Figuring out life...

Variation in the species

2011-06-12T00:36:00.000-07:00

Frankly there isn’t nothing much to type here. Pretty much everything was mentioned in the last post which highlights the fact that sexual reproduction is a very inefficient form of reproduction.

But then this begs the question: why does it exist even now?

I had linked to the article which was my original inspiration. There are actually four theories which explain the phenomenon. What most caught me was the Lottery Principle. In essence it says variation in a specie of cells is good. Usually the cells have to protect themselves from invading colonies of viruses or bacteria. If all the cells had the same makeup their defense strategies would most probably be the same. And if this is something that the invading colony can conquer then what mostly happens here is the extinction of the whole species. But with variation some individuals are equipped more “gifts” to better obviate the attack.

There are two things that can happen here. Either the fit individual is able to ward off the attack and destroy the individuals of the invading colony; thereby allowing the weaker individuals to survive. Or the fit individuals flee the scene leaving the weaker ones as bait. Whatever be the case, from the invading colony perspective, it simply means that one tactic alone is not enough to attack and obliterate the other species. This results in the other species having a chance to survive.

So that is the gist of a cell’s reproductive life.

But what has happened over the years because of this variation?

You ended up being different from your siblings, parents, friends at school, work, or, play, etc. So obviously no one is born equal. Everyone has their own gifts and curses within them. But lets not interpret this universal fact politically and fight with everyone.

The history of life on earth is replete with irony

How many wars have we fought just because one race of people are different from the other? How many of these wars were fought completely ignorant of this universal fact of life: we are all simply different. There has undoubtedly been instances where individuals of the same specie (not just in the human species) fought with each other because they were “different”. There has been instances where a group of individuals fought with another group of individuals because they were “different”.

The amazing fact in all of this “difference” is that, at a time when the whole specie was in threat (due to attack, or natural calamity, etc) all differences simply vanish. Sometimes even the warring individuals have to unite, setting aside their differences, to save their own species from being extinct.

I do realize that this “uniting” or “coming together” is a prehistoric phenomenon; a very very old one. But it is also something that symbolises life of earth.

The sexual reproduction paradox

2011-05-22T03:10:00.000-07:00

Life at the cellular level is hard to imagine. Some might say its TOO MUCH BIOLOGY. I am of the same kind. I was looking into why there are two varieties in most of the mammalian species, but instead, stumbled into a bit of cell biology. And if you thought cell biology was tough, try applying the theory of evolution to that!

But (and this is no joke) Darwinian principles apply to cells too! There is a form of cellular reproduction which is quite successful, but in actuality, (or in straight-forward natural selection sense), should not have evolved. And because that method of reproduction was quite successful, it has caused variation of traits in our species and in others.

I’d suggest now is a good time to catch up with some preliminary biology (if you require it). Following are links to a group of videos on Mitosis & Meiosis - the two forms of cellular reproduction. I’d suggest you go to the first link (shorter videos), and then resume with reading the rest of this post:

Mitosis and Meiosis animations (with narration)
Mitosis and Meiosis lecture

The video simply explains the processes in brief. Each phase in the cell reproduction is actually very dense to describe. For e.g. consider the metaphase in mitosis of a cell.

The centrosomes move to two extremes of a cell from which we have spindles orginating. Some of these spindles attach themselves to the centromeres. It is still not fully understood how the centrosomes are able to exactly locate these points. Its also said that mitosis won’t happen if these connections fail.

Some common facts of mitosis:

When the cell divides we have 2n number of chromosomes - this is the genetic deck of a cell.
The daughter cells which result have the same trait as that of the mother cell.
Mitosis is the method to reproduce when cells need to replace other cells which has worn out or become dysfunctional. For e.g. a small cut on your hand will heal; after a few days you notice that that spot where you cut is similar to the surrounding. What has happened here is a mitotic reproduction where the dysfunctional cells are replaced.

Some common facts about meiosis:

At the end of the cell division we have 4 haploid cells, each with half the number of chromosomes (n) when compared to mother cell.
The cells that participate in meiosis are called gametes. It could be either the ovum or the sperm cell.
There is recombination or crossing over of chromosomes. This shuffles the genetic deck. This is what solely responsible for genetic variability.

And now to the Natural Selection mode of arguments

The crossing over process is very complex. The chromosomes have to align themselves properly. The cross-linkages should happen successfully. The structure of the DNA should be intact. There are a host of other physical/chemical conditions (temperature, pressure, pH level, etc) which must be conducive for successful meiosis.

There are numerous factors. There are times where all these factors or some of them might not be conducive. Sometimes the meiosis fails. But sometimes these environmental factors can alter the genetic deck. There is a level of variation due cross-over of chromosomes, but there may be variations which may not be due to the cross-over alone. These are what we call mutations.

So what are the results of these mutations (or even variations)?

It is simply what natural selection dictates it to be. Sometimes the result may be a successful offspring; sometimes it may not. But that is simply how life of any germ cell is...(it is also the case with mitosis). The idea of natural selection is to select those processes which maximize chances of survival.

It is inappropriate at this juncture to explain how meiosis (or mitosis) came about. (The easiest answer to that is natural selection). In essence mitosis creates copies of itself. Meiosis creates variations (or mutations). But some of these offspring might die. How they die? They depend upon the rules of natural selection. This is the case with mitosis too! If the rules of natural selection are unfavourable for the cell (which is the product of mitosis) even that cell dies. But that cell is a copy of another cell, and all cells have the similar characteristics. The whole species might go extinct because of this. But lets not digress...

Meiosis is a very inefficient form of reproduction. You can come to this conclusion after you simply analyze all the processes that go into meiosis. The offspring is subject to variation (due to crossing-over of the chromosomes). It is also subject to changes in the physical/chemical environment which results into mutation. So what we must profoundly ask ourselves is:

Why has this imperfect process become so successful and flourished all these millions of millions of years?

The simple answer is NATURAL SELECTION. But, it abstracts so many things about what has actually happened. It has abstracted so many things about some aspects of life on earth itself.

So I think I have provided context enough for my next post. I hope people appreciate that post better. There are other means that let you know about the (evolutionary) stuff that I’m interested in.

You can follow me on twitter (@deostroll).

I bookmark articles about evolution on delicious.

And you can subscribe to the rss of this blog.

Ps: My inspiration for this post was this.

Hating twitter

2011-04-16T01:40:00.000-07:00

Its been a while since I last posted. Its not like I've got my thing back, but I haven't lost it like you imagine I have. I now realize that I can post in multiple places about evolution, it needn't be only on this blog alone. But I only do mention about minor stuff in the other places. So lately I have created a post about a social networking site. I feel I have blogged something to take note about human existence and all. Just click on the title of this blog post to browse to that page.
PS: you won't be able to view the page if you are seeing this post through some third party service like readers, etc. You have to visit this post manually, and then click on the title.

Non-vegetarianism

2009-05-10T02:50:00.000-07:00

I frankly don't know what life would have been if we had persisted with a vegetarian diet through out our evolutionary history. Nowadays people say being a vegetarian increases our life expectancy and stuff. There is no denying these facts. But we cannot also deny the way in which we became...

First, a twist in the tale: the shape of our jaws and teeth suggest that we were not designed for eating meat.

This is true. If we examine the shape of the jaws and teeth of early humans, there is nothing to tear flesh. We need inch-long canines to tear flesh if we were persistent meat eaters (carnivores). But this does not mean that we did not eat meat. I'd suggest humans first started as vegetarians. There were times in earth's history when the climate was too unbearable; something like a small period of rain, followed by a longer period of draught. This could have forced the species to migrate to new lands in search of food. This could have either lead to two consequences - the species forced to eat their own in order to keep themselves alive, or, the species would have consumed other inferior species (mostly herbivores) after killing it.

