Science in the news?
So....I definitely want to continue the discussion of what I could be when I grow up that has started in the comments section of the previous post, but I also have an idea for a new post and I wanted to know what you thought before I started.Would you be interested or bored to tears if I wrote about my opinion or explained science articles that are getting a lot of press? (I'm specifically referring to the human-chimpanzee hybrid ....story right now, but I was thisclose to doing one last week too.) I'm in the process of reading the human-chimp journal article right now so I could write something later today (or probably tonight because I want to look something up in a college textbook that is at my apartment.)
(Important note for any of you who try to read the paper yourself: It is NOT in today's issue of Nature as reported by the Boston Globe...it is an Advance Online Publication...available on the Nature website but in a different section.)
posted by Immunegirl @ 11:07 AM
14 Comments:
Are chimpanzees a step up or down from sheep?
Also, can you really declare things two seperate species if they can interbreed and yeild fertile offspring (without Star Trek-esque genetic engineering)?
Write about whatever you want, Ig. If people aren't interested, they don't have to read it.
*smooch*
I'll get to writing a real post about this later (thanks Jen :) Smooch), but an answer for Ben:
The simple definition of different species is inability to interbreed and yield fertile offspring, as you say. In a couple of my evolution classes in college we talked about how that wasn't really true or wasn't necessarily true (and how it kind of comes down to semantics.) As I remember it, there are some other ways that different species can be defined and each is used in a particular type of speciation, but that is exactly what I was referring to above when I said I needed to look something up before I wrote a longer post on it. :)
Was it a male monkey or a female monkey?
Well, I know a lot more guys that could be confused for monkeys than women that could be confused for monkeys.
You want to write about science?
But science is soooooooo boring....
I'm almost at the end of the paper (after many stops and starts) and I can't believe I'm saying this, but I have a real answer for Mike:
They say it had to be a woman and a male chimp based on X chromosome patterns.
I've got to escape
From the planet of the apes
Before it explodes.
I agree with Jen. It's your blog and if you want to write about it, you should go for it! A blog is actually a good place to compile your toughts about what interests you.
I'd be interested. You can be like the new Jean M Auel.
You know in India where there are a number of temples with resident sacred monkeys, menstruating women are sometimes attacked by aggressive male monkeys. (Attacks are rare but memorable, so people talk & joke about them.) I can totally see male chimpanzee/human female encounters like this if these two "branches" of the same species shared a territory.
I should have said that the attacks are always foiled when the woman is aided by other people, and she is also protected from penetration by her clothing which the monkeys don't understand. But they are clearly sexual attacks. Attacks are always on small women. At least that's the story people will tell. Maybe the stories are some kind of Indian urban legend, but I don't think so.
Sorry.
Swami <--- killed another perfectly good discussion. You're talking about genetics and I jump in with the hot monkey sex stuff. You'd think I'd know better by now.
Swami <--- off to visit MM.
No worries Swami...you didn't kill the discussion, it is just that I've been in tissue culture and unable to respond.
I think your comments are really interesting and it brings into even clearer focus how "hybridization" could occur.
As for the monkey sex part, I would say that I was all about the wild monkey sex, but in this discussion that probably sounds bad, doesn't it? ;) So, I'll just say that such discussions are not at all out of place. :)
there's never enough time for monkey sex.
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