Pacific Standard March-April 2013 Cover

How Are They Hanging?

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A few years ago, the evolutionary psychologist Gordon Gallup, whom we’ll meet again later, along with his colleagues Mary Finn and Becky Sammis, set out to explain the natural origins of the only human male body part arguably less attractive than the penis—the testicles. In many respects, their so-called activation hypothesis elaborates on what many of us already know about descended scrotal testicles: they serve as a sort of cold storage and production unit for sperm, which keep best at a temperature slightly lower than the norm for the rest of our bodies. But the activation hypothesis ... Read More

Darwin’s Rival To Get His Due?

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Via Ars Technica: It's been three months since Charles Darwin received just shy of 4,000 write-in votes in a Georgia Congressional race. Which is not bad for a candidate who is 1) British, so not eligible, and 2) dead. The famous naturalist's opponent, incumbent Paul Broun, had spurred the write-in effort after referring to Darwin's writings on evolution as "lies straight from the pit of hell." (What appears to be a video of Broun speaking on evolution is here, from an unlikely source.) A suggestion for 2014: Run Alfred Russel Wallace instead. Like Darwin, he's a foreigner, and dead as a ... Read More

Out of Their Shell, Are Turtles More Like Birds or Lizards?

The turtle’s family tree has always been a bit of a mystery. “Turtles have a lot of unique morphological characters,” explains Nick Crawford, a post-graduate biology researcher at Boston University. “Basically, having a shell makes the rest of you look really different from your closest relatives.” Scientists looking at the turtle’s muscles and bones tend to think that they belong next to snakes and lizards. But scientists doing molecular analysis have placed their bets with turtles and birds. A recent paper in the journal Biology Letters hopes to put the issue to rest. By ... Read More

Meat: Bad for You, Good for Your Species

Seems like barely a week goes by without some new study telling us yet again that eating lots of meat is bad for our health. But take heart, fellow carnivores! Turns out our appetite for animal flesh may have given the human race a major evolutionary advantage, according to findings by Swedish researchers published in the online journal PLoS One. The team found that meat-eating human mamas were able to wean their babies at around two years, whereas vegetarian chimps suckle their spoiled offspring for at least twice that long. Since females typically don’t become pregnant while suckling, ... Read More

Charting Genomes: Old Hairs Create New Headaches

Charting Genomes: Old Hairs Create New Headaches

Nearly a century ago in the outback of southwestern Australia, an eminent English anthropologist snipped off a dreadlock from an Aborigine at a fuel stop along the just-built transcontinental railroad. The 20 red to brown hairs in that clay-encrusted clump now have produced a genetic profile that researchers say defines how some of the first modern humans populated the world. The ancient DNA links Aborigines to one of the earliest groups of Homo sapiens, a group that had left Africa about 70,000 years ago, then lived in the Middle East before spreading east. A Danish-led team reports ... Read More

Law of the Jungle: Powerful Men Have More Children

Two generations after the beginning of the feminist revolution, men still dominate positions of power in the United States. Why are men still over-represented in corporate board rooms, halls of government, and other places where decisions are made? One reason might be that men are evolutionarily programmed to seek positions of high status, as a means of upping their reproductive output. In the podcast, Christopher von Rueden, an anthropologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, talks about his research into the connections between status and reproduction among the Tsimane, an ... Read More

Scientists Find Missing Drink, umm, Link

Yeast studies never grabbed the academic spotlight like more charismatic species, say, bacteria or green algae. But a new discovery is rocking this placid pantry of academe. Microbiologists have identified the wild roots of the yeast that allows humans to brew lagers. Lager isn't just another word for beer (although it is the most popular commercial brew); it refers to a specific type of beer brewed at lower temperatures than the ales popular from the time of Amenhotep to the age of Budweiser. Lagers require a particularly hardy strain of yeast, a hybrid of the ancient strain of brewer's ... Read More

New Answers to Whale of a Mystery

There are around a hundred species of whales all over the world, from the mighty 200-ton blue whale to the tiny 100-pound vaquita. How did the whales evolve so diversely? In the podcast, Graham Slater, an evolutionary biologist at UCLA, explains how the tiny land-based ancestor of all mammals evolved into the multi-ton whales that we see today. Slater discovered that whales experienced an explosion of evolutionary activity 35 million years ago. Far earlier in their evolutionary history than scientists had previously imagined, whales had already evolved into the basic forms that are found ... Read More

Humankind’s Ascent Took Path of Yeast Resistance

Once upon a time there were no farms. People ate fruit off the vine and killed animals as they ran. They roasted things when it suited them but just as often ate them raw. The world was like this for thousands of years, a place of arrows and nuts where everything that was necessary could be found. One might imagine many reasons for giving up on those old, superficially idyllic, ways. Perhaps it was hunger, that ultimate mother of invention, or maybe it was just invention itself, unmotivated by need. But these are not the only options. Solomon H. Katz at the University of Pennsylvania thinks ... Read More

Can Threatened Species Evolve Their Way Out of Trouble?

Untold numbers of species are on the brink of extinction. What can do we about it? Dr. Andrew Gonzalez, an ecologist at McGill University, has a brand new approach for thinking about saving species. In this week's Curiouser & Curiouser podcast, Gonzalez talks about the possibility of threatened species getting out of danger through evolution, by changing their genetic code to adapt to new conditions. At first glance, the idea seems crazy. We think of evolution taking place over very long periods, with gradual changes in species over time. How could slow-moving evolution have any ... Read More