That or technologically advanced socities are pretty much destined to destroy themselves. I think it's a rational possibility that some sort of time weapon or other not yet understood technology makes self destruction a near certainty for technologically advanced societies. Also it's perfectly...
Natural selection is the process where naturally occurring selective pressures cause certain inheritable traits to be favored because these traits lead to quantitatively more offspring, or qualitatively more fit offspring. Natural selection doesn't require bad traits to be weeded out through...
We should be using humans as a starting point. An organism could be highly cognizant, able to process huge amounts of information, but it's all irrelevant from a fermi paradox/drake equation perspective if that organism doesn't have the ability to produce communication or transportation...
Aesthetics and morals have their place in the discusion. It's the main reason beautiful places and megafauna are usually overemphasized in these types of discussions. But again the issue is really all about the economy. Lots of money will be lost, effort wasted, and likely many famine deaths...
Bingo.
The predominant view, that agriculture lead to higher population densities doesn't fit the facts. Agriculture developed in areas where population density got so high (the river valleys) that agriculture became the only way to sustain the population. People were planting seeds and...
Interesting. I was not aware that there were conifers that did not have senescence (though I should have realized this due to the argument about the biggest and oldest "organism" rests on definitions, partly due to a specific pine forest of clones). By the way your first example of salamanders...
Ear lobes (attached, unatached), eye color (brown, pale - though the non brown colorations aren't so simple, but all are recessive to brown), Curling tongue.
We are at the technological level now where you can (with a decent, but not too absurd, amount of cash) set up a lab in your garage, do some research on the internet, and splice genes from phosphorescent algae into some other organism and make it glow. No kidding. So yes, you can insert genes...
I've always been curios about aging and sex. These two attributes seem to make no sense from an evolutionary perspective, at least in terms of raw numbers. I recently saw a science show that tracked some fish that could reproduce asexually and sexually, and that study pretty much showed that...
As stated above, there are a few slight changes in the brains of humans that consistently vary by sex (women have more neurons devoted to language, men more to spatial orientation). It's important to note that these deviations are based on averages, it does not mean that all women are better...