Then it became a play of natural selection. Those humans who remained to be only herbivores perished slowly; the others survived. This selection would have driven the species to have a omnivorous diet. But humans were not primarily carnivores. If they were carnivores, we would have in time developed sharper canines. So well, the omnivorous argument could be one reason we don't have canines.

Now I'll be using the above argument and coming to a different conclusion which is more interesting to note...Raw meat takes time to digest. Breaking down the proteins and fat in meat would have taken straight 5-6 hrs of digestion alone. If this was the rate food assimilated in the body, then we would have definitely become undernourished. We have to note the primitiveness of our digestive systems; there were designed for a vegetarian diet.

So consuming meat would have "slowed" the species. They had to take long hours of rest to complete their digestion. This meant they were more susceptible to being prey by other carnivores. They would not have been in a position to flee if they were faced with a threat. This on the one hand could have brought down the population, and this could have resulted into extinction.

But fortunately we were intelligent enough to know how to scare out predators away. On the one hand we did have tools to hunt, and butcher our dinners. They had also provided a means to defend ourselves against threats. On the other had we had fire.

Many historians agree that fire and hunting tools were discovered during a period referred to as the Early Stone Age or the Lower Paleolithic age. I googled to find out how exactly our primitive species looked like around the time. The result - fairly primitive enough.

Their jaws and teeth were similar to ours - they had no sharp and long canines. So what did happen eventually.

They say meat eating has impacted our evolution. But this would have not made sense if we disregard the discovery of being able to tame fire. Fire lead to another discovery - cooking. Cooking processed the food we consumed. Now what actually took 5-6 hrs to digest hardly took an hour or two. We were sufficiently nourished. We had the energy to hunt more, etc. And we were top performers at what we did. This fostered a small change in us. You could say it was the breeding ground for a much more powerful version of ourselves.

The most notable evolutionary change the discovery of fire and cooking brought in was an increase in brain mass. Our brains evolved tremendously. This is partially because of the meaty diet we grew fond of. Now since we had cooked food, we only needed a small time to chew. Hence we didn't need extraordinary canines to chew our food. Plus, we started to consume more meat (proteins), and this lead to many startling changes in the entire body. Here is a small contrast of the times:

Initially primitive humans spent most of their time sitting idle and chewing their food. Now they were sitting idle and perfecting their tools.

Anthropologists would interpret this and remark this was something that indeed revolutionized the human species.

Really there is no meaningful purpose in sitting and perfecting our tools, when they are actually good at whatever their purpose was. But now they actually put their thought into it, and perfected their tools with a view to improve their hunting capabilities. Though they did not actually realize the ballistics of a sharper spear at the time, they observed that sharpers spears were more accurate and effective tools for securing their baits. And tools and hunting were not only the stuff they invested their thought processes in; they actually thought of many other things - constructing sheds so that they avoided rain and the sun, polishing stones to make them sparkle, etc.

We started using our brains. We started becoming creative at what we were already doing.

The increase in brain mass suggests that there were several inter-neural connections within the brain which never existed before. Even at present we are trying to learn more about that. Because it is probably after this we started "settling", forming societies, etc. You'd be truly amazed how far we've come from there...From that small creativity spark to how advanced our civilization has become; truly amazing.

Most of this discourse, was taken from a two-hour documentary from NatGeo. I had seen it a long time ago; when I was in college. I would have rightly titled this post The Story of Fire, but my motive was to make you understand that we owe a part of ourselves to being the meat eaters we once were. We would have been different if we were vegetarians. So I don't think a vegetarian lifestyle is the only one to adopt. Of course it has its advantages. But I don't know what vegetarian life style alone would have resulted our species to become. We have gone through a phase of being meat eaters. We could evolve better in future if we maintained that status. But I don't suggest you have to take a complete carnivorous diet. A balanced diet would do fine.

And what is a balanced diet? I mean you'd have to go to a nutritionist and tell him/her that these are the things I do everyday. He/she would, ideally, do the math, and tell you how many calories you need, and how you can achieve it. So I hope you get the idea of a balanced diet.

So happy eating, and healty living...

PS: there is an enclosure link pointing to a national geographic news article about the same subject. Not that insightful though, but I guess you'd find more if you dig the site further...

Life on Mars

2009-03-30T03:23:00.000-07:00

I was watching a show on discovery channel; people were discussing if life could have first started on Mars and then "landed" on earth...(watch Into the Unknown with Josh Bernstein)

The scientific community only started to really look into this issue after president Bill Clinton in 1996 said there was such a possibility. This was probably after they were able to retrieve a Martian rock sample. (It has a very strange name. It was a combination of words and numbers. I think its this one).

The documentary then went on to actually reveal various researches that would actually prove life was indeed possible on Mars, and it could have originated from there. All of these researches could not have been triggered without a discovery on Mars. There was a discovery by one of those Mars missions which showed the possibility of ice formations under Mar's rocky surface. If life was ever observed by someone to thrive underground, you could rule out such life forms relying on sunlight for their energy needs. But then again, that is against our 1st and most important criteria for the existence of life - sunlight. (Anyway this is what I studied in my school).

But people have gone to extreme depths, and discovered that life does exist, here on earth. I can't remember what they called that particular organism, but they had classified it to be an extremophile. It seems that this particular specie gets its energy by some chemical reaction, (which is not fully understood as of present). It was an entirely new specie that had never been catalogued before. It was found in a remote undisclosed cave located in New Mexico, USA. Those scientists did not disclose the location as they fear contamination with foreign life forms - the ones we are exposed to all the time. So now you get the picture of how extreme this specie is...

Another Martian discovery was the evidence of frozen river beds of high salt concentration. Of which salt(s)? I don't know. But generally the assumption is that these beds are salty. This does show the possibility that the Martian surface had rivers very long time ago. Life was actually present on the surface of Mars! But the focus here is on those salty beds. This leads us to assume that there were river/lake beds that were highly saline. So people, here on earth, tried to investigate if life could survive in these high saline conditions. Since these river beds were on the surface, they were exposed to sunlight and hence this led to the possibility of photosynthesis being one of the ways organisms actually produced food for their energy needs. But even photosynthesis needs water. A highly saline environment would actually strip a cellular body of its water content. So how do such bodies live?

Well, here on earth, scientists discovered organisms that lived in similar environments. These organisms have special cell membranes. They are hard and virtually immune of reverse osmosis. So salt does not enter their system and disrupt it. Studies have also showed that the concentration of such organisms were high when sunlight was peak.

So there; all these are seemingly proof that life could have existed on mars. We don't see diversity in life forms on mars like that on earth because at present the conditions on mars do not support a very rich and diverse earth-like ecosystem. But one should guess how does life on mars reach earth?

Asteroids could have brought them in

Yes, and it is not something new. People have looked into the possibility of asteroids and/or comets bringing life to earth before. Here is a possibility of a foreign body from another planet being introduced into earth. There is evidence of craters on the mars surface suggesting that it was bombarded by asteroids before. The collision would have been so enormous that some Martian rocks escaped Mar's gravitational field and got caught in earth's gravitational field. This could have possibly made life "flourish".

So where does this leave Panspermia?

Panspermia suggests that life on earth could have originated because of seeds planted by other alien civilizations/life forms. We may never really know if this was how life was indeed started. Even if it was we would even go the depth of understanding how that life form came to existence. What’s accepted currently is the Theory of Chemical Evolution: life could have started due to numerous chemical reactions between stable/unstable compounds over time, and under some highly improbable conditions. The results of such reactions could have fortunately become stable. And even these stable compounds could have could have participated in more such reactions over time. Experiments have been done in this area - a popular example we learn through out text books at school is Miller's Experiment.

