Language Experiment

Part 1: 
A.This part of the experiment was actually easier than I expected it to be. Obviously it was more difficult than just speaking with each other, but it is surprisingly easy to communicate using your body.
B. The other people did have to change the way that they talked, but only to make it easier for me to answer them. It was hard to reply to an answer that didn't have a simple answer. It ended up being a lot of yes or no questions when they were directed towards me, or at least rephrasing of questions.
C. I think that the culture with a symbolic or spoken language can more easily communicate complex ideas as long as the other culture could understand what they were saying. If they couldn't, and the speaking culture couldn't communicate with their body, then there would be almost no way for them to relay information to the other culture. So if this were the case and the non speaking culture couldn't understand the speaking one, then the non speaking culture would have an advantage because body language is more or less the same in any culture. The speaking culture might find the other one primitive and maybe stupid because they would feel like they have to simplify everything to get easy responses from them. Obviously deaf people can't communicate with others the way most people do by talking, so in order to communicate with them we use sign language or write what we want to say. Blind people are the opposite. They can't see our sign language or read what we write, so we can talk to them, and they have braille that they can feel to read. One very special example of somebody who has special needs when communicating would be Helen Keller. She could not see or hear so she had to learn to communicate in a very special way. She would feel something and then have somebody move their hand into the sign that it represented with her hand.

Part 2: 
A. I was sort of able to last the full 15 minutes of this part of the experiment. I say sort of because everybody kept laughing at me and then I would start to laugh, so that made it difficult, but we continued to try after we calmed down every time.
B. The people that I had my conversation with were affected quite a bit. Not that it was overly difficult to communicate (unless I was being sarcastic, then they had no idea), but it was just hard not to use body language or facial expressions or even different tones. Not speaking isn't that hard because you have to think in order to speak, but we move our hands and make faces and change our tone out of instinct when we talk, so you have to really focus on doing that when trying to talk and it can be distracting.
C. This experiment shows that non speech communication is very important because things can be completely misunderstood when you don't notice how a person acts when they talk. If somebody rolls their eyes when they say something, then you can assume that they are probably being sarcastic, but if they have no facial expression or intonation changes you would probably think that they are being serious.
D. Obviously, blind people can't read body language, although they can still hear changes in people's voice, so they may have some trouble understanding people all of the time, but not as much as if they couldn't hear the voice changes either. Reading body language can be useful in many situations. As an adaptation, it could help people and animals to survive. If we are in a situation where somebody is planning to attack you, they are likely angry and will usually show this through body language. They will have a menacing posture and may talk to you with an angry tone. If you notice these things then you could have a better chance of diffusing the situation or leaving before anything happens. The same goes for animals, if an animal sees a predator, it should be able to tell by the predator's body language if it is about to attack or not. If it notices body language that would suggest that it is about to attack, then the animal could run or use its natural defense.I can't think of any situation where it would be advantageous not to be able to read body language. It is an important tool that we all use if we can.

Piltdown Hoax

1. The Piltdown hoax was the forgery of fossils said to be of the 'missing link' between modern humans and our ancestors. The bones are said to have been collected by Charles Dawson in 1912 in Piltdown, East Sussex, England. It appeared to show that humans developed large brains before the ability to walk upright because it appeared to be over one million years old and had the same basic shape as a modern human skull and the same type of teeth, though it had a jaw similar to a gorilla's. This was the view of a few scientists at the time including Arthur Keith, an anatomist, and it seemed to be proof that they were correct although we now know that this is false due to other finds. In 1953 it was proven that the Piltdown finds had been a hoax when Time Magazine published evidence found by  Kenneth Page Oakley, Sir Wilfrid Edward Le Gros Clark, and Joseph Weiner proving that the Piltdown Man was a forgery. It was shown that the Piltdown Man skull actually consisted of a medieval human skull, a 500-year old orangutan lower jaw, and chimpanzee teeth that had been filed to look more like human teeth. After these discoveries it was shown by analyzing Dawson's other 'finds' that many of them were also fakes.

2. One human fault shown in this hoax is greed. These findings made Dawson look extremely credible as a scientist and made it seem as if he had found a huge misstep in the history of evolution and wanted to be praised for it. When it was found that the findings were fake, it made supporters of science look less credible and this was used as an argument against science.

3. One piece of new technology that helped scientists find the truth behind this is the fluorine absorption test, a new type of dating technology at the time.

4. I suppose it is possible to take the human factor out of science by not doing anymore experiments or attempting to make discoveries but this would not be a good idea. if we did this then  scientific progress would go at an incredibly slow pace because we would be forced to observe these things as they occurred in nature, which sometimes is impossible. I would not want to remove the human factor from science. 

5. This event shows that it is never wise to take anything at face value without some other form of recognition. It is always wise to look to outside sources and to investigate to assure that what you are seeing is fact.

Primates

 A. Lemurs live on the island of Madagascar. Madagascar has an extremely varying environment. There are rainforests on the east side of the island and there are arid lands on the west side. The island also goes through long floods and droughts in a sort of cycle.

B. Lemurs are adept at leaping and are generally quadrupedal . They have been known to leap up to 10 meters in the air onto a tree trunk and then leap from tree to tree while ascending rapidly.

