New Human Species Identified from Kenya Fossils
Exciting new fossils discovered east of Lake Turkana confirm that there were two additional species of our genus –Homo – living alongside our direct human ancestral species, Homo erectus, almost two million years ago.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2012/08/new-human-species-identified-kenya-fossils
What do you smell like? I mean, really smell like? And WHY do you smell like you smell like?
The natural odors of most animals, besides those like skunk musk, are actually a result of bacteria digesting certain secretions and releasing tell-tale scent compounds. When dogs smell each others’ rear ends, they aren’t really smelling each other (so to speak), they are smelling the characteristic odor products.
But why? The obvious reason is that it provides an odorous fingerprint, a tell-tale tail-tell. Dogs, primates and many other animals smell each other to identify strangers from those they know. Do humans do it? We evolved off of all fours long ago, so having scent glands “down below” wouldn’t do us much good, unless you wanted to bend over in the street to say hello. But we do have quite a garden of smells going on up above, in our armpits and chests.
It turns out that people can be identified by their chest and armpit bacterial odors using an “electronic nose”. It also turns out that we think people with more diverse immune genes smell better than those who are genetically closer to us, a sign that we use our nose to pursue genetic diversity. And most women can tell you some tale of sensitivity to smells when pregnant or ovulating. Some research even indicates that we can smell sick people! Is this why we nuzzle our noses into the napes of necks when getting romantic? To test the smelly waters?
And what about our species’ proclivity toward perfume? Here’s what Rob Dunn theorizes:
Then there is a final piece to this story, the issue of subterfuge. Very early in our human history, we began to take advantage of smells produced elsewhere in nature to perfume our bodies. We think of perfume as lovely in moderation, but there is another way to think of perfume, as a way to cheat. When you apply deodorant or perfume, you are covering up the odors produced by your bacteria with an odor regarded as pleasant, at least to the conscious brain and perhaps, if the perfume and deodorant companies have done their jobs, to the subconscious too, which is important since that seems to be where the decisions are being made11. I’m not sure where this leaves us other than with the impression that nearly the entirety of modern humanity has figured out how to smell like a peacock. Beware both the wolf in sheep’s clothing and the Gonorrhea that smells like Old Spice.
For more, check out: Sick People Smell Bad: Why Dogs Sniff Dogs, Humans Sniff Humans, and Dogs Sometimes Sniff Humans
(via Scientific American)
Even in modern society, if we disregard the differences artificially created by a thousand social causes, such as upbringing, education, and economic and political standing - which differ not only among social strata but nearly from family to family - we will see that from the standpoint of intellectual abilities and moral strength the vast majority of individuals are either quite similar or at least balance each other out (since one who is weaker in a given respect nearly always makes up the difference by being equivalently stronger in another respect), with the result that it becomes impossible to say whether one individual from this mass rises much above or sinks much below another. The vast majority human individuals are not identical, but they are equivalent and hence equal.
Michael Bakunin (via johngaltsnipples)
(via liberationfrequency)
Source: ibbetson
Lab-made organ implanted for first time
(CNN) — For the first time, a patient has received a synthetic windpipe that was created in a lab with the patient’s own stem cells and without using human donor tissue, researchers said Thursday.
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