Quotes About Biology

In 1929, as a young man, British biologist J. D. Bernal wrote a book entitled "The World, The Flesh and the Devil" that Arthur C. Clarke called, "the most brilliant attempt at scientific prediction ever made.

Now, traveling about twice as far back again in Earth time, back to 542 million years ago, we encounter another sudden massive wave of extinction instigated by runaway biology: The Cambrian substrate revolution, when the texture and chemistry of the seafloor (at that time, the entire habitable surface of the planet) was rapidly remade by a spurt of biological innovation that caused both mass death and fantastic new evolutionary opportunity. This

Male Amazon river dolphins will even insert thier penises in each other's blowholes in the only known example of nasal sex.* *I refuse to make the obligatory "blowjob" joke here. Science writing is very serious business.

Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, arguably the greatest discovery in biology in the twentieth century, famously said, "If you want to understand function, study structure.

Our brains are comprised of around eighty billion neurons interconnected to form an enormous network involving approximately five hundred trillion connections called synapses.

Martin Hammer in Menzel's group had discovered a unique neuron, called VUMmx1, that responded to sucrose (a type of sugar) with electrical activity but not to an odor; however, after the odor was delivered, followed shortly by the sucrose reward, VUMmx1 would now respond to the odor.

What differences can we observe in the brains of men and women? Can we use those differences to test the hypothesis that the brains of gay men are more likely to be partly feminized and the brains of lesbians are more likely to be partly masculinized? In

These include a portion of the hypothalamus called INAH3, which is larger in straight men, and a bundle of fibers that connects one side of the brain to the other, called the anterior commissure, which is larger in straight women. While there have been some well-publicized reports suggesting that the size of the anterior commissure and INAH3 are more femalelike in gay men,17 there have yet to be clear, independent replications of these findings.18

It may be, for example, that one key difference between the brains of straight women and lesbians is the function of a particular protein, like a voltage-sensitive potassium channel, that influences the electrical behavior of certain neurons in a brain circuit that influences sexual and gender-typical behavior.

This process of error correction is so fundamental to our biology that distinct circuits of the brain appear to coordinate learning that results from error. One of these error correction pathways involves the cerebellum.3 The cerebellum receives electrical information from a part of the brain stem called the inferior olive when a sensory prediction error occurs. The cerebellum uses these error signals to predict and correct for errors that might occur in the future.

the sleeper shark can live to the age of four hundred years, because it exists in slow motion.

Note that having a large brain is biologically costly: the brain is an expensive organ to run, and large ones consume many precious calories (the human brain accounts for a whopping 20 percent of our energy expenditure).

Like it or not, war is distinctively human. Apart from the raiding behavior of chimpanzees and the so-called wars prosecuted by certain species of ant, there is nothing in nature that comes anywhere near approximating it.

It should be clear by now that we tend to think about races along the same lines as we think about species. Both races and species are presumed to be natural kinds defined by hidden essences passed down the "bloodline" from parents to their offspring. Both are scientifically vacuous but intuitively compelling.

Las mujeres que elegían a los hombres en parte por su fortaleza y habilidades físicas tenían más posibilidades de sobrevivir y reproducirse.

The language of God is not English or Latin; the language of God is cellular and molecular.

If no God, mankind is a set of bi-pedal carbon units of mostly water. And nothing else

What did turtles evolve from? Really, I want to know. And for God's sake, don't say lizards, because turtles are nothing like lizards. They could not be more different.

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

Are we biology or God or something higher? I know my heart beats and I listen to it. The beat is biology, but what is the song?

In God's eyes, walking on water is no more miraculous than the ability of hemoglobin to bond with oxygen inside a red blood corpuscle.

I disagree with those who argue that evolutionary biology and the existence of God are incompatible.

one of the good things about being a woman is that my level of testosterone poisoning is lower than most men's.

My first class is biology. I can't find it and get my first demerit for wandering the hall. It is 8:50 in the morning. Only 699 days and 7 class periods until graduation.