"Known as the enteric nervous system, these neurons are commonly referred to as our 'second brain', but a new study from Australia suggests these neurons may actually be the very 'first brain' that our mammalian ancestors evolved."
Many years ago, on another platform, someone said that humans are digestive tracts that eventually evolved nervous systems and brains, and not the other way around.
And that has forever changed how I think about being human.
"The insect world is full of species of parasitic wasps that spend their infancy eating other insects alive. And for reasons that scientists don’t fully understand, they have repeatedly adopted and tamed wild, disease-causing viruses and turned them into biological weapons. Half a dozen examples already are described, and new research hints at many more."
Not sure, but feels like one thing about genes that is generally not popular knowledge is that it is all about interacting chemical gradients over time. So uhh if trying an analogy here… more like building sounds with a synth than blueprints of a building. Maybe someone actually expert in this has a better popularization? #genetics#biology
American geneticist Nettie Stevens died #OTD in 1912.
In 1905, Stevens published a pivotal paper detailing her observations on the mealworm beetle, Tenebrio molitor. She identified that male mealworms had a pair of unequal-sized chromosomes, while females had two X chromosomes. This discovery supported the theory that sex is determined by specific chromosomes, a significant advancement in the field of genetics.
Tip of a butterfly tongue. Dr. Stephen S. Nagy. Montana, USA. 750x.
Butterflies have chemoreceptors, or nerve cells that open onto the surface of their exoskeleton & react to the presence of different chemicals. #butterflies#biology#science#photography#nature#wildlife
Live water mount of Hydra viridissima (freshwater cnidarian) capturing Daphnia pulex (freshwater crustacean). Dr. Stephen Lowry. University of Ulster. Darkfield.
Magnification
10x #biology#science#microscopic#ecology#photography#nature
Hi, folks! I've got a set of nano-reviews up at Nerds of a Feather!
Live Long and Evolve: A non-fiction book by an evolutionary biologist about what life on other planets might look like, charmingly interwoven with relevant Star Trek lore.
The Extractionist: a very Cyber futurist heisty type book, which I found well constructed but somehow dull
THe Frame-Up_Magical art thieves. Perfectly fine, but not special.
A forest in Utah made of a single tree known as Pando has 47,000 stems and has amassed 6,000 metric tons of life in its thousands of years on Earth. It’s the largest living organism on the planet in terms of mass. Naturally, something that large and old has something to say, and recordings released this year let us “hear” it like never before. More from Science Alert: https://flip.it/PSwxIA #Science#Biology#Trees#Horticulture#Utah#Forest
We totally randomly met two #bicycle riders this morning near our home, apparently they're traveling around #Greece & #Albania with bicycles. They are a #German & #Italian couple. We invited them at my mom's home and we all had lunch together. Apparently they are #PhD candidates in #Austria, one in #chemistry and the other one in #biology. Very interesting young people. It was a good day today.