Quotes About Biology

pace of genetic selection, recombination

Behavior isn't something someone "has." Rather, it emerges from the interaction of a person's biology, past experiences, and immediate context.

Hormones influencing the sensitivity of the person to environmental stimuli.

I think that people do things for a reason - that we have mental illness, that we have genetic wiring that can get triggered by certain environmental factors.

Birds are extremely valued as indicators of overall environmental health. If there's a problem in a wild bird population, it's indicative that something went wrong.

I had long ago stopped believing in promises. Biological imperatives, yes. Environmental factors, yes. Promises, no.

The likelihood that inborn differences are one contributor to social status does not mean that it is the only contributor.

Any living cell carries with it the experience of a billion years of experimentation by its ancestors.

Saliva has testosterone and estrogen. When you kiss, you're having a chemical experience.

My boarding school experience was the only thing I had strong enough feelings to write about for hundreds and hundreds of pages. I can still smell the formaldehyde of the fetal pigs in biology.

It is my belief, based partly on personal experience but partly also arrived at by looking around at others, that childhood lasts considerably longer in the males of our species than in the females.

As the number of unexplained, irreducibly complex biological systems increases, our confidence that Darwin's criterion of failure has been met skyrockets toward the maximum that science allows.

Experienced builders and performers can attract up to thirty-three females to fuck per season if they put on a good enough show, have built up enough good blue in their bower, and have the contrast with the yellow straw down right. Less experienced builders sometimes don't attract any females at all. Each female mates only once. She incubates the eggs alone.

If it squirms, it's biology. If it stinks, it's chemistry. If it doesn't work, it's physics. And if you can't understand it, it's mathamatics.

The more we appreciate from whence we came biologically, the better placed we will be to build up those cultural and environmental influences that help ameliorate the worst aspects of war.

For history and biology also show that even if we are a violent species, in which males have an inborn predisposition to engage in team aggression, the specific conditions of our environment, culture, economic well-being, and demographic structure can have dramatic impacts on how our most fundamental impulses are expressed.

The amount of DNA not coding for RNA, sometimes called junk DNA (a dangerous term for something one does not understand), is also much greater in eukaryotes.

Interestingly, a part of the cortisol secretion rhythm is related to the sleep/wake rhythm, and another part is coupled to the body temperature rhythm.

There's nothing like sharing menarche with a billion hermaphrodites. I think it was everyone's first time.

Obin: "it," not "he" or "she." Because they're hermaphrodites. That means male and female sex organs. Go ahead and have your giggle. I'll wait. Okay, done? Good.)

Some planets evolved genetic structures roughly similar to Earth's, incorporating some if not all the nucleotides involved in terrestrial genetics (perhaps not coincidentally, the intelligent species of these planets have been known to consume humans from time to time;

The skin was not skin at all, but bone. Ectoskeleton.

A dying organism is often observed to be capable of extraordinary endurance and strength. ... When any living organism is attacked, its whole function seems to aim toward reproduction.

Men, they were able to conjure it up immediately, that was one of their powers, that thunderous splashing as they stood lordly above the bowl. Everything about them was more direct, their insides weren't the maze women's were, for the pee to find its way through.