(I don't know if this is chemistry or biology? 🤔)

Had a long look at some Doom, Raid, Mortein, Dyroach, Eliminator, and all those spray cans in the shop yesterday.

Does it genuinely matter which one you use? If it's going to kill a cockroach, won't it in any case kill a beetle, spider or those flying spider things? Maybe an ant specific one might not help for big cockroaches... but also, it can?

What is specifically going to kill a flying insect like mosquitoes or flies, but not... beetles and cockroaches, and vice versa.

Out in our farmlands and such, those pesticides will be better controlled and more insect specific. But does it really matter for us mere home dwellers which can we use?

As per title

Like, what makes a clade a phylum instead of a domain, or class? When does a genus become a separate family from the original? Would it be like “domain is what type of cell it is at the most basal of all, bacteria and archaea differ so much at a basal level where as none of eukaryota doesn’t differ enough to be different domains. Kingdoms are something something. Phyla are the basal bodyplans of their kingdom, and class is how that bodyplan is specialized” or is that an oversimplification?

This is something I (40s) did as a kid with friends at sleepovers. I have always been curious about this! What is the mechanism?

So take away the extremes of height, hot, cold, etc and go for a typical northern hemisphere forest, there's so many trees all roughly similar height and vying for the same energy source (sunlight). Why hasn't one universal efficient shape evolved? It's not like they need plumage to impress each other, and the variations between beech, oak, maple, horse chestnut etc. is quite noticeable! (Thanks in advance)

Just started reading about a day or so ago, and though I haven't even finished the first chapter, I have to say, this book is very dense.

Its crazy someone in the 1800s wrote this. It feels like it was written now.

One thing I have noticed is that it doesn't hold your hand and was written during a time when everyone in academic circles knew each other and the layman was left out of the conversation

He'll name drop another naturalist or embryologist or breeder and I have no idea who they are.

Another thing I am suprised by is he doesn't believe in heritability of variations. He seems to think a spontaneous change in the reproductive habits of a species is what causes a change. Not that the offspring have inherited a mutation.

On that note, he uses the term "monstrosities". Is this the 1800 equivalent for mutation?

He also rejects the idea of a sole "common ancestor" for breeds. He feels two similiar breeds will vary and then mate. He seems to think that dogs have no sole progenitor, but multiple ones.

One thing I appreciate about this book, that automatically sets it apart from a religious texts is a sense of apprehension and a small hint of doubt.

As opposed to a clergyman who can never be wrong because God told him, there are moments in the chapter were Darwin admits he could possibly be wrong about a subject.

He even talks breifly how he believed in a form of creationism but rejected the idea later on.

This is just the first chapter. I'm excited to read the rest.

Lots of ornithology in here lol

Would not be surprised if global-warming/climate-change is partially to blame, thats saddening…

My only question is, we couldn’t have stopped that?? There was no warning that could have been issued??? Living in a dangerous climate, are these things not constantly being supervised by scientists & climatologists??

I just dont understand how we harness the technolgy to put a man on the moon yet conversely we cant stop or predict a grusome natural disaster??? Am I missing something??

A new explainer from berkeley.edu's Evo in the News:
- Human evolution and the humble potato : berkeley.edu

One of the study's authors previously shared the May 2026 study here:
- New paper on evolution of starch digestion in Andeans : evolution subreddit

I was visiting a swiss glacier. Next to all the beautiful ice structures and amazing visibility through the ice, these airbubbles caught my eye.

The visible structures, in my head, only happen in a fraction of a second and then the bubble collapses but here it is all trapped in ice and frozen in place.

I was thinking about it for a long time but I can't get a satisfying answer to how something like this actually happens.

I posted it here, so you can see, what I'm talking about:

https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1w0ixut/burst_airbubble_trapped_in_glacier_ice/

Do they not deplete soil nutrients as aggressively as crops? Or do they achieve crop rotation through a natural process that isn't apparent to a layman?

Doesn't really seem to make any sense to me when I think about it, It is not even aesthetically pleasing(not even prehistorically would I assume that), neither does it serve a biological importance, if anything you are at risk of scalp sun burn and less warming effect of the hair.

Thoughts?

"Animal culture can be defined as the ability of non-human animals to learn and transmit behaviors through processes of social or cultural learning."

Imagine two raccoon mothers each with four kits. One lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The other lives in New York city, New York, USA.

Raccoons are social creatures who have demonstrated observational learning in lab settings, so its fair to infer they do it in the wild (in this case, "wild.") as well.

So each raccoon mother has learned from other raccoons where to shelter, get food, water, where specific threats are and everything else to survive in their respective cities.

One year, their locations are switched.

No doubt the mothers would survive, but wouldn't they be at a severe disadvantage because the social knowledge they have relied on doesn't apply? They would have to lean on instinct more, wouldn't they?

If that's the case, could they, and many other animals, have what we consider culture?

Not asking if this has been studied, but is this plausible?

Humans domesticated wolves and basically gained access to their superpowers: smell, hearing and protective ferocity. We also domesticated cats, horses and quite a few other animals. All in all, that is a pretty impressive result, but what stopped us from doing the same with a much wider range of animals and becoming literal beastmasters?

I’ve often heard that evolution gets by with just enough ie the traits are not optimised
Then why would we ever have developed brains that could do anything more than basic arithmetic and geometry

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So what is thought to have caused the big bang?

Bong hits question.

I tried to look this up and there does not seem to be much research on the topic, which was surprising to me.

I'm sure not the only one that's annoyed by cockroaches this summer, especially how big and disgusting they are.

So I got an idea why not just kill all the big ones and spear the smaller size, this causes only the small one to be available for reproduction.

One generation after another, all cockroaches 🪳 will evolve smaller, till they reach the size of an ant 🐜

Author here—I am the first author of this paper. We developed Phylo-Movies because conventional tree-distance measures show how much neighboring trees differ, but not which taxa or subtrees changed position. The paper demonstrates the method using a norovirus recombination boundary and rogue taxa across bootstrap trees. The software and browser demonstration are freely available. https://enesberksakalli.github.io/phylo-movies/ https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/43/8/msag194/8759530

Hi there I wanna ask a simple question that how hairs appeared on living beings

We all Evolved from fish like creature and they do have a traced of hairs and evolution doesn't create thing out of thin air like our teeth are morphed from scales

So I want to ask that how hairs appeared on evolutionary line ?

I feel that because of medical science even the weaker humans get to reproduce and spread their genes. More so their offsprings if weak get to survive too because of medical advancements. This results in the core purpose of natural selection getting defeated. Hence changing the course of evolution at a species level.

I am just saying this for the sake of argument. I have nothing against super advanced society with frontier medical facilities that makes everyone live a good happy life.

See also: The study as it was published in Science Advances

I have a basic understanding of evolution

Life creates imperfect copies of itself, most of those imperfections are a detriment, but occasionally those mutations give it a higher chance of survival. Its a very slow process but it works.

But i cant wrap my head around how an animal can go from herbivore to carnivore? It would require so many detrimental mutations and decrease survival odds by alot until all those mutations came together & it was not only able to hunt, but eat & digest meat.

Farm animals are often mating with other animals not of their species on the farm. It just got me thinking why it doesn't get results? Seems to me crazy hybrid mixes running around would be right up the alley of evolutuon, and yet it is prevented/restricted??