Intoxication, Addiction and the birth of Addiction

2008-08-19T09:07:00.000-07:00

Foreward (written after the post): This article is very vague in what it tries to explain - the evolutionary insight into addiction. It actually relies on evolutionary theory.

This post is a little about what happens in the brain when we get intoxicated or addicted to a substance. I suppose this post will highlight a little about the neurobiology of the brain. I don’t consider everyone to be an addict in any way; but I believe people are more susceptible to be a victim of addiction in general. The only way to understand ‘why this is so’ is to understand the biochemistry of the brain, and a little evolutionary history about it. Before I move on, I just want to clarify the two terms – intoxication and addiction:

Intoxication is the state of being affected by psychoactive drugs. It may also refer to the effects of consuming poison or excess amounts of harmless substances. Since I am not talking about intoxicating substances which are lethal or cause instant death I am ruling out the second definition. Intoxication may result in relative euphoria, feeling of pleasantness, etc. These are common symptoms. However not everyone experiences the same symptoms the same way. For some the relative euphoria is a sign of panic, and hence they develop a hate toward these substances. However the general trend is that people rather enjoy the feeling. Addiction is the next level of intoxication. It is much more serious. It is the physical dependence on a psychoactive substance which, when suddenly stopped, causes what is known as withdrawal symptoms. Some common withdrawal symptoms are anger, lethargy, depression, anxiety, etc.

Brain Evolution
Sometimes our brain can be considered to be a huge response system. It responds to various stimuli. And to get these signals or messages across to various regions for processing, the brain relies on its intricate mesh of neurons and neural network. There are some signals that can trigger panic, or readiness to attack, etc. These particular signals are ‘wired’ for the primary reason of survival. We perceive panic or the readiness to attack through a phenomenon called emotion. Neurologically, this is how we would behave when there are certain levels of chemicals (neuro-transmitters) present, taking a particular emotional phenomenon in context; for e.g. when feeling sad or suffering from anxiety, we can observe high amounts of a neurotransmitter called serotonin. (Serotonin has other function like regulating sleep, the cardio-vascular system, etc).

There are two kinds of emotion – positive emotion and negative emotion. Positive emotion works in a scenario where the brain (or the organ called the brain) has realized that there is something positive. For e.g. edible fruits on a tree. If we come to know that we are able to eat fruits from a tree, and that they are abundant, we would naturally be happy. This is a positive emotion which would make us want to consume more fruits from that tree. You can derive a corresponding case for a negative emotion too. Hence as a conclusion you can say that the brain seeks positive or rewarding scenarios most of the time for the simple reason called survival.

The reward system
Now that you know that the brain seeks for positive signals, you should also know that there exists neural pathways or channels and/or reactions which would generally come under the an umbrella the reward circuitry system. In the days of prehistory, the reward system in humans was relatively undeveloped. Perhaps early humans who primarily relied on hunting/gathering for survival did not require one. They were not exposed to intoxicating substances like modern humans. Reward for them was being a successful hunter and acquiring lots of food. Or being reproductively successful, etc. But as food became scarce they became physically unfit for hunting; they discovered that these intoxicating substances could boost their hunting stamina, or even sometimes their reproductive success. However, these substances were not administered in amounts that would cause chronic addiction.

As we became more civilized and started to settle our urge to hunt and feel superior etc, still remained. These programs were still running inside their brains. And consuming intoxicating substances was the only way out. Thus we see the evolutionary birth of addiction.

Monogamy Demystified

2008-04-12T23:57:00.000-07:00

Right now I believe monogamy is more of a social construct rather than pure natural evolution. In other words I say it is social evolution. It kind of forms the basis for humans to be able to live in a society. There could have been a time, in the nomadic or in the agrarian days, where the males actually decided to invest in reproduction.

Investing is good thing for the offspring. There is more guarantee that the offspring can reach adulthood; by then he or she would have also learned necessary skills to go about life. The group of people had an idea of the skills they needed to impart to the next generation. So on one part it was about training the generation.

There was another socio-evolutionary aspect of this kind of investment. It was that the group needed more of these trained generation to advance their society. Indirectly, we can conclude that the law of survival is still obeyed. And so is the gene expansion program being obeyed in a restricted sense. These two factors could have led to the group's survival.

The males didn't have to fight wars over trying to possess a female anymore. This meant fewer injuries. Plus, their investment into parenting, training the child, etc play an important process in social evolution.

From the reasons I've stated here I believe monogamy is about being able to live in a society. Monogamy gets all the advantage of a nuclear family too. But one should not think that monogamy was the definite reason why the society is a lot stable today than erstwhile. In fact we have no proof that monogamy really leads to a stable peaceful society. But considering the graph so far I think this is what it appears to “be”. But don't be deceived.

But we still see violence happening in society due to many reasons. Tensions of war, crime, etc all plague society. Monogamy has done its part, and is probably still doing it. These problems are rather lack of resources to counter the rising human population. Imagine those little fights we had over a territory or a person, or on anything you are very much dependent on. The only difference is that they are now on mass scale.

The institution of marriage, and monogamy...

2008-04-08T07:51:00.003-07:00

I certainly don't want my marriage prospects don't go down because I am writing all of this...

In fact I was only wondering about the term. I always thought that an institution was a place of study. Well guess what! That is not the true meaning. It is an organization with a specific goal. To me it means something has happened a long time ago. Some society's thought process changed, I don't know why this happened, or what was their inference. I don't even know what society “that” was...to be specific. But however the idea of marriage is not unique to any one culture or society. I know it shows some idea with relevance to the human civilization but I don't know what it is or how to explain it.

I looked at the word institution (an organization with a specific purpose) and marriage, and asked myself, what the hell is the purpose of marriage. Being an ideologist of the so non-popular idea of survival, I knew this fact was obvious. But it is not merely survival this “organization” is up to. It is also about mutual survival. Concepts like altruism, family, etc enter the scene here, but I don't really intend to discuss them at this point. If you study this particular phenomenon (marriage) it is about the unit (called a family) that procreates, supports itself and its offspring. In this unit there is always a male and a female; both are adults and are fertile enough to produce offspring.

In most of the cultures the idea here is that both the male and the female “agree” to living like this. They enter a monogamous relationship or sort of sign a contract for it. This has nothing to do with their natural way of being (primitive) human beings, but it denotes a change in some sociological aspect. I don't know what that is or how to explain that. I also believe that this may have some evolutionary psychological backing. However the eternal question still is open...why was polygamy dropped and why is monogamy deemed to be a prominent phenomenon these days?

Monogamy is not monogamy in a true sense

Most of the human cultures around the world 'force' its people to have a monogamous relationship. I say “force” because it is against our normal evolutionary psychology. We were designed to be polygamous. However saying this does not mean I encourage polygamy. On the contrary I rather want to encourage the curiosity behind why monogamy is gaining momentum at present and polygamy is not...? Surely it must let us know the inherent problems with polygamy.

If monogamy was the basic rule of natural human life then some things don't get explained that easily. Like for e.g. in almost all civilized modern cultures we have a system of marriage where in a male and female vow to live with each other. Mostly this is something legal and the event is a public one. As far as the role of evolution is concerned between the two, both of them should mate, have children, support themselves as well as the children.

If everything was fine then we can assume that there is no upper limit to how much times the female can give birth provided her maturity and health are capable of doing so – i.e. producing offspring. Assume that there is also no upper limit as to how many times the male can impregnate the female, provided the same rule for health and maturity follow. If it is a strictly monogamous society we are talking about we see that, for e.g., if the male dies due to some unexpected reason, the female is still very much very much fertile to produce offspring.