C. The lemurs likely evolved with this trait because of the land that they live in. There are many predators on the ground that could easily kill a lemur if it were not able to get into the trees. But there are still predators that can also climb trees rather quickly, therefore it is necessary to their survival that the lemurs be able to go from tree to tree rapidly. This is their best advantage in the rainforest against predators, and is also a way for them to reach food high up in the trees.

A. Spider monkeys live in tropical rainforests in Central and South America. They tend to stick to the upper canopies of the trees. 

B. Spider monkeys for the most part, swing from tree to tree using their long limbs and tail (suspensory). If they are on the ground they can walk upright on two feet or on all fours, but they tend to walk on all fours unless carrying something (quadrupedal). 

C. Spider monkeys live in trees, so obviously they have evolved to be able to quickly move between the trees by swinging. They have disproportionately long arms and legs to help them swing and a long tail to help with balance and also used for swinging. The trees that they live in are so thick and close together that there is little reason for these monkeys to go on the ground at all.

A. Baboons are terrestrial animals, meaning that they live on the ground. They live in savannas, forests, and hills of Africa. 

B. Baboons run on all fours(quadrupedal). They have short tails due to the fact that they don't live in trees. They also have large hind legs  that help them to run more quickly on the ground. 

C. The environment that the baboon lives in very likely shaped its evolutionary growth. There is no need for a long tail due to the lack of trees to climb in the hills and savannas. Because of this though, they need some other advantage to help them survive. That is why they have such large legs. It helps them to run quickly on the ground through their environment.

A. Gibbons live in the tropical rainforests of Asia. They mostly live in the upper layers of the trees.

B. Gibbons swing (suspensory) between branches in order to move through the trees. The wrist joint of a gibbon is very similar to a ball and socket type joint. This relieves much stress on the shoulder joint and reduces the amount of energy spent by the arms and torso of the animal. It can swing at distances up to 15 meters and hit speeds of 34 mph while doing so. If they have to walk, they do so on all fours (quadrupedal).

C. The ball and socket-like joint in the wrist of the gibbon may have been an adaptation to its environment. It allows them to travel extremely fast through the trees that they live in and makes them one of the most elusive animals in the forests.

A. Chimpanzees live in Central and West African forests and savannas, but tend not to go very far away from the forest. 

B. Chimps usually walk on all fours using the knuckles of the hands for support (quadrupedal). They have long arms which they can use for climbing and swinging (brachiating). Chimps can also walk upright if they are carrying something in their arms (bipedal). 

C. The long arms and strong fingers used for climbing and walking are likely adaptations that chimps have made due to their environment. They have adapted to move in multiple ways because they live in an environment that makes several modes of transportation viable and sometimes necessary.



The environments that these five primates live in definitely seem to have shaped the way they have evolved. They have all been forced to adapt in different ways giving them all different behaviors and physical abilities and traits that are suitable for each environment that they live in.

Analogy/Homology

Two animals that share a homologous trait are humans and bats. The bones that make up a humans fingers and the wings of a bat are inherited from a common ancestor. Both are vertebrates, whose oldest ancestors were fish, but from a later point are descended from amphibians and reptiles which both had fingers. Humans obviously use their fingers to handle and hold things while the same bones in a bat are used to help the bat fly. Although they do not share the same purpose, they were inherited from the same ancestors.

Birds and insects both have wings, but that does not mean that they were inherited from a common ancestor. When comparing the wings of birds and insects, you will actually find more differences than you will similarities. Birds have bones in their wings while insects do not. Birds have one set of wings while insects have two. The wings of a bird are covered with feathers while the wings of an insect are covered with scales. One of the few similarities between them is that they are used to help with flying. The birds and insects evolved with wings because of a need for flight not because they are both descended from a common ancestor.

Protein Synthesis

ATACCAAGTGAGCTGCAGTCAAGTTAGCACCTGGATCT

Thomas Malthus: Influencing Darwin

Thomas Malthus

So for our first blog post, after looking at the five choices of influences on Charles Darwin's thoughts towards evolution, I thought that the most influential of them was Thomas Malthus. The first thing I looked at about him was a quote by Charles Darwin that goes, "In October 1838, that is, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic inquiry, I happened to read for amusement Malthus on Population, and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on from long- continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The results of this would be the formation of a new species. Here, then I had at last got a theory by which to work"(http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/malthus.html). Darwin used Malthus' book to get his first solid theory to work with. Darwin built on Malthus' thoughts on overpopulation in nature in that instead of just stating that famine and poverty due to overpopulation were God's way of keeping men from being lazy, he gave a natural reason for famine in a species. If there are too many of a species in an area that is not capable of supporting that large of a population then many of that species will die. It forms a competitive environment for all of the resources. Based on that, the bullet points from the assignment description that relate the two men's ideas best would be: Resources are limited and Organisms with better access to resources will be more successful in their reproductive efforts.

I don't think that Darwin could have formed his theory of natural selection as well as he did without Malthus' research. Like Darwin said in the quote above, he got his theory from reading Population. I don't think that Darwin cared much about the attitude of the church when publishing his book. Obviously it had at least a small influence on him, but I think that he really wanted to get his ideas out there in part to dispel the thought that each species had been meticulously created by some higher being rather than just nature taking its course.