by Christine Kenneally BH | Jul 8, 2007 | Altruism, Chimpanzees, Infants
The latest research on altruism in apes may not be as surprising as the selfless rats in the previous post–because, of course, chimpanzees and humans are much more closely related–but it’s all good, solid evidence that sharing can be as sensible an...
by Christine Kenneally BH | Jul 8, 2007 | Altruism, Rats
Giving help to a stranger without expecting anything in return is supposed to be a problem for evolution–if this kind of altruism doesn’t help your family and it has no immediate reward, surely it costs the individual animal too much to bother? We know...
by Christine Kenneally BH | Jul 8, 2007 | Men, women & language
It’s been long believed that an uncontroversial difference between men and women is how much they talk: women say many more words in a day than men, and they do it by a huge margin. This nugget crops up all over the place, from gender studies to...
by Christine Kenneally BH | Jun 27, 2007 | ASPM, Genes, Microcephalin, Populations, Soul/Free Will
The New York Times Science section has an excellent evolution special this week. Of particular interest is Nicholas Wade’s article on the very recent evolution of human populations. There is more and more evidence that culture has shaped the human genome. Also...
by Christine Kenneally BH | Jun 27, 2007 | ASPM, Genes, Languages, Microcephalin, Populations, Tone
Two variants of the genes ASPM and Microcephalin may make it easier to learn tone languages. If you have the tone-versions, as do most speakers of Chinese (and other languages such as those found in South East Asia and sub-Saharan Africa), you may be more adept at...
