LucidDreamer

When I say an animal would benefit from increased intelligence I don't mean that it would be better off being as intelligent as man. For instance, a feline could certainly benefit while hunting by being 25% smarter. But a 25% smarter cat isn't going to start coming up with new string theories or build a nuclear bomb. It takes a long time to develop a brain comparable to man's brain. Also, suicide makes a relatively small dent in the population of mankind. When you talk about nuclear bombs I assume you are thinking that any creature that develops sentience would be as violent as we are. Homo sapiens, and their cousins, chimpanzees, and most likely our common ancestors are violent creatures. There are other creatures of great intelligence, such as certain whales and Gorillas that are more non-violent to one another that could develop sentience.

DNA studies have been done on the Aboriginals and they indicate divergence from other human populations at around 40k-70k thousand years ago. Transition from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens was already complete. The facial features that you mention, such as the broad flat nose and stringy black hair, are also present in some peoples of Africa. Hunting and gathering societies were common just a few hundred years ago, and there are still some around today. Genetically, morphologically, and culturally there are no great differences between the Aboriginals and the rest of mankind.

Very good, in my opinion. Almost all multi-cellular animals would benefit from greater intelligence. However, there is a price to pay for intelligence and not all animals are equipped to support a large and complex brain. So, although there is a price to pay it is still almost always beneficial. I think there is a general trend towards encephalization, or at least increased intelligence (sp), especially among large mammals because they are especially equipped to support it. I mean look at how many smart mammals there are: dolphins and porpoises, dozens of species of whales, many species of apes, and elephants. I think that the trend among large mammals is to improve intelligence. So I think that as long as the earth's environment supports the existence of large mammals there will be a trend towards encelphalization, which should eventually lead to the use of tools and machines. I think the major factor then is the environment, with an emphasis on natural disasters since mankind will be dead. If mankind continues to "prosper" then I think you will end up with another intelligent being capable of building machines in less than 1000 years through genetic engineering.

Nevermind, it wasn't funny in retrospect.

Interesting question. My guess would be yes, for a healthy, viable allopolyploid at least.

It doesn't have much to do with features really, but other alleles that are vital for survival of the species. As an example, each of our cells (humans and other mammals) has proteins called mhc molecules imbedded in the membranes. These MHC proteins present specific proteins from viruses that have invaded the cell by binding the proteins on the outside of the cell. Killer T cells then come along and recognize the virus protein and kill the cell before it can release more viruses. Problem is that each type of MHC molecule can only present a certain amount of different kinds of proteins from viruses or other antigens. So while you may only have a small amount of different kinds of MHC molecules in your make up, the human population as a whole has hundreds. This insures that although some people will die when they are exposed to a new virus some members of the population will survive because the have the right complement of MHC molecules. There are other examples of the same concept.

They are not random acts. They are acts that are controlled by the forces that control the universe. Just like a black hole is created when certain conditions are present so does life evolve when certain circumstances are present. Whether man has a soul or not and what it is made of is not relevant to this discussion. No one is saying that a chimpanzee created the Mona Lisa. We all know that a human being did. Funny, I thought we were talking about two scientific models and not the existence of God. Obviously we are not. Obviously creationism is about religion. It's about starting with a model of the universe, according to an interpretation of a religious text, and trying to mold science until it matches that viewpoint. Ha, I started this post before other people posted, had lunch, then finished and found that Dak had already given almost the exact same answers as I did.

I won't comment on whether this is ethical or not but I think the research is suppose to give us insight into how sentience and human intelligence developed and how it is created in the human brain.

There are like 6 billion of us and our DNA is strung all over the world. It is likely that any species that develops sentience after us will have as much curiosity as we do. The same goes for any alien species that visits our planet. Seeing as the death-ray only killed us and didn't cause us to disintegrate or destroy all of our buildings then there would be a good chance that some of our DNA in some way would be preserved, even for millions of years. Since genetics and curiosity are natural developments for sentient species then I imagine that the chances are alot better than close to zero that another sentient species will raise us from extinction just to prove to themselves that they can do it. I mostly agree with you. We are slow, weak, bad swimmers, bad climbers and bad at just about everything except using tools. This is likely part of the reason we developed sentience. However, our bodies are quite adaptable and versatile, which is quite a useful trait for a tool-user.

Hmm, interesting point. Of course, some silly cave man may have been bored out of his primitive mind one day and decided to rub sticks together all day to see what happens. Surely man used wood tools for a long time before flint. Either way I would say that man learned to use tools and make fire himself before he used fire on a regular basis. I don't think man could have kept fire going that long from lightning if he did not have the ability to restart it. So therefore tools are a prerequisite to fire, but I'm probably the last moron to come to that realization.

