Category Archives: biology

biology, Darwin Eats Cake, evolution, evolutionary psychology, science, sex

On the nocturnal penile tumescence

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So, here’s the latest Darwin Eats Cake. Once again, Guillaume is gracing us with his adaptationist explanations. This time, he is answering a question from Bastian Greshake (@gedankenstuecke), champion of evolution, creative commons, and all sorts of other good stuff.

If you’re not familiar with Creative Commons, it is an alternative to traditional copyrights. It’s a great option if you’re committed to an open culture, where creations can be shared, but want to protect yourself against having your creations exploited.

For instance, all of the Darwin Eats Cake strips are published under a creative commons license explicitly stating that you are free to share them. You can e-mail them, copy them into your own blog, print them out, pretty much anything you want, just so long as you provide attribution. The only thing you can’t do is sell them.

Best URL for sharing: http://www.darwineatscake.com/?id=47
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Behavior, biology, Darwin Eats Cake, evolution, evolutionary psychology, genetics, science, sex

Why do we make odd faces when we orgasm? A romance in three parts

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So, Guillaume’s Mailbag has continued on its mission to provide an adaptive explanation for every existing trait. The most recent trait Guillaume has been tackling was submitted by John Wilkins, who asked, “Why do we make odd faces when we orgasm?”

In case you missed when I’ve plugged him before, JoHn Wilkins (no recent relation) is a philosopher of science in Australia. His most recent book is Species: A History of the Idea, and he runs an excellent blog called Evolving Thoughts. He recently concluded an excellent series of posts on “Atheism, agnosticism and theism” in which he discusses, among other things, what it means to have a belief. You can find the start of that series here.

But back to the face of orgasm. Guillaume took three full strips to answer this one, so I’ve waited until he was done to post them here. I think I’ve finally figured out how to make these full-page versions more readable on the blog, but it involved lowering the resolution of the JPEG, so, for higher-res versions of these three comics, head on over to Darwin Eats Cake. The first of the series of three can be found here.

Best URL for sharing: http://www.darwineatscake.com/?id=44
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Best URL for sharing: http://www.darwineatscake.com/?id=45
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Best URL for sharing: http://www.darwineatscake.com/?id=46
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For those who are interested, a couple of vole and oxytocin citations are provided below to get you started. The vole literature is actually quite extensive and all interesting. I’ve included a relatively recent paper, which will contain citations to a lot of the other work. No peer-reviewed publications are yet available on the eating and mating habits of Ursus philorgasmii.

Ross HE, Cole CD, Smith Y, Neumann ID, Landgraf R, Murphy AZ, & Young LJ (2009). Characterization of the oxytocin system regulating affiliative behavior in female prairie voles. Neuroscience, 162 (4), 892-903 PMID: 19482070

Carmichael MS, Warburton VL, Dixen J, & Davidson JM (1994). Relationships among cardiovascular, muscular, and oxytocin responses during human sexual activity. Archives of sexual behavior, 23 (1), 59-79 PMID: 8135652

Although at least one study suggests that, in men, prolactin is actually more strongly correlated with orgasm than oxytocin is:

Krüger TH, Haake P, Chereath D, Knapp W, Janssen OE, Exton MS, Schedlowski M, & Hartmann U (2003). Specificity of the neuroendocrine response to orgasm during sexual arousal in men. The Journal of endocrinology, 177 (1), 57-64 PMID: 12697037

biology, culture, Darwin Eats Cake, evolution, evolutionary psychology, music, science, video

Guillaume explains the origins of armpit hair, with bonus items

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So, Guillaume has answered his second letter for Guillaume’s Mailbag. As usual, this will be much more readable at the Darwin Eats Cake site:

Best URL for sharing: http://www.darwineatscake.com/?id=43
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Hat-tips go to Alejandro Weinstein for his question, and to Lizzie Foley, for consulting with Guillaume on the answer.

Guillaume also wanted to point out that if armpit hair were not adaptive, then why would Kevin Grennan have included it in this artificial armpit?

The robotic armpit releases “Japanese standard artificial sweat,” which is apparently a thing. Image via CNET.

We leave you now with this music video, which, if Pop Up Video is to be believed, was referred to by its director as a “celebration of the armpit.” Enjoy.

biology, culture, evolution, Flying Spaghetti Monster, religion, science

An advance for Pastafarian rights

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So, Pastafarianism, the faith of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, is unquestionably the awesomest line of defense against intelligent design and the slippery slope to theocracy.