But fortunately, some modern societies “do” allow her to satisfy her evolutionary role. However the focus in not on the society which allows her, or why that society thinks that way; it is about the idea of leading a truly monogamous life being corrupted or not followed. Because a truly monogamous life we would not choose to mate with any other prospective partner. But there are a lot of prospective partners out there, and if we did mate with them we could have made successful children too...! This...is not monogamy in a true sense. However the principle fact of monogamy is still preserved. We only mate with one partner and maintain one intimate relationship. This is called serial monogamy.

I know that the institution of marriage has something to do with monogamy these days. But I still haven't actually figured out the monogamy part. I have set a discussion over at biology-online.org. You can visit the thread by visiting this link.

Flirting & Sequestering

2008-02-28T07:15:00.000-08:00

I was looking for clues as to why humans became monogamous. But it seems I latched on to another seeming subtle subject. I guess this involves a lot to do with mating rituals, but have you ever wondered why people rather have sex in private where as other animals usually have it in public?

These days the entries are increasingly related to the three letter word that some might feel offended even just thinking about it. But it is better not to stop thinking about it however, because it tells a lot about us - our macro social self. The male species had to copulate with the females in order to survive. The more number of females it copulated with the more chances that his trait and characteristics prevailed in the group. But this was also a time when polygamy was the norm, and it must have also been a pre-hunter gatherer society. Usually one male would have 5 or 6 females under his control. This also meant that he had to defend other males from stealing his females.

Sometimes this meant that the only way that those other males had to become reproductively successful was to lure those fertile females away from that group and mate. This way they sequestered the females to a seemingly private location and mated. This probably explains the psychology behind having sex privately in most human beings. Flirting was one tactic most males resorted to in order to lure the females. However I do not know the psychological origins of this phenomenon at the moment.

But this analogy does not explain why most people feel disgusted when they happen to see a couple in the process of mating in first person? I guess this is probably due to another type of evolution called cultural evolution. The type of evolution that I am more interested in the moment is natural evolution.

The link between the Sympathetic Nervous System and falling in love...

2008-01-27T19:16:00.000-08:00

I bump into a lot of things and discover stuff. Today I was actually trying to solve the guardian crossword. I was trying to find the answer to the clue that said: greater uplands near Manchester. I googled but could not find any clues. Last attempt, I thought I check out Yahoo Answers, and that is where all the intrigue started... On the main page itself there was a small blog preview about a question. I guess a Yahoo Answers staff (who calls himself mike) volunteered to answer the question on his own; and he had also posted a Yahoo Answers blog entry about it.

I went and checked the question out and hoped to see if I get some real hard answers. But no!!! All that was mentioned was about the sympathetic nervous system. In others words the fight/flight response mechanism. No one has given a perfect answer to date. (May be I'd try answering this one my self if need be...). The question itself was in a way too general. And the answer given by mike only answered one part of it; it dealt with what should happen to an individual when he/she is experiencing stressful situations. In other words, situations that are direct threat to life. For e.g. confronting a wild bear. (Remember the example from my previous blogs?)

The part of the question that didn’t get answered was something related to courtship/dating. A teenage boy on seeing an attractive girl in his class would mostly feel butterflies in his stomach. Well, for one thing that isn’t the exact way I would want to put it, but I feel he is nervous asking the girl out or even simply proposing to her. Reading mike’s answer I wondered, how can you liken this to a sympathetic nervous system or a flight/fight response?

In one way what just happened here could be likened to a mating ritual - a ritual adopted by most modern and civilized human beings. But there is a sense of history/evolution in the mating ritual itself! Mating ritual these days are quite notable. The couple goes dancing, has dinner, or goes out on a trip, or spends the night together in a rented lodge. (These things are not written keeping teenagers in mind at the moment, but all adolescent & post-adolescent human beings). We tend to notice these things very often. But rituals in the past were not as simple as it is today. Well, for one thing, females were sort of scare resource, statistically speaking. There would be more males for a single female. All of these males were programmed to expand his generation or his trait. Till date I don’t know why this specific thing happens, but it is natural law. In such a situation the males would battle it out among themselves, and the victor possesses the female.

The females then were actually okay with all of this. No, seriously!!! While the male individuals do what they were naturally selected to do – fight – females also played their part in it. For females it is necessary to find a strong male. A strong male could help her survive in various situations, and one of the most important and critical times when a female would require a male’s physical support is during pregnancy or gestation.

Okay, we are not yet to the point! The teenage male subject we were talking of earlier is not in a stressful situation, or in any way related to experiencing one in the near future. We are just dealing with a case wherein if he did propose the girl would have said yes and life would have gone normally for the two…there is nothing interfering our assumption. (No, evil brother, father, or ex-boyfriend involved in this story). The actors here are both perfectly healthy people capable of mating – I mean they have matured! We observe that the boy is naturally feeling the heat. I have two theories to that would try to explain this…

Theory #1: Possibly the boy’s so called sympathetic nervous system is evaluating or initiating a response. This could mean one of two things. He would run away in case there was a evil third actor involved – the ex-boyfriend perhaps – or fight with the third evil actor. Our evil boy friend is quite possessive about his asset. Therefore if he does interfere he would sure put up a fight. Which means the teenager (the protagonist of this story) would have to fight or run away. This is logical and also relatable to actual life. The boy must be wondering if her parents, or other family members, friends, or even if her actual boy friend is around...

I had come across an article which tried to answer why a particular primitive human prototype’s cranium was large. It was so because they had to endure harsh battles before actually selecting a female.

Theory #2: Let us assume the boy has proposed the girl and she agreed. Again if we simply thought of fight or flight responses, it does not make sense. But I suppose the sympathetic nervous system/response embraces another kind of response – foreplay. If you were a researcher of human evolution, have you ever heard of the phrase ‘pay for having sex’, before the actual sex? Of course, in any modern day human intercourse it is called foreplay. (I don’t know if it is a euphemism though). I don’t have any direct proof which suggests this; but foreplay could be something initiated by either - the male or female. And this blog entry suggests foreplay actually increases the sexual activity of the opposite partner.

Theory 2 opens another door of questions (which is not specifically related to foreplay or the activity called 'foreplay'). And if you are a small-time evolutionary researcher like me, I’ll leave those questions as homework. And you can ask me what those question are if you have figured them out. Of course theory 2 does suggest our protagonist is probably trying to get ready for foreplay...therefore the raise in biological activity.

For those who have not seen this foreplay thingy coming, I know you might have startled at the idea. But I am not in any way alluding to the fact that foreplay is an essential part of sex. And if you happen to be a teenager who is thinking of having sex, always have protected sex. And even if you don’t have “sex”, life will not kill you. Just be happy you are alive. But say you are dying of cancer and you can't accept this...go ahead kill yourself! :)

PS: The references I have used for this entry are embedded in this entry itself. You can also find them in the right side frame - del.icio.us bookmarks.

Intelligence: A Prerequisite for Fear.

2007-12-04T20:37:00.000-08:00

What should you be afraid of?
How does your body decide what it should
be afraid of?
Why should your body be afraid of it in the first place?

These are questions that perplex me currently. But actually you might ask why didn't I think of them before? Well, I was not oriented this way. I somehow believed intelligence had nothing to do with basic survivial until I asked my self these questions.

I am not saying that my previous route was completely wrong; rather fear could only have evolved after some threat was realized. Therefore some work of cognition had to be done in order to realize. I would have been in a better position to answer these question if I knew inside-out how a bacteria or any other cellular organism lives. What gives them the phenomenon of perception? How do they sense food, etc?

In hope of finding answers I have started a discussion thread here.

FAQs Post: Oct 2005 to Feb 2006

2007-08-06T23:32:00.000-07:00

This FAQs Post is the first of its kind. It is intended to give you a general idea of what I usually write here. These kind of posts are for those people who are new to my blog. They can read these posts are then go ahead to read newer posts. It will help them understand things better.

This FAQs relates to posts posted between Oct 2005 & Jan 2006

Q1. What is the meaning of survival?

