Hairless Apes

If chimps are our closest relative why aren’t we hairy like they are? The answer lies somewhere in the far distant past. Imagine how hot it must have been on the savannah after our ancestors left the safety of the trees to hunt for food. Homo Erectus did this almost 2...

Master Switches

Nestled comfortably within our DNA are a set of switches. Like the light switches you casually flip on and off in your home, they are responsible for making you who you are. And just like that one regulating switch which controls the current of electricity to your...

The Predictive Power of Evolution

We can make broad predictive strokes when it comes to how an organism will evolve. But that’s all we can do. What those changes will look like, if they happen at all, is beyond our power to know. Does this mean that theories about evolution are outside of the realm of...

The Strange Case of Richard Owen

Every good story needs a villain. And there has been quite a few in the history of evolution theory. History has not been kind to Richard Owen. But just like the story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Owen had his good side. Not that his good side cared about the proper...

Epigenetics

In 2005 biologist Michael Skinner witnessed something that shouldn’t have happened. His mice were exposed to a toxin. A toxin which caused the children of these mice to experience birth defects. This wasn’t the surprise since the mice could easily have been exposed...