Created by Oregon State Physics grad student Brian Henderson in 2005 to protest Kansas’s decision to teach intelligent design in schools, the Flying Spaghetti Monster has spread around the world. If you’re not familiar, the basic idea is this: if you’re going to teach intelligent design in schools based on the Christian Bible, you have to give equal time to other religions, including one that believes that in a supernatural creator that looks like this:

Well, according to the BBC, atheist Niko Alm told Austrian authorities that he is a devout Pastafarian, and that his religion requires him to wear a spaghetti strainer on his head, including in his drivers license photo. It took three years, and Alm was required to undergo a medical interview to determine that he was psychologically fit to drive, but his request was finally honored:

FSM FTW!

biology, Darwin Eats Cake, evolution, evolutionary psychology, science

Guillaume’s Mailbag: Why do we close our eyes when we sneeze?

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So, as always, these full-page ones are hard to read on the blog. For a better image, go here.

Best URL for sharing: http://www.darwineatscake.com/?id=42
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Thanks to Willemien Kets and Elais Kadeem Player, a.k.a. crashgroove for their excellent questions.

biology, Darwin Eats Cake, evolution, evolutionary psychology, science

Guillaume’s Mailbag

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So,

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I’ve set up Guillaume’s e-mail: guillaume@darwineatscake.com now, and Guillaume confirms that he received the test message that my wife sent to him. You can also reach Dev, Eleonora, Brooke, Todd, iBall, Douchebert, Drillbit, and Tacey.

I can’t promise how quickly or appropriately any of them will respond, as some are much more responsible than others.

biology, Darwin Eats Cake, evolution, science

Wrinkly fingers for gripping?

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So, here’s the latest in adaptationism:

Best URL for sharing: http://www.darwineatscake.com/?id=39
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Hat-tip to Justin Blumenstiel, who is the king of transposable elements, which I think means that every time one of them transposes, they have to tithe to him.

Changizi M, Weber R, Kotecha R, & Palazzo J (2011). Are Wet-Induced Wrinkled Fingers Primate Rain Treads? Brain, behavior and evolution PMID: 21701145

biology, evolution, science, video

Happy Belated Father’s Day

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So, Farther’s day was almost a week ago, but I wanted to share this video, which illustrates all the good-timey ho-down fun that led to your father becoming your father.

Did I just call your mom a ho?  It sure seems like it, doesn’t it?

If you want to try this (or something like it) at home, check out the ideas in this article:

Joseph P. Chinnici,, Joyce W. Yue,, & Kieron M. Torres (2004). Students as “Human Chromosomes” in Role-Playing Mitosis & Meiosis The American Biology Teacher, 66 (1), 35-39

biology, culture, science

Happy 99th Birthday, Alan Turing

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So, today (June 23, 2011) marks the 99th anniversary of the birth of Alan Turing, British supergenius who played a critical role in winning World War II and is one of the founding fathers of computer science.

He was also gay, which was illegal Britain at the time. In 1952 he was prosecuted under the same law that had sent Oscar Wilde to gaol. He chose to undergo chemical castration (in the form of treatment with feminizing hormones) as an alternative to prison.

In 1954 he committed suicide in dramatic fashion. He died of cyanide poisoning, and was found lying in his bed with a half-eaten apple beside him. The speculation is that he had laced the apple with cyanide and was reenacting the apple scene from Snow White.

When Alan Turing was found on June 8, 1954, he had been dead for one day, and he looked exactly like this. Snow White by *VinRoc on deviantART

Turing’s earliest major contribution was the hypothetical Turing machine, which consisted of a very long piece of tape and a set of rules for manipulating the symbols on that tape. Turing showed that such a machine was, in principle, capable of performing any mathematical computation that can be represented as an algorithm. The Universal Turing Machine (a Turing machine capable of simulating any other Turing machine) provided a sort of proof-of-principle for the idea of general-purpose computers, and the tape-and-manipulator structure of the Turing machine is often cited as the prototype of the separation-of-hardware-and-software structure that pervades our computer lives today.

A Turing machine consists of a tape with symbols on it and a machine with a set of rules for reading and manipulating those symbols. And a bell.

During World War II, Turing worked as a cryptanalyst and made major contributions to cracking the “Enigma” codes used by the German military. The success of Turing and his colleagues throughout the war gave the Allies a critical advantage, particularly during the early parts of the war, when the Germans had a significant military advantage.

After World War II, he introduced what we now call the “Turing test” for artificial intelligence. The idea is that a computer can be said to have achieved genuine intelligence if a human having a conversation with it could not tell that it was a computer. For the next forty-some years, this was considered to be the gold standard for the demonstration of human intelligence. Then came a flood of reality television, which demonstrated that many humans would not actually pass it.

During the last few years of his life, Turing turned his attention to certain problems in mathematical biology, including the curious fact that many plants seem to grow in patterns governed by the Fibonacci sequence. The whole phyto-Fibonacci thing is a weird and interesting phenomenon that will get its own dedicated post sometime soon.

In the meantime, happy birthday Alan Turing, and RIP.

Turing, A. M. (1950). Computing Machinery and Intelligence Mind, 59 (236), 433-460