Ancestry & Evolution
The desire to understand our origins is primal. By examining our DNA over successive generations through the evolutionary process of inherited characteristics of human and animal populations–as well as from those species from which humans share a common ancestry–we can decipher our individual and collective past and develop medical innovations for the future.
Below is the complete archive of related articles sorted by date.
Baby talk: What we can learn from bats about how human moms and babies communicate
“Mamama,” “dadada,” “bababa” – parents usually welcome with enthusiasm the sounds of a baby’s babble. Babbling is the first milestone ...
Human evolution is accelerating. Here’s how — and why it’s necessary for us to adapt to an unstable world
For Prof. Ze’ev Hochberg of the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, evolution ...
Intriguing new clues revealed about the genetics and evolution of homosexuality
In a study of data from hundreds of thousands of people, researchers have now identified genetic patterns that could be ...
Why researchers are vacuuming ‘environmental DNA’ from the sky
Scientists have been using environmental DNA (eDNA) for more than 10 years to measure biodiversity and discover new species, often ...
If evolution encourages reproduction, why do people have same-sex preferences?
Same-sex sexual behaviour may seem to present a Darwinian paradox. It provides no obvious reproductive or survival benefit, and yet ...
More than 50% of Americans accept the science of evolution — but only 32% of fundamentalist Christians
Americans are more scientifically literate than ever in 2021 — so much so that creationism has become a minority opinion. And ...
Less than half of cultures around the world indulge in romantic lip kissing — a uniquely human endeavor
Less than half of all societies kiss with their lips, according to a study of 168 cultures from around the ...
Many non-human animals end their lives through self-destructive behaviors. Is it suicide?
Are non-human animals actually capable of purposely ending their own lives? ... Famed field biologist George Schaller recounts an instance ...
Children who finish puberty earlier — usually girls — tend to do better in school
Girls do better than boys in almost all subjects at school. Many researchers are concerned about the growing differences in ...
Love over food: Canines pass on eating when forced to choose between their owners and snacks
An analysis of several kinds of research on dogs has concluded that dogs really do love their owners or other ...
Is there an evolutionary advantage to feeling pain?
For individuals that have either an acquired or naturally occurring reduced sensitivity to pain, the results can be fatal.... Clearly, ...
What will Covid look like in the years ahead? Young children could be most vulnerable to new variants
Researchers predict SARS-CoV-2 could become endemic and primarily infect children, thereby shifting risk from older people to toddlers too young ...
Viewpoint: Might embracing fake news and conspiracy theories serve as an evolutionary survival strategy?
Human beings have an evolutionary history, and deception is commonplace in the animal world because it confers evolutionary advantage. There's ...
Male investment: Humans are one of the few species in which men supply a lot more than sperm
Lee Gettler is hard to get on the phone, for the very ordinary reason that he’s busy caring for his ...
Finding ‘invisible DNA’ floating in the air opens doors to detecting and protecting rare wildlife
DNA is in the air – literally. It is wafted around by all the Earth’s creatures, and now scientists have ...
‘A tyrannical clawhold’ on their world: How Tyrannosaurus Rex dominated the prehistoric ecosystem
The sheer size and apparent ferocity of T. rex has been apparent from the outset, but, paleontologists have learned, this ...
Delta has disrupted the timeline for corralling COVID. What can we expect now in the months ahead?
In May, after the CDC ended indoor masking for vaccinated people, President Joe Biden gave a speech that felt like ...
Delta variant tricks: Will the coronavirus continue to outsmart attempts to contain it?
The race between the evolution of the virus and the vaccination of human beings boils down to a math problem ...
‘Ghost lineages’: Discovering extinct species in modern animal DNA
Either before, during, or shortly after their migration to the [Tibetan] plateau, H. sapiens got friendly with Denisovans, while their ...
Why is life genetically programmed to die?
Epidemics have a way of making one wonder about death. To put it plainly, in the raw form it takes ...
Rethinking ‘The Omega Man’: How viruses alter human DNA
[W]e're celebrating 50 years since the release of The Omega Man, the 1971 film based on Richard Matheson's novel I ...
Humans are poor climbers and clumsy jumpers, but boy can we throw. Here’s how and why that happened
With the Tokyo Olympics on the horizon, Kara Winger is training hard. “I want to make the top eight in ...
How climate change shaped evolution in the Middle East
Researchers at the University of Birmingham and the Wellcome Sanger Institute, along with their international collaborators, have uncovered signals in ...
‘It’s almost certain’: An even more elusive and potentially more dangerous variant than Delta is likely to emerge, scientists warn
An analysis by British academics, published by the UK Government’s official scientific advisory group, says that they believe it is ...
Taboo: Why has Africa emerged as the global coronavirus ‘Cold Spot’ — and why are we afraid to talk about it?
The first COVID-19 case in Africa was confirmed on February 14th, 2020, in Egypt. The first in sub-Saharan Africa appeared ...
Why is the Delta variant so much more transmissible than past COVID mutants?
Upon first inspection, the mutations in the highly contagious delta covid variant don’t look that worrisome. For starters, delta has ...
The de-extinction club: Scientists plot to restore the Tasmanian tiger and other extinct species
[Paleontologist Michael Archer] is part of the “de-extinction club”: a growing group of scientists working to harness genetic engineering and ...