Survival means staying alive. It also refers to the acts of staying alive and keeping ourselves unhurt, and free from danger (threat to life).

Q2. What is the idea of survival about?

Basically it is about staying alive. It is probably a phenomenon which has kept us alive and kicking of centuries, even before human beings came to appear on the face of earth.

Q3. What is the significance of this idea?

Think about this idea of survival as a vital program - software for life. Now without this program living creatures would know how to escape from danger or protect themselves from it. This could result in their extinction. There could have been many species that lived and died on earth not knowing what danger is; some of them we might not even know. But luckily we (human beings) are alive, and so are other plants and animals too. This means this idea has had effect.

Q4. But why did survival become the rule of life?

Life was not equated to the idea of survival. The idea of survival was not something taken for granted. It means it is ridiculous to assume that life was this way in the beginning. By default life could have been anything (or any number of things). Over time some things die while other live/survive on to the next generation. This is exactly the principle of natural selection. Survival is a phenomenon that exists because of natural selection.

Q5. What is natural selection?

It was an idea propounded by Charles Darwin. He used it to explain why certain traits were popular in species and others were not. There could be variation in a specie based on characteristics of its geographical location.

For e.g. cactuses. They are found in the deserts as well as on some coastal regions (geographically different areas). The desert cactuses have longer thorns to help them protect themselves from herbivores that would otherwise feed on them. Plus they are comparatively thin with respect to their cousin. This feature allows for low surface area so that water loss due transpiration is minimized. If you look at their cousin down at the beach, they are small, plump, and have small thorns. The small thorns could be the result of not having to face enemies that their desert cousins would normally encounter.

Q6. What is fear?

In extreme life-threatening cases fear is a reaction which would urge us to escape to safety. (Commonly referred to as 'flight' in evolutionary terms). It is again a program that helped us survive all along. Without it all of us would have been extinct or, we would have never existed at all!

Q7. What is feminism?

Normally this is a political term that refers to support to women's right, freedom, welfare, etc. In biology or with reference to evolution and the idea of survival, it is actually about members of the a specie becoming more concerned of rearing the offspring to adulthood.

Most male species exhibited polygamy. They mated with other females to increase their likeness in the community. Another reason for polygamy can also be to create a large army to protect the whole herd. The birth apparatus in most mammalian female species are generally not capable of giving birth as frequently as males copulate. Gestation or pregnancy is so critical that any abnormality or stress could result in the female dying. If the females die the chance of the species to produce the next generation also decreases, which could ultimately lead to extinction.

Feminism is also responsible for the males taking an active part in child rearing and overall child development.

Nociception: Why we feel pain?

2007-07-21T19:11:00.000-07:00

The word nociception means the perception of pain. The word is a combination of noci- (which in Latin means pain) and ception from the word perception (which means sight). These days I have been trying to find out if there was any evolutionary reason why most living things feel pain. We can't certify if all living things feel pain! We still cannot say if insects feel pain). We can't know for sure if an animal senses pain either! We only study the effect of pain on animals by noting changes in their normal behaviour.

Anyway carrying on with the reason behind why most living things feel pain, there seems to be no special evolutionary reason why we feel pain, however our evolution has incorporated this stimulus in our system. If you still want a reason, it goes back to the idea of survival that I have mentioned before...all living things want to live. No animal can self-destroy itself. Imagine that you strictly follow these two points. Now assume you are confronted by a grizzly bear for the first time. You or the other individuals of your species have not come across a situation like this before. Now if the bear jabs you with its paw, which is generally an unpleasant experience, you immediately feel the urge to run away from the bear as far as possible and stay clear. You feel pain and you would want to avoid a second possibility of that event. It is here that the idea of fear makes sense. Fear would not seem to fit in if it were not for something like nociperception.

One other small point to note here. You can think of fear as a program, but nociperception cannot be thought of in that way. Fear is a kind of behaviour. We are able to perceive it with one or more of our senses. The effect of fear is visible. On the other hand nociperception is hidden. We only come to feel pain. Nocipercetion induces a behaviour. It could be anger, fear or sometimes even laughter! However I am linking the phenomenon of nociperception to fear.

You may want to ask if fear is a consequence of this phenomenon called nociperception. The answer is

no its not

. I don't think it is logical to think of it that way. I'd rather believe that the combination of nociperception and fear resulted in a successful genetic make or a genotype. This logically means if you had a genotype with only one of either the chances of that type becoming successful in evolutionary terms is relatively low.

A new hobby

2007-06-26T11:34:00.000-07:00

Hi. You might be wondering why I have not been posting for a long time. The reason for that is I have been learning some biology. However I cannot call myself 'a bio student'; I have not undergone a formal education. At school I must have learned some preliminary topics, but the last of that I can recall was probably 7yrs ago.

So what is it like learning biology now? Hmm. Well it is real slow. Not exactly perpetually dragging, but real slow. If I were to study it in some institution things would have moved on at a faster pace. The only thing that I'd brag about then is the lack of time devoted for certain important topics. (Yeah, what can I say. My ego rules!!).

The motivation behind this new hobby is to understand the processes that created life. Research into this area still requires more exploration. I mean there are still things (life processes) out there we need to have a good understanding of. (At least relatively in my case!). Well, you might be interested in things that I have found so far.

Hmm well I feel there is nothing new. Everything was once long ago told. But however I find it all fascinating. I have learned about the different kingdoms of life - Monera, archaea, protista, plantae, animalia & fungi. There is another classification - prokaryotes & eukaryotes. But strictly speaking the latter classification pertains to cells, I think.

I next learned about cells. How do you call something a cell. Here what fascinated is the ambiguity regarding viruses. People don't think is a cell in a strict sense. Because they are only active when they feed/destroy other cells, i.e. their metabolic activity is dormant until they find a host cell to feed on. But like other cells they reproduce and divide themselves. Most importantly they have no form unlike a cell (which has a cell wall).

But how and why did these living organisms become? And that question takes us back to the oceanic soup from where life once sprang! But wait a minute - what is this thing about a soup? Well, one point in the history of earth, long before any sort of terrestrial creatures evolved, life was present - in the oceans!! Water was the mother of all life back then. How did life become in these oceans? It is hard to say exactly how but theories say that under immense physical conditions (high temperature & pressure), and under strange combinations of various molecules life could have formed. It is hard to simulate such conditions in a lab because we don't have a clear knowledge of there conditions (and reactions), and there is no technology that could simulate such an environment.

Anyway there was a time where cells became...Almost all living things need food, oxygen, etc. In a population that consisted of such cells. There were parasites. These organisms like all organisms needed food, oxygen, etc. But they relied on a host to get a source of energy. So in an environment like this viruses must have come about.

Well, thats the story of viruses. There is more - protein synthesis, reproduction, DNA sequencing etc. If you click on the title of this post you'd be directed to a tutorial site. If you are interested you can pursue from there. If you have never ever really touched biology, then this is probably a good place to start. It is never too late for change.

The concept of God

2007-01-31T05:03:00.000-08:00

You might find this post odd. This is probably the first time I am discussing about an abstract subject - God. However it is not without reason. The idea behind life seems incomplete with out some discussion on this subject. But why is this subject so important? Even before science was established in societies it was religion or rather the concept of God that shaped almost all the ancient religions. My guessing is that almost all the concepts of God (i.e. most of the religions) map to the same thing - the One who created this universe.

However so many questions come to surface while we are even thinking about this concept. Like for e.g. why would you think that there is only one force? The concept of God was not founded on logical arguments, but rather on observations of phenomena that people had no way of explaining in the ancient times. Child birth and death. Archaelogical evidence has hinted that people who lived in civilizations that are 3000 yrs old even paid respect to the dead. This fact is amazing. But why would we want to pay our respects to the dead? We do it even today?!