All I will say is munchies. In the US alot are 24/7 and they throw away the refrigerated food after like two or three days after it starts to loose freshness, but before it goes bad.

SIV, the name given to a virus similar to HIV that is found in monkeys and apes, is a very ancient disease. Almost all forms of African monkeys have a form of SIV, and in some cases the majority of the individuals of that species have the virus in their bloodstream. In fact, in most cases the monkeys and apes have very high viral loads, yet they do not ever become sick. Over thousands of years the monkey's immune systems and bodies have become resistant to any harmful effects. I am not sure that how they know this but it has been estimated that monkeys have been infected with SIV for hundreds of thousands of years and chimpanzees are suspected of being infected for tens of thousands of years. As another poster has already pointed out it is likely that humans have been exposed several times to the SIV virus, but because people were relatively isolated back then, especially in the area around the Congo, the disease never spread and became an epidemic. They believe that the people that were exposed then probably spread the disease locally and then died off before they were able to spread it very far. Since humans are so similar to monkeys and apes it is very easy for the disease to leap from species to species among the primates. In fact, HIV (SIV) has been transmitted from another primate species to humans more than once in just this century. HIV1, the predominate form of the virus, comes from chimpanzees, but HIV2, another form, is thought to have been transmitted from the Sooty Mangabee monkey.

The spread of HIV can be traced to an extremely sexually active Homosexual male airline's steward. I think he is called patient zero. Although he was not the first person to catch the disease, he is attributed to starting the epidemic in the United States and I believe Europe as well. Patient zero frequently visited homosexual hotspots, such as the bathhouses of San Francisco. Frequent visitations to the bath houses and other homosexual hot spots, where homosexual sex was extremely common, was the link that was found between early AIDS patients. This was even before it was called AIDS; is called gay cancer in San Francisco because it was occurring in mostly gay men and because of an uncommon form of cancer that developed among them. There were most likely several cases of the disease in Africa before the 80's (and a few in other countries) but it was not recognized because they lacked western medicine.

The theory proposes that HIV was introduced into the human population in sub-Sahara Africa in the 1950's from contaminated polio vaccine. Most polio vaccine was made in the West but some polio vaccine was actually made in Africa near the Congo area. It is the polio vaccinations that were made in Africa that were suspected to have been contaminated with SIV, an ape version of HIV. It is widely believed that HIV1 was transmitted from chimpanzees to humans because chimpanzees have the form of simian SIV that is most similar to HIV1. The theory proposes that chimpanzee tissue was used for the growth media used to create the polio vaccination and that the chimpanzee tissue was contaminated with SIV. This batch of polio vaccination was then distributed throughout Africa and the HIV that we know today all originates from this vaccination. This theory was never the dominant theory and it has fallen out of favor over the years, primarily for 3 reasons: 1) Mutational studies indicate that the HIV was introduced into the human population around 1930 and the vaccinations took place in the 50's. 2) The chimpanzees located near the site where the vaccination was made are not the chimpanzees that carry the SIV that is suspected to have mutated into HIV. 3) Most importantly, samples of the suspected batches were found to be SIV free and the tissues used for growth media appear to be from the mangabee monkey (could be wrong about the species of monkey) and not from chimpanzees. The currently accepted theory is that the SIV infected humans in the jungles of Africa when hunters killed and slaughtered chimpanzees.

I think hitting it strait on would have probably saved the ship. Like the original poster pointed out, the ship was designed to still float if 3 bulkheads were flooded. It was the fact that they sideswiped the iceberg and tore a huge gash along the side of the ship that sunk it.

Tips for eating for free: 1) Walk into a fast food joint and tell them that the last time you ordered they messed up your order and you are an unhappy customer. Free tacos! 2) 7 eleven throws away perfectly edible food every night around 3:00 am or so. Make yourself a friend at one of them and get a bag full of slightly stale donuts and breakfast burritos a couple of times a week. 3) Alot of large cities will have coupon manufactures that make large coupon books full of buy one, get one free coupons. Get one of your equally poor friends to go with you and you can both eat at half price.

I would guess that if there were a switch from matriarchal to patriarchal it would have to do with tribal warfare resulting from the increasing human population and the competition for resources.

Is it the physical chemistry course dealing with thermodynamics or quantum physics?

Homo sapiens are one most hardy large animal species on the planet with billions of individuals. We could lose 99.9% of the population and still have an excellent chance of persisting.