Terminalcoffee discussion

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/12/sci...

A virus infected our monkey-like ancestors 40 million years ago, and its genes have been passed down ever since.

It is amazing to me the remarkable place the human body is, and yet with all the studies there are always new things being found.

I saw that too. Fascinating!

I liked the part where someone discovered that a mutation in ancestor genes made our jaw muscles weak (much weaker than apes), so that they were small enough to allow our skulls to expand and allow for larger brains.

Yep, for sure.

And to remember all those user IDs and passwords.

I have that issue, too. I use the same ones for so many different things, too.

But seriously, it could be a combination of evolutionary factors -- the need for more social info, and that the brain could get larger with the smaller jaw muscles.

Absolutely.

And then you have to wonder about the trend toward more Caesarian births, which allows brains to develop even larger, earlier.

Psychologists have long said that babies born ceasarian have different personalities than ones born au naturale. They claim that a CS baby will take easier roads in life, and seem to have a talent for finding these roads, but when they experience something difficult they tend to give up more easily. Apparently this has to do with how much they had to go through the trauma of the birth canal vs. the 'ease' of CS. (Note: I don't think CS is easy for the Mom or the baby)

I don't think it is anything they've studied greatly, but I've seen this with my own daughter and the few nieces & nephews (out of 11) that were born CS. They all seem to have more similar personalities when it comes to learning new things & their capacity to deal with stressful situations. It's interesting to think about how these kids' future offspring & down the line might end up being different, and what kinds of changes may occur because of it.

Bun, that was a fantastic show. The whole gene switches thing is related to epigenetics, which is really cool (Thanks to Larry for tuning me into that). NOVA had a special on it a while ago: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencen...

Another thing mentioned in this piece is how they think maybe a set of virus genes enabled early mammals to have placentas that would pass nutrients through to offspring in the womb.

Just think -- if it weren't for a virus, we might all be marsupials. Sally's little joey would already be out and in the pouch!