Earlier I guess people believed in after-life, i.e. life after death. This was the main reason the egyptians mummified great kings and queens. They somehow believed that they would be reincarnated somewhere in the future... This was the fundamental belief of the egyptian civilization.

But why is it that people think of God? Is it to find the meaning of life? Is it to define some purpose for life? Is it to say, God created the universe. Then why is it that we are so interested in living?

Sounds like madness doesn't it?

Then would you want to believe in my philosophy rather and believe that life on earth was co-incidence?

This was where I wondered what makes our mind behave so special. Special in the sense why we relate to spiritual things... Of course we can construct a scientific answer, but then you'd hate life for that! I ventured in trying to realise a model for our brain. I tried to understand concepts such as memory. I was going literally crazy at one point of time. My current model of the brain is simply a network of neurons designed to either instigate signals due to some brain chemistry or to propogate signals from nieghbouring neurons, or inhibit them. It is not a complicated model.

I tried wondering what if this model was subjected to some strange signals? What strange signals? Seeing something out of the ordinary - like miracles or seeing a ghost etc. When we see some object our neurons work through predefined channels and propogate signals. At the end of this process there is always a result. Either an action or response. These responses can be chemical in nature. These chemical can in turn influence brain activity by making other neurons that are normally dormant to fire. When this happens there is no regularity in the way the neurons direct signals; there is no particular channel. Its like chaos. There are many channels that are normally not supposed to be there. Somehow I feel that this particular condition is the same as fear. Fear of not knowing what happens next.

Although this is only a hunch. The pattern when one sees a miracle is the same as that of fear. This was what I concluded from the above discussions.

The concept of God. Back to square one. Miracles are the back bone of faith. Not everyone will agree with this view. And those who don't believe in this view are truly considerate people. They think about religion at some point in their life. Now was the concept of God born out of chaos in the mind? Could be; we don't really know.

All that I've discussed here are not the result of lucubrative scientific studies. Rather it is the output of probably preconceived thought. It could have come to my head before.

Altruism

2007-01-27T06:28:00.000-08:00

You know this is actually an interesting subject!

You are probably wondering what am I talking about?

Yes, its the word called altruism from an evolutionary perspective.

But what is the connection? How will this add up?

I began wondering about patriotism. To me patriotism is the act of sacrificing life for the welfare of the nation or a group. This idea of patriotism is usually linked to human beings. Because you can cite numerous examples of people actually sacrificing their life for their country or nation. But this is also quite true in the animal kingdom too. Imagine a pack of wolves defending their territory from a bear that has strayed into their LoC. [Line of control] ;)

But then the very idea of patriotism is against the laws of survival. Evey individual is prompted to live and increase its chances of survival. This is something selfish but it is vital. This notion is hinted in the phrase survival of the fittest. Because its those who compete and succeed thats wins the race. But how does this idea support the phenomenon of patriotism?

The answer is altruism.

First of all you should differentiate the use of words patriotism and altruism. Patriotism is almost always commonly used by man in the context of politics. Therefore I believe it will confuse some people. To avoid this ambiguity I chose to use a more scientifically sounding word - altruism.

Even my understanding of this concept is incomplete. It seems there were a lot of revisions into the idea. People have used statistics to come up with proofs that are vincible. I have not quite followed that trail of thought. In fact I popped a question relating to this at Yahoo answers and received links to web pages that dealt with this subject.

However, to begin with, it is an idea better understood from a 'gene expansion' standpoint, rather than from an individual's survival standpoint. It is the gene that is trying to favour its selection by maximizing its trait. This is what I understand of it at present. However if you are interested in research check out the following links:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/altruism-biological/
my yahoo answers question

Message

2007-01-13T07:56:00.000-08:00

While I compose this post there are many things I want to tell my readers. The first thing is that I have become more philosophic in certain ways. I have started thinking about religion. However I have not become religious. Even if I have become religious people still will say that I am an atheist. Because I think in that fashion. However to be exact I am an agnost; I can't know about God or any other supreme power. I can't truly define 'what is God'.

Since I do think about subjects like God and religion the thought about how these concepts came about are also lurking in my head. Why have these concepts come about? This is something I choose to find out. May be the answer is out there. But as of now I do not know about it. I intend to discover it. However I have not renounced the scientific temper that I have. I still rely on some evolutionary principles to start explaining some concepts about life. And if you are thinking how I am balancing myself between religion and science: simple; they are one and the same thing in terms of goals they want to establish. Now while I use science to look into some things it might seem that I am ignoring the importance of religion, and vice versa. This fluctuating tone is what you are going to get.

Finally these blogs are going to include a much wider scope. It is going to discuss religion, philosophy and science. I personally feel that these things should be discussed as they somehow give a more or less complete perspective. Or in other words they complete the perspective. Or at least they give you an illusion that they complete the perspective.

Why our brain remembers...?: Part 1

2006-10-29T01:57:00.000-07:00

Memory is something intriguing; thinking is something intriguing as well; but dreaming...? What is that? We are not the only animals that dream or are capable of dreaming. Even dogs dream. But we don't really pay attention to that.

Sigmund Freud was the first to do a systematic study on dreams. He captured his case studies in his book called "Interpretation of Dreams". But people disregarded his conclusion as pseudo-scientific. I think he was able to tell why people dreamed; why they see the images they dream of in vivid detail; but his conclusions were unsatisfactory. Now let us take a look at dreams.

Why do you dream?

The most logical answer I can give is that the brain is active. But this level of activity is not the same as that of when we are awake. Sleep is another thing that I don't have a good knowledge. But sleep is something physiological. It induces stress on our muscles which in turn communicates to the brain to stop all activities. How does this communication happen? The first thing that would probably come through your mind is the nervous system. But the nervous system does only that. How do you think our eyes shut. The eye muscles are far apart from the thigh muscles (assuming you have walked a lot, and then you feel like sleeping).

The brain can communicate this information to the eye muscles through a system called neuro-transmitters. In short some chemical messengers that either dulls or aggravates the activity of that muscle. Neurotransmitters are extensively used when we think of the functioning of the heart. Because in case of an immediate threat the brain signals the heart to pump faster because you have to flee from danger.

But what is the brain actually? A house packed with neurons. Millions and millions of them. Even more staggering are the connections one neuron has with other neurons. There are at least 5000 connection for a single neuron. But how is information processed in the brain? What is the output of this processing? Here is where I need to get philosophical.

Why is a red cube, red in colour? Why red is just a colour! We see it as red and call it so because that how we have done for centuries. Everybody knows that red colour is "red". How would you prove this fact? You see a some colours and you are asked to pick the colour red, you will definitely pick it out and say "this is red". But how do we define what is red?

We see colour because of light rays falling into the retina. What is special about a red colour light ray is that it has a particular wave length and frequency. The cones that populate on the inside of our retina is sensitive enough to decipher these signals. But then again what is the output? The colour red? No. It's a thought. It is an emotion. The brain is familiar with this colour...I guess the output is an emotion.

Emotion, what you are familiar with is about expressions or something that deals with it. When we get excited with an idea, excitement is the emotion. So why not when we see a colour we experience emotion? I am deliberately re-inventing vocabulary here. Try thinking, "or else how do you explain what the red colour actually is...?".

In the later parts I will make the distinction clear!

Why our brain remembers things...? : Introduction

2006-10-29T01:40:00.000-07:00

I wish to discuss the topic about memory. Because there is something in why we remember things! My conclusions are not ideally scientific deductions. They are again an anthology of my researches, and logical thinking. Meaning to say when I know something for fact then it is more or less scientific; else it is something derived logically.

Here science and logic are my only friends. Therefore my views are not something that will appeal to everyone. And thus I wish to tell my readers: don't blindly believe whatever I say without confirming it.

