http://www.philly.com/philly/columnists/faye_flam RSS Feed for Inq Col Faye Flam en-us Mon, 16 Apr 2012 14:59:50 GMT http://www.philly.com/philly/columnists/faye_flam/20120416_Why_can_baboons_tell_written_words_from_gibberish__The_eyes__mdash__and_brain__mdash__have_it.html Charles Darwin would surely have been mesmerized by a paper released last week showing that baboons can recognize written words and distinguish them from gibberish. This was more than a feat of memorization, since the baboons were able to do this even if they’d never seen the words or nonwords before. In a paper describing their findings, the scientists say perhaps the baboons are able to do some sort of unconscious statistical calculation involving the combinations of letters most likely to form words. “We tend to think that the ability to distinguish what’s a real word is fundamentally human,” said Duke University neurobiologist Michael Platt, who wrote a commentary accompanying the paper in the journal Science. http://www.philly.com/philly/columnists/faye_flam/20120326_Planet_of_the_Apes__What_we_taste__and_don_t__and_why.html Sometimes evolution gives and sometimes it takes away. Cats have lost their ability to taste sweets, and dolphins lost the sensors needed to pick up bitter or sweet flavors. http://www.philly.com/philly/columnists/faye_flam/20120319_Planet_of_the_Apes__Once__the_sun_was_cooler_and_crueler.html You didn't need to be a solar physicist to be riveted by the "solar storm" that sent a blast of charged particles our way this month. That particular flare-up fizzled, but in the long term, the sun's temper is worthy of our attention. http://www.philly.com/philly/columnists/faye_flam/20120312_Planet_of_the_Apes__Academy_of_Natural_Sciences_gave_evolution_an_early_boost.html It was the time of P.T. Barnum, when people would line up to see a whitewashed elephant or a carefully faked petrified giant. But in 1868, a display in Philadelphia proved that reality could be far stranger than fiction. That year, the Academy of Natural Sciences showed the world its first glimpse of a real dinosaur skeleton - a 15-foot-tall Godzilla pulled from a pit in Haddonfield. http://www.philly.com/philly/columnists/faye_flam/20120305_Planet_of_the_Apes__An_evolutionary_basis_for_our_trust_in_political_attact_ads.html Election seasons can serve as a reminder of just how deeply mysterious the human mind remains. Particularly puzzling is the fact that people are heavily influenced by political advertising on television. http://www.philly.com/philly/columnists/faye_flam/20120227_Planet_of_the_Apes__No_fear__guys__the_Y_won_t_vanish.html Among the more alarming rumors prompted by genetics research was the impending extinction of the Y chromosome. The classic male marker seemed to be shriveling. Would the human race become an all-female species? The Y is, after all, just a tiny nub of a chromosome, having undergone serious shrinkage in the past. http://www.philly.com/philly/columnists/faye_flam/20120220_Planet_of_the_Apes_.html "Planet of the Apes" by Faye Flam does not appear this week. http://www.philly.com/philly/columnists/faye_flam/20120213_Planet_of_the_Apes__As_in__Star_Trek___would_aliens_be_similar_to_us_.html On Star Trek, the aliens often look so human that crew members fall in love with them. But in real life, scientists in the field known as astrobiology can't be sure alien life would even be carbon-based like us, or use DNA to carry a genetic code. http://www.philly.com/philly/columnists/faye_flam/20120206_Planet_of_the_Apes__Luckless_Lamarck__whose_evolution_theory_preceded_Darwin_s.html Timing is everything, and if there was ever a scientist whose legacy was tarnished by bad timing, it was Jean Baptiste Lamarck. The French naturalist lived from 1744 to 1829 - and published his own evolutionary theory decades before Darwin's theory went public in 1859. http://www.philly.com/philly/columnists/faye_flam/20120130_Planet_of_the_Apes__Wing_Bowlers__So_disciplined.html Anyone doubting our evolutionary tie to other apes should check out that Philadelphia festival of food and fun known as Wing Bowl. The annual event has some striking parallels to behavior outlined in the article "Chimpanzee Hunting Behavior and Human Evolution," which appeared in the magazine American Scientist.