence, go Google it. It's as far as I know generally accepted by scientists that we've all descended from apes and that it all started in what we now call Africa. Also take into account that the world looked a lot different then it does now. From the things I've heard, the native Americans went to what's now called America when America was only divided from Europe, Asia and Africa with a few miles of water/sea/ocean and they travelled over the ice in the north between the continents. Hence why the Inuit are so similar to native Americans.

While I might be incined to agreee with you, without a source your statement is no better than me saying that humans and dolphins are cousins. Think about it: We're nearly hairless. What hair we have naturally streamlines in water. We face each other while procreating. We don't have the same mechanism that "turns off" the desire for salt that other land mammals have. So we obviously spent some time in a shallow water environment at an early part of out development. In fact, dolphins are about six feet in length, they're pretty intelligent, and they have language. I thereby deduce that dolphins evolved from humans that continued to be waterborne.

See how that works? That's the kind of crap I might be able to get away with if I weren't required to cite sources.

So I hereby state that my part of the quoted and complained about text is factual and generally accepted by science and is thus not fail. This imo goes for all claims which are being taught in schools and universities as facts, and not for new, unknown claims or claims going against what is generally accepted as being true. Bottom line, whining about widespread knowledge having no sources is just... Eh gad I don't wish to insult you.

I hereby state that my claim is generally accepted by science. Does that persuade you? It shouldn't. Cite a source. Otherwise, try to convince us that you're an expert in the field. Then we might listen to your opinions about what is and is not generally accepted.

I could of course just always give you my knowledge, my brains, as source. Just like every other source out there in existence, you will have to judge it on its trustworthiness by finding other sources yourself. Something similar would be me putting a link to dictionary.com for every word I use to indicate which definition of the word I am exactly using at that moment in that context.

It's simply not up to us to verify your claims. We require you to back up your claims yourself. That's one of the things that makes this board better than the others.

Andrew

Carl Sagan gave an example of how a little conjecture can lead to horrible conclusions.

"I can’t see a thing on the surface of Venus."
"Why not?"
"Because it’s covered with a dense layer of clouds."
"Well, what are clouds made of?"
"Water, of course. Therefore, Venus must have an awful lot of water on it. Therefore the surface must be wet."
"If the surface is wet, it’s probably a swamp. If there’s a swamp, there are ferns, if there are ferns maybe there are even dinosaurs."
"Observation: You couldn’t see a thing."
"Conclusion: Dinosaurs."

...

without a source your statement is no better than me saying that humans and dolphins are cousins.

Eh, Dolphins and humans are cousins. Genetically speaking. Distant cousins true, but cousins nonetheless. Evolution states we all came from single celled organisms.

The difference between your argument and my argument is that my argument actually looks more believable. I mean, nearly hairless? Take a good look at yourself, unless you shave and/or wax your body frequently you'll have hairs on your arms, hands, fingers, chest, stomach, legs, feet, toes (perhaps), chin, cheeks, head (unless you're balding), your crotch. I am of the opinion that that's most of our body. So nearly hairless, not at all, they're just small. Our hairs streamline? The do so in the air too. The function of hair is not to degrade your streamline, it's to keep you warm. So of course hair streamlines in currents, for it wouldn't be beneficial if all our hairs were stiff so they wouldn't be able to move freely in currents. Punks wouldn't need gel to fix their hair if our hair did that!

I also used the acronym, afaik a few times, which stands for "as far as I know" which indicates that I'm not willing to go out of my way to first research thoroughly if everything I say is 100% correct.

I hereby state that my claim is generally accepted by science. Does that persuade you? It shouldn't. Cite a source. Otherwise, try to convince us that you're an expert in the field. Then we might listen to your opinions about what is and is not generally accepted.

No, it doesn't persuade me 100%, but did you miss my source? I clearly stated that "You can check Wikipedia", and that I used my knowledge acquired during Biology class as source. True, the Wikipedia remark was mainly aimed at the Vitamin D and Melanin points, but a smart person would read about those sources and apply that knowledge on my other claims, they would check Wikipedia or study books if they wanted to make sure I was not talking/taught bullshit.

I know it's not up to you people to verify my claims, but neither am I. I lose some credibility by not citing sources, but what about those sources? You'd have to personally verify that those sources aren't bullshit either. If I recall correctly Rym and Scott once mentioned something about fake book reports or using nonexisting books as sources by an nonexisting writer. One would check that source to see if the person wasn't talking bullshit, and if said person wanted to be on the safe side he/she would make the source to cite themselves. If I give sources you'd still have to check that source and its sources to make sure the person who originally claimed something is talking bullshit. If said person does not give you sources you can just go out to your own major information sources, like Wikipedia, and check there if the claims made are true. My claim that my claims are generally accepted by science are true. You can check all kinds of sources related to it and find information confirming my claims. I mean they teach it in schools and universities for crying out loud! Do you really think we would teach ourselves lies?

And us sometimes citing sources does not make this board better than others. It's the intelligent discussions.

EDIT:

Water, of course.

That's where it goes wrong. The person claims that only water can form clouds and prevent vision when there's scientific evidence that says that's not true. There are other ways to prevent sight by a gas. Someone would note that and provide evidence. Also that person looking at Venus also concludes in too many layers. He does not take into account that the water on Venus might've formed seas and oceans and claims that it's only possible to form swamps. And he concludes that since there is a swamp there are verns. Since Venus can sustain life just as well as Earth and all live on Venus evolved in exactly the same way as on Earth to create verns and dinosaurs.

HungryJoe

. . . they teach it in schools and universities for crying out loud! Do you really think we would teach ourselves lies?

Yes.

...

Yes.

So you would lie to yourself?

HungryJoe

Yes.

So you would lie to yourself?

I lie to myself all the time. I tell myself that I'm not old, I'm not fat, that I don't know my incept date and longevity . . . but I wasn't talking about me. I was talking about schools and universities. Don't think that everything you hear in school is automatically true.

Question authority. Cite your sources. Get off my lawn.

Andrew

I don't know my incept date and longevity

Talk to Tyrell, he should know these things.