Birds Don’t Drive Buicks Because of … Evolution, You See

abstractions, amphibians, animal art, Antone Martinho-Truswel, art, bear marks, beaver logs, birds, bison paths, cars, cave bears, cave painting, cephalopods, driving, Evolution, fish, Flight, human art, human consciousness, human exceptionalism, Lascaux cave, Michel Lorblanchet, natural selection, Neuroscience & Mind, Pech-Merle cave, reptiles, Sarah Newman, University of Sydney
This all seems a roundabout way of saying that humans are exceptional. And here’s the question that no one in evolutionary biology has the answer to. Source
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Fruit Fly Eyes and More Surprises for Darwin

apoptosis, biology, body systems, Charles Darwin, circulation, convergent strategies, courtship, Current Biology, descending neurons, digestion, Drosophila melanogaster, Evolution, feedback control, fine control, Flight, fluctuating asymmetry, fruit flies, Hermann J. Muller, Intelligent Design, jointed appendages, Marco Milán, muscular, natural selection, neurons, Nobel Prize, odors, ommatidia, PLOS Biology, reproduction, saccades, sharp turns, Stephen Crane, timing, visual system
Don’t swat too quickly! There’s more awe in that little fly than might be apparent from  a cursory glance. Source
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Sleep — Designed for Our Good

acetylcholine, adenosine, amygdala, birds, brain, brainstem, cerebrospinal fluid, dopamine, dreaming, Evolution, Flight, gamma-aminobutyric acid, hippocampus, histamine, Howard Glicksman, humans, insects, Intelligent Design, irreducibly complex, mammals, mice, neurotransmitters, norepinephrine, pons, prowess, reptiles, rest, sleep, speed, Steve Laufmann, strength, thalamus, tuberomammillary nucleus, unconsciousness, wakefulness, waking, Your Designed Body
The evolutionary mindset operates as a major obstacle to the scientific understanding of sleep. Source
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Fossil Friday: A Popular Just-So Story on the Origin of Bird Flight Bites the Dust

adaptation, aerodynamics, arboreal hypothesis, avian flight, birds, China, Chukar partridge, computer modelling, Confuciusornis, cursorial hypothesis, empirical data, Evolution, flapping, Flight, forelimb, Fossil Friday, fossil record, ichthyosaur, kinematics, Liaoning, mechanics, muscles, paleontology, powered flight, storytelling, WAIR hypothesis, wing-assisted incline running, wings
There is a long-running about whether birds first took off by running and flapping from the ground up, or whether they jumped as gliders from the tree down. Source
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Sandgrouse Takes the Royal Society to Design School

Africa, biology, Biomimetics, bird feathers, birds, Brian Miller, Casey Luskin, chicks, Engineering, feathers, Flight, Intelligent Design, Jochen Mueller, Johns Hopkins University, Life Sciences, Lorna Gibson, males, MIT, Namaqua sandgrouse, nest, Royal Society Interface, Science and Faith in Dialogue, southwestern Africa, water
Episode guest Brian Miller talks with host Casey Luskin about the details of the ingenious design. Source
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New Mode of Flight Found in Tiny Beetle

Adrian Malone, barbs, beetles, biology, bird feathers, Blepharida sacra, Charles Darwin, Chloe Tenn, Coleoptera, convergent evolution, electron micrograph, Evolution, flat bark beetle, flea beetle, Flight, froghoppers, insect wings, Intelligent Design, J.B.S. Haldane, Japan, larvae, Longitarsus anchusae, Matthew Bertone, miniaturization, Nature (journal), PLOS ONE, ptiloptery, Research, Sergey E. Farisenkov, The Scientist, Zookeys
A millimeter-sized beetle flies efficiently with feathery wings and a beat mode not seen before. Did it evolve by natural selection? Source
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