Quotes About Mammalian

And, for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human.

Belief in God is apparently a psychological artifact of mammalian reproduction.

while the modern, human animal is capable of deep thought and, like its mammalian forebears, can nurture and play, it also is capable of behaving in an absolutely "reptilian" manner.

In pre-ethological terms, the emotional-territorial circuit is what we usually call "ego." Ego is simply the mammalian recognition of one's status in the pack; it is a "role" as sociologists say, a single brain circuit which mistakes itself for the whole Self, the entire brain-mind apparatus. The "egotist" behaves like "a two year old," in the common saying, because Ego is the imprint of the toddling and toilet-training stage.

Mammalian sociobiology, rooted in the antique neural circuits of the old brain, contains many factors opposing the evolution of domesticated primates into true freedom and objective intelligence.

As many neuroscientists have affirmed, this evolution has led to the higher mammalian brain being composed of three parts. The oldest is the reptilian part of the brain, which controls all automatic responses that regulate the body. This is the instinctive part. Above that is the old mammalian or limbic brain, governing feeling and emotion. And on top of that has evolved the neocortex

I have always been interested - indeed, waylaid - by the leading edges of technology, even during my Ph.D. years when I pioneered (but did not publish) agarose gel electrophoresis for RNA fractionation. Also, much later, I was instrumental in showing that Green Fluorescent Protein and RNAi could be made to work in mammalian cells.

For the entire course of evolution leading from our primitive mammalian forebears of a hundred million years ago to the single lineage that threaded its way to become the first Homo sapiens, the total number of individuals it required might have been one hundred billion. Unknowingly, they all lived and died for us. (21)

Human beings appear to be sufficiently selfish and calculating to be capable of indefinitely greater harmony and social homeostasis. This statement is not self-contradictory. True selfishness, if obedient to the other constraints of mammalian biology, is the key to a more nearly perfect social contract.

Belief in God is apparently a psychological arti-fact of mammalian reproduction.

Empathy probably started out as a mechanism to improve maternal care. Mammalian mothers who were attentive to their young's needs were more likely to rear successful offspring.

That work led to the emergence of the recombinant DNA technology thereby providing a major tool for analyzing mammalian gene structure and function and formed the basis for me receiving the 1980 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

One can choose to obsess over prescriptive rules, but they have no more to do with human language than the criteria for judging cats at a cat show have to do with mammalian biology.

Play begins as a major feature of mammalian evolution and remains as a major method of becoming reconciled with our present universe.

When we dive underwater, the spleen contracts as part of the mammalian diving reflex, shooting its supply of oxygenated red blood cells into circulation around the body. The heart rate slows, and blood vessels constrict, directing blood flow away from the extremities and toward major organs. These energy conservation measures kick in so we can use available oxygen more efficiently.

Actually, dinosaur DNA is somewhat easier to extract by this process than mammalian DNA. The reason is that mammalian red cells have no nuclei, and thus no DNA in their red cells. To clone a mammal, you must find a white cell, which is much rarer than red cells. But dinosaurs had nucleated red cells, as do modern birds. It is one of the many indications we have that dinosaurs aren't really reptiles at all. They are big leathery birds.

as horripilation but more commonly as getting goose bumps. In furry mammals, it adds a useful layer of insulating air between the hair and the skin, but in humans it has absolutely no physiological benefit and merely reminds us how comparatively bald we are. Horripilation also makes mammalian hair stand up (to make animals look bigger and more ferocious), which is why we get goose bumps when we are frightened or on edge, but of course that doesn't work very well for humans either.

The eyeless tick climbs onto a grass stem to await the smell of butyric acid emanating from mammalian skin. Since experiments have shown that this arachnid can go for eighteen years without food, the tick has ample time to meet a mammal, drop onto her victim, and gorge herself on warm blood. Afterward she is ready to lay her eggs and die.

Neuroscience has discovered that a key part of the brain that processes emotion is the "mammalian brain" or limbic system that we share with other mammals, though not with reptiles and lower life-forms. The warm, emotional bond between a dog and its owner, for example, transcends species. In contrast, any bond between a snake and its owner will be strictly one-way.

All the explanations proposed seem to be only partly satisfactory. They range from massive climatic change to mammalian predation to the extinction of a plant with apparent laxative properties, in which case the dinosaurs died of constipation.

Selfishness is also written on our hearts. This is our mammalian conflict - what to give to others, and what to keep for yourself.

The implication is that there are two pathways from the eyes to the brain: one for conscious vision and the other for circadian entrainment. This hypothesis is consistent with the known anatomy of the mammalian brain; the neural hotline to the pacemaker is separate from the brain's visual pathways.

Human insulin differs from other mammalian types by having a different C-terminal amino acid on the B chain. The immunological difference between beef insulin and human insulin, which is presumably responsible for the antigenicity of the former in some human beings, is thus limited to very a small portion of the whole molecule.

Mammalian cells of all types disgorge prostaglandins at the slightest provocation, but the tissue content of prostaglandins is very low compared with the release.