And to this, I must still add, that although I want to be known the world of science as a scientist, I am a philosopher.

The brain...

2006-08-20T08:21:00.000-07:00

Lately I've decided to delve the realms of the human mind. Thinking is what I am thinking about these days. Because thinking is what I do mostly. What interests me is the fact that how I am able to conclude on certain issues just by thinking. However I find it difficult to put it down rationally at this moment.

All I have is the knowledge that the brain is composed of millions of neurons so intricately networked to respond to many things - stimuli. Thinking, on the other hand is something that is initiated within our selves. I wouldn't say that thinking is a sort of stimulus or a conaequence of it, but I cannot confirm that however as of my current status.

Lately I've been wondering what the term brainwaves stood for...and my wikipedia research narrowed me down to encephalogical activities that takes place in the brain. It just that when we respond to something our brain activity kicks up. Neurons fire and this propogates like a wave to specific regions in the brain

The abyss...

2006-07-30T03:26:00.000-07:00

The search for life it seems has opened up a chasm; an abyss that cannot be sealed. I guess this is why most scientists have stopped research in this area. The reason: it more or less corrobates the same fact -

Life is a big coincidence

Its a long story to tell actually. You need to know how the earth was a million years ago; how life sign started showing up; and how they resulted into newer ones. The story goes on. Its like an endless saga. However I found the facts interesting. But I don't think a normal person can digest the facts, so well. Try this wikipedia page for a start. Click here. Its a long article, but take time to understand it.

Now that the fact that life has no explicit purpose is evident (or thats what we can conclude from the current scenario of investigations) we live as if there is some purpose. Why? The answer to this question can only come if we are keen on learning the details about our past.

I feel as if there is a whole ocean I have yet to swim through.

Perfection?!

2006-04-27T02:04:00.000-07:00

Yahoo answers!!! The place where I can get answers for my questions. I only require that people think about my questions for themselves and then give feedback.

Lately I've asked a rather intriging question over at yahoo. Its that whenever someone puts up the idea of a class tour I don't get that much excited about it. Because I know that girls will also be coming. Bringing them is a lot of headache. (Accommodation before late night, what rides to take women to and what not). Ultimately there is a feeling that you could not enjoy the way you've wanted to.

It was this emotion that I wanted to question. Why boys enjoy trips when there are only boys around? There were diffferent answers, but I liked the one that said something about boys wanting to be perfect in front of women, or more precisely a person appearing perfect in front of his/her opposite sex. I guess this is probably a work of natural selection that not all of us are usually aware of.

Suppose you are this open kind of person. You belong to a group of friends who are mainly boys. Suddenly you see this sexy girl! You spill it out in front of your friends, right? Now suppose you change the scene: you (being male) are hanging out with a couple of women. There are no other boys in this group. And then you see a sexy lady, what would you do? Tell the girls?! You might; but that depends upon your degree of relationship with them or how open you are in front of them. But the probability you would spill it in front of your boy-friends is more than the opposite case!

If you (the reader) happens to be female, try thinking about a similiar situation and you'll end up with the same conclusion.

I am more interested in the psychology behind all this. What is it that we try to achieve or gain through this irrational yet unaviodable emotion?

A curiosity list

2006-02-04T21:26:00.000-08:00

There are so many things I am curious about. But I find that I really don't have time to find answers for them. I believe answering these questions can "upgrade" our perspective of life or may be put us in a position to better face it. I realise that there are some glitches in my way of thinking; but that does not put me off. I simply believe the wrong way of thinking like I am doing now or today might hopefully turn out or somehow transform into a the right way of thinking. However I am not implying that my way of thinking will be successful in the end. I am implying that my way of thinking might evolve gradually. But I really wish I had some user input.

Well, I might jot down whatever I am curious about this moment. All these areas are in itself a separate branch of study: -
1. The brain: the human brain is an amazing organ. Why I am curious about the brain is because studying how the brain responds to stimuli, and how it evolved into the shape it is now might give us insight into our mode of thinking. It might also give us an answer to why other animals that have brains have not been able to adapt quite well.
2. Reproduction: for now reproduction is almost like a riddle. Why is reproduction important? For now I have a hunch that some aspect of brain development is linked with this phenomenon. It could give us an answer to a lot of things related to how human societies formed, and may even give out logical reasons why they had formed this way.
3. The evolutionary life of a cell: You should probably look at things micro-level. Even cells have defence mechanisms. Which means that even they respond to a stimulus similar to the one that causes fear in us. But how did they evolve? It might give us a clear picture of what fear is and how it influenced our evolution and to what extent.
4. Sadness: whenever something bad happens we feel sad. But why do we feel that way. What is going on inside our brain? What is the significance of such a reaction that takes place inside our head? There must be an evolutionary reason for it. But how should you begin to explain it? This is the most perplexing of all the above.

What are the odds that you or someone else has already answered these questions? What are the odds that someone from the past has already answered these questions? Frankly I don't know. But if you could give me the name of that person, then probably you could give me an account of what he or she has answered! Although I feel miserably alone, I am actually not alone. How many people are out there who has thought of the same things I have? It is possible even they are trying to communicate somehow but still can't find each other!

Feminism and survival

2005-12-28T10:00:00.000-08:00

I have nothing to my proof, but I still believe life is about survival. (At least partially). It is not that I don't care what folks at biology-online.org think; they have dispelled it as philosophy instead of science. Hell, I don't know what is for sure, but I believe that there is a brighter side to it. Perhaps one day in the future there will be scientific explanation that agrees with this insane idea of mine.

It has been quite a while I was infatuated with this thought of life. There was one time I used to think about feminism. My idea of feminism was rather subjective (while talking about survival). The modern definition or a dictionary definition goes on to saying something related to supporting women's rights or movements. It is something like allowing women to do what average men do (like for e.g. working late until night and returning home). In the context of survival, it has something to do with men involving themselves in the affair of child rearing.

Why should the father ever take care of his child? Again, a little knowledge of how primitive simian societies survived long ago would help. But for a mention, a man would live relatively much better if he had one child to take care of and support until it has grown up; too many children (from more than one female) are hard to keep. And in the former case, the child itself receives proper development. This is a cause that supports survival, hence ok.

Most males of other species and in primitive humans were known to be polygamous. They mated with more than one female and had many offspring. But what was the catch? All the offspring were not given equal privilege when it came to growing up. This resulted in some not surviving. There is another theory that all the offspring united and killed the father; this ultimately lead to something but I don't know what. I guess most males, the clever ones, started realising the importance of bringing up offspring from one female. Thus grew societies and higher organizations. Today, males have gone monogamous; or technically relatively less polygamous

It is difficult to actually point out how the idea of survival can be identified here. But really I hope you understood what I am about to say next:

Feminism is somehow related to survival.

Survival of the species and survival of the self

2005-11-03T03:21:00.000-08:00

I assume my earlier discourse of love was rather interesting, or at least thought provoking. Now there are two things I’d like to call attention to: survival of the self/individual, and survival of the species.

If you ask me what the relevance of fear is, there is no direct answer. However, I can speculate that it somehow supports the survival of an individual. Yes, fear creates panic, which in turn gives us a sudden impulse to escape a situation of danger or threat to survival. It does not make sense if you extend this to a group which has many members in it. It fails to make sense there.

Now if you ask me how love is relevant to an individual, there is again no direct answer. However, it indirectly supports it's survival by surviving the species. How is this so? Well, it is actually a complicated process. Now imagine there is one predator that cannot be defeated by an individual alone. However, this predator can be defeated if it had to confront an army. No love, can imply cannibalism is a common phenomenon. Once that is true then how do you make an army if you keep consuming your soldiers the minute they are born…? No army means, not enough of defence to resist that predator. End result is that that individual can die due to predator attack.

