Quotes About Biology

The actual organization of behavior goes on the level of the individual nerve cells and their connections, and we have a hundred billion nerve cells, probably a hundred trillion connections. It's just mind-boggling to think of all the different ways in which they're arranged in a baby's head.

Kissing could have begun as a way of sniffing out who's who. From a whiff to a kiss was just a short trip across the face.

If poly A is added to poly U, to form a double or triple helix, the combination is inactive.

A comparison between the triplets tentatively deduced by these methods with the changes in amino acid sequence produced by mutation shows a fair measure of agreement.

Time and time again, truly basic studies of simple experimental organisms have proved directly relevant to human biology and human disease. An investment in such basic studies is an effective investment indeed.

The part we play is not as we want it, but as we are made-with the genitals God gave us.

How you eat tells your genes what type of body you want to have later.

When subjects go to sleep later in their body temperature cycles, they actually sleep less, even though they have been awake longer.

There are various ideas about the mechanism of synchronization, but the best guess is that it has something to do with pheromones: unidentified, odorless chemicals that somehow convey a synchronizing signal.

Every single cell in the human body replaces itself over a period of seven years. That means there's not even the smallest part of you now that was part of you seven years ago. Everything is changing.

mindset impacts emotion, which alters biology, which increases performance. Thus, it seemed, by tinkering with mindset—using everything from physical to psychological to pharmacological interventions—one could significantly enhance performance.

Just as blueprints don't necessarily specify blue buildings, selfish genes don't necessarily specify selfish organisms. As we shall see, sometimes the most selfish thing a gene can do is build a selfless brain. Genes are a play within a play, not the interior monologue of the players.

The supposedly immaterial soul, we now know, can be bisected with a knife, altered by chemicals, started or stopped by electricity, and extinguished by a sharp blow or by insufficient oxygen.

Disgust is intuitive microbiology

This book intends to make the case for explanation by reduction to physics and mechanical engineering, to this alternative realm of explanation: not to alternative explanations but to explanations of phenomena with which the biologist's classical chemical reductionism just doesn't help. As we'll see, this realm not only explains different phenomena but provides information that makes wonderfully satisfying intuitive sense.

My theory of evolution is that Darwin was adopted.

There is no monopoly of common sense On either side of the political fence We share the same biology Regardless of ideology Believe me when I say to you I hope the Russians love their children too [...] There's no such thing as a winnable war It's a lie we don't believe anymore ..." ( The Russians )

From what they have learnt so far, they reckon that some 20–30 per cent of our natural lifespan is accounted for by our genetic heritage, while environmental influences account for the rest.

Once our long bones have finished growing (usually by around the age of fifteen or sixteen in girls and eighteen or nineteen in boys), we will have reached the maximum height we are ever going to be.

believe it or not, our height varies according to the time of day: we are on average half an inch shorter by the time we go to bed than we were when we got up. We lose most of that height within three hours of rising, as our cartilages settle and compress and decrease our joint spaces.

long ago gave up a number of beekeeping practices conceived with the notion of making bees do certain things that seemed good from a human standpoint but which usually involved radically disrupting the hive. Instead, I watch the bees more, try to understand what they are doing and then see if I can work in a way that will be in keeping with their biology and behavior. I try to create conditions that will make them happy, and then leave them alone as much as possible.

He stared at her. "How do chicks do that?" "We have uteruses- they give us magic color sense.

Both bonobos and common chimps are as close to humans as foxes are to dogs. I don't know about you, but that's closer than I feel to some of my human relatives.

Make Sperm Wars, Not Real Wars!