Ever heard of Palindromic DNA? Check this out!. I made this with @TaylorLabGroup from the @MilnerCentre

I studied biology and illustration. The hardest thing about college was trying not laugh during art history "lectures".

Why would a person risk their life, even jumping in traffic, to save their pet dog, when that same person won't think twice before eating an equally sentient pig?. Philosophers struggle with the "logic" here. My advice to the philosophers: Study Darwin.

As much as I enjoy @skdh, I just had to mute my computer because I have hundreds of tabs open (each is very important, of course) but one of them, not sure which, "decided" to play an endless stream of Sabine Hossenfelder. Witty iconoclast overload! MAKE IT STOP!🤣.

Scientist:."This remains an active area of research and ongoing empirical exploration.". Napoleon Dynamite translation: ."We don't flippin' know yet but we're trying. Jeez!"

RT @MilnerCentre: It's Evolutionary Fact Friday! Did you know some fungi sniff and smell plants before attacking them. Our very own Neil Br….

RT @DaveShapi: YouTube, please allow us to disable and hide all shorts. Thanks. Alternatively, can someone make a browser extension tha….

RT @smartereveryday: The illustrated guide to a PhD by @mattmight .

Some of these are unique & worthy of their own name: . Moonlighting, for example, is when a trait still performs old & new functions. Recruitment is when 2 traits merge resulting in a new function. Salivary tube merged with teeth, resulting in snake fangs, for example.

The repurposing of old traits for new functions is so important in evolution (but so rarely taught) that scientists keep independently "discovering" it & thinking it needs a name:. Trait conversion.Preadaptation.Co-option.Neofunctionalization.Moonlighting.Exaptation.Recruitment.

What is your third favorite fish?

What if ChatGPT is the Wright brothers' plane?. In 44 years we went from fabric planes to war jets flying faster than the speed of sound.

Morgan Beeby's lab has an excellent new paper out in Nature!

New research on bacterial flagella!. "Like the contraptions of Heath Robinson or Rube Goldberg, evolution is a tinkerer, using the tools at hand to build ever-more elaborate structures.".

This is duck science doing its thing!. ". we (H.Z. and L.N.) must withdraw the earlier finding that the duck interdigit lacks BMP expression and regret any inconvenience the earlier conclusions may have caused.".

Here's the link to sign up:

This is an agouti! One of hundreds of critters you can meet on this years Evolution Tour with me and @SciBugs. Tour is 7 days in Ecuador, most of that time is in Amazon rainforest. Link below

RT @CarlosEAlvare17: @StatedClearly redneck engineering is a genre here and on Reddit!

I'm doing a vid on co-option in evolution (when a trait starts being used for a new function it did not evolve "for"). I'm trying to think of examples people are familiar with in tool use. Using a tool for the wrong thing but not caring. Ever drink through a stirring straw?

RT @janetiwasa: I'm happy and humbled to take on a new role with @buildmodels . I'll be continuing @dsgoodsell's work on the Molecule of t….