Love and fear – together they make little sense. But with the idea of survival they seem to agree, but on different terms. In spite of this difference I see them both as constructs to survival, because they are elements or entities that aid in further survival in a way.

The opposite of love…Cannibalism

2005-11-03T03:17:00.000-08:00

Having told you some strange fact about love let me put the question to you:

is it bad for the mother wolf to consume her offspring?

Technically, there is nothing wrong in the mother wolf eating her offspring, as long as it can act as an energy source. But once again, you have to think in terms of software and survival of the species.

The job of love is not only to bind the mother to the child. I believe it is to survive the species. Now if there was no such software, then yes, it is likely the mother can consume her offspring. But this does not happen that often. Well, it happens only in exceptional circumstances: for e.g., when food supply is scarce. In such situations the mother might be compelled to make a meal out of her offspring.

But otherwise, this event is unlikely. Why? Again because of the phenomenon called love. Now if there were no such software called love, then what do you think might be likely to happen? The mother eating the child – or cannibalism.

And cannibalism was a popular phenomenon in the days of prehistory. But then is it relevant today? Well, you might hear of small isolated cases, but they are not frequent. But then how do you explain why the phenomenon of cannibalism disappeared? Well, if you think of cannibalism to be the source of major diet of the wolf then naturally the species of wolves might turn out extinct. That’s why!

But then again, how is all this related to love? Love binds. In a society group where there were males and females, it was usually the females who reared the child. And sometimes it was possible that males consumed offspring of their own descent. So the females not only had to rear the child to maturity, it also had to protect it from other males. And love was software that supported this activity in someway.

The importance of love

2005-11-03T03:12:00.000-08:00

People are likely to get a lot of ideas if I said “I believe in love.” Well, frankly I attach only a remote philosophical sentiment to it, because without love we would not have survived this far. I respect the phenomenon called love just because of this fact.

Maternal love is one of the most significant and popular forms of love. I mean to say that maternal love is something significant as far as proper child growth is concerned. But we should not think of only human beings as we discuss. Think of other animals and species. Think about the environment they live in where predators roam in search of food.

For the sake of discussion I take the example of a mother wolf and her offspring. This is an incident most likely to occur today if you are ever going to observe a wolf’s habitat and culture. It is strange to note that the mother cares for the child. Now suppose that the offspring is being cornered by a big black bear; the offspring utter a cry of help. And if the mother is nearby, she recognises her that offspring is in danger and rushes to the rescue.

What you might probably expect of the mother to do is challenge the bear. Yes if the mother wolf is successful she would force the bear out of her territory thus saving the offspring. Well, I hope now you gauge the importance of love from this small example.

It is love that binds the mother to the child. The mother sacrifices her life for the survival of her offspring. And this is an aspect of survival of the species. All this happens because of love. Now think of love in terms of some vital software. If this software was flawed then it could mean peril for the offspring.

Today love is perfect software; if it wasn’t, there would not be any wolves; and there would be humans either.

Another dimension

2005-10-29T08:46:00.000-07:00

A friend once told me that fear is the most primal of our emotions. I never went to verify this fact. I was not keen in doing so for a long time…

Blindly assuming what my friend told me to be true, I asked myself, ‘why is fear important?’. I was expecting an answer for why we have emotions; but instead I had bumped into another realm.

When we perceive some immediate danger or threat to life we begin to panic. As consequence to this we take to our heels. Sometimes we may fight against our fears, but that is different. Running away from danger is one of the most primitive of actions, but seemingly one of the most important ones, because that is arguably why we have survived for so long.

We unconsciously don’t want to get ourselves destroyed. We don’t want to feel pain, suffering or face death. Remarkably, this is how we evolved. This is probably why you don’t see mass suicides because of some irrational reason. (For e.g., once believed lemming rats running out to sea).

With this concept in mind I developed another idea; I gave the term survival a new significance – a new meaning. It is not survival of the fittest. It simply means merely staying alive. It is not about natural selection either. I believe the evolution of every species on earth somehow supports or reflects this idea of survival.

Both survival of the fittest and natural selection has something in common. I think they signify or suggest competition as a means to stay alive. The idea of survival is no different; it does suggest competition as means to staying alive. But there are other things this idea suggests. You will learn more about it in the coming blogs…

But this argument should be viewed at from a philosophical perspective only. And I am only saying this thanks to the forum people from the biology-online.com; I had this confusion whether this can be viewed scientifically or not. But now I think it is safer and probably healthier to look at it philosophically.

Original quest

2005-10-28T07:01:00.000-07:00

Understanding behaviour has a lot to do with evolutionary science. I hope I am not speaking like a scientist. But it somewhat perplexes me.

Well, the reason behind this existence of this blog started with inquiry into emotion – why we have it, what is its purpose? “Communication” might be an answer, but it is only a part of it. However, it is evident that emotion requires some sort of interaction. Meaning if humans existed in isolation, then emotions would not make sense...

Trying to find a reason for that I guess I’ve stumbled into other things. Let me warn you, you might appreciate whatever I mention in here provided you look at it with a philosophic perspective. I am not a philosopher yet!!! But this frame of mind can broaden the scope of this blog.

Coming back to emotion, well I have not got any thing yet. But I rake it out at another place: biology-online.org; I’ve joined a forum there and I never believed I would get a response, but people are actually into it. Click here to go to the forum page.

People don't often die...

2005-10-28T06:43:00.000-07:00

The title is not meant to be ironic or sarcastic. Every second someone or the other dies around the world for some reason. If you look at the title with this perspective you might feel it is kind of negative, but it is not. It is actually something interesting. Look at it from another angle.

Have you ever heard of any living species committing mass suicide? Well, lemming rats are known to die in unison; they are reported to simply jump into the ocean. But even that has a scientific reason. Click here if you want to know.

Have you heard of another species simply committing suicide in large numbers? Well, to my belief I don’t think it will happen. However, if you have heard of such a case, I bet it is infrequent and, the numbers of people who die eventually form an insignificant percentage of the whole population. And this fact is only to be taken in a statistical sense, mind you.

For human beings although death is an inevitable part of life, no one lives life thinking they will die the next day. Humans have come a long way after that...it has a lot to do with the way we evolved. Well, I’ll leave that for you to figure out...

Figuring out life

2005-10-28T06:26:00.000-07:00

I happen to be a civil engineering student presently. I am not a biologist, evolutionist, or a psychologist. I just happen to enjoy understanding more about life, culture, finding reasons for absurd questions, etc.

This blog is meant to be a place to share few of my thoughts. But I want everyone to understand that I am not consciously trying to rouse a conflict.

This blog was started a long time back. In one sense it is revived. Some things have changed. I plan to write my blogs short in logical stretches. That way I believe I don’t have to engage you in reading long, really long articles where you stop in between and find that you are lost. I am not a professional writer you know.

Although this blog may sound formal to you, it is because otherwise you would misconstrue something or the other. All my future blogs will be short (with no guarantee however). But they will be definitely logical and concise. However, I want everyone to realize that ‘sharing ideas’ and ‘sharing ideas via blogs’ is completely new to me. It does not mean that I don’t know how to use a blog; it simply means that I have not done such a thing like this (i.e. sharing strange ideas) before.

Well like I said I am trying to share ideas. I am not an expert at making them either. But I find fascination in trying to find answers to strange things: phenomena. For e.g. why aren’t there cases of mass suicide? You’ll know more about it in the next blog.

I would like this place to be interactive. Sometimes I may write some blunder without the knowledge. Your criticisms will definitely support this blog, my quest for knowledge about weird things and will widen your awareness. Although this is not a forum to have an actual discussion, which is what I prefer, you can at least give a comment. This blog allows you to do so. (just look of “comments” link after every blog).