Human laughter can be traced back 10-16 million years to the last common ancestor of humans and great apes, according to new research published today.   Dr Marina Davila Ross, a primatologist of…

The genetic code is fixed in most organisms, but sometimes microbes pull off a swap. How that swap works is hard to fathom, because you can screw up nearly all of your genes by doing it. A paper out…

Like human infants, young apes are make noises when you tickle them.  Is that really laughter? The answer to the question is yes, say researchers in Current Biology. The researchers analyzed the…

When we think of volcanic conditions, our minds leap to images of vast eruptions like Mount St. Helens in Washington State, or lava oozing down the slopes of Kilauea on the Big Island of Hawaii. With…

It should be clear that the vast majority of biological interactions are largely indifferent to others, while there is also a high degree of cooperation as necessitated by the evolution of sexual…

The Art Of Torture More than 28 million Americans, and many more people throughout the world, suffer from migraine headaches, one of the most debilitating of pain disorders. Symptoms like…

The key issue in considering competition is the question of whether changes in resource availability or mates would alter the confrontation. If the answer is negative, then no competition can be said…

VIB (the Flanders Institute for Biotechnology) researchers linked to K.U.Leuven and Harvard University say they have shown that stretches of DNA previously believed to be useless 'junk' DNA play a…

Creationism Axed - Again !The stone axe from 400,000 years ago which has been described as "the most important stone tool in the establishment of the geological antiquity of humankind" was mislaid…

At this point it will be useful to examine some of the selection pressures that will also affect a species. The obvious ones are the need for resources to maintain the day-to-day activities…