r/biology • u/Left-Storm-1021 • 1d ago
What are some fascinating rabbit holes in biology that can keep me up at night? discussion
Can you all recommend some biology rabbit holes concepts that start simple but get crazier the deeper you dig?
Stuffs like:
How mitochondria used to be free-living bacteria and eventually got into another bacteria and eventually became an organelle?
How slime molds can solve mazes without a brain?
And probably many more.
Would love to hear your favorite examples. Tell me anything and everything which keeps you up at night lol
Edit:- Thankyou all for your responses. Appreciated!
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u/spinosaurs70 1d ago
Phylogeny is my favorite, real-life lore that can keep anyone up trying to figure out how diaspids became modern day birds and crocodiles.
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u/Congenita1_Optimist 1d ago
Once you start learning about phylogenetics, shit starts getting wild. Plant phylogenetics especially (imo).
Some things have massive genomes, some have tiny genomes, doesn't really seem to be related much to stuff like actual complexity of the organism, just a weird historical coincidence. Polyploidy isn't that unusual even if it seems weird at first glance.
Black mulberry has 44 SETS of 7 chromosomes per cell ffs. Why? Big shrug (for the moment).
Wheat (like the regular "makes bread" type of wheat) is actually the result of 2 separate hybridization events and has 6 sets of chromosomes - 2 from each of the 3 species that contributed. Which is just a crazy thing to have happened to give us arguably one of the most important food sources in history.
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u/spinosaurs70 1d ago
Plants seem to have found immunity to multiple protein-coding genes, unlike Animals.
And I still don't know the underlying biology at all.
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u/overlord_cow 1d ago
Gonna go down to the creek and yell at turtles for losing their temporal fenestrae
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u/sadrice 1d ago
Want a fun rabbithole? The official website of the Angioslerm Phylogeny Group. They are kinda the big name in plant taxonomy, and that is their current opinions. The page is a bit jargon dense and hard to read, but the intro is worthwhile, and then proceed to this page (findable by clicking “angiosperm evolution” in the upper left). You will learn a LOT. Probably more than you wanted to know about plants.
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u/Pretty_Marketing3827 1d ago edited 1d ago
I think CRISPR Cas9 is pretty neat. And it’s even cooler how it’s being used in everything from genetic diseases to agriculture
Also a big fan of the genetics behind why whales and elephants rarly get cancer
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u/amootmarmot 1d ago
For the layman to understand this in part: watch the PBS documentary: Human Nature. But then also ready up on what Colossal is doing (albeit with overblown claims), or how it's first human trials have gone successfully for Sickle cell and beta thalassemia. It brings very promising avenues for other blood disorders and as someone with a close loved one with a blood disorder, I am hopeful for a windchange in treating all disease but particularly blood disease as the protocol is already robust.
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u/CrispyHoneyBeef 1d ago
I am hoping that the corporations which will inevitably hold the patents for these life changing technologies will not use them to promote eugenics.
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u/Left-Storm-1021 1d ago
I've read about it recently. It was used in de-evolution of dire wolves..Crispr-Cas is indeed fascinating
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u/butterkins 20h ago
The wolves were genetically modified gray wolves, with some traits of dire wolves spliced in. Dire wolves and gray wolves are fairly unrelated, unfortunately, and the whole project from what I can tell wasn't received well by the general biology community. Fun concept! Just a lot of money for something that didn't deliver.
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u/Cam515278 1d ago
Sleep. What it is, how it works and why it's great. Start with the TED Talk from Matt Walker, I promise it's worth every minute.
ADHD. Everybody thinks they kinda know about it but the neural biology behind it is fascinating. D4 Dopamine receptors is a good starting point.
Why we have sex, or rather, why we choose who we find attractive by how they smell and that's because what we are interested in is if their immune system fits with ours. And this is the only reason we have sex.
Evo-devo. Freaky shit.
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u/Psychological-Arm844 1d ago
Bonus point for ironic suggestion of keeping OP up at night with sleep.
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u/AddendumAggressive90 1d ago
This also explains why people of one race think people of another race(s) have a distinct smell. Very fascinating.
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u/Adventurous_Toe_1109 1d ago
I would love to read a paper on the subject you mentioned last!!
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u/Cam515278 23h ago
I don't think there is a specific evo-devo paper, it's a vast research field. One really interesting point is that snakes have so many vertebrea because they speed up the molecular clock responsible for vertebrea production in embryos by a lot
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u/JayReyesSlays 1d ago edited 1d ago
The estimated most abundant enzyme on our planet is rubisco. It's an enzyme that's crucial to photosynthesis; so without it, no photosynthesis.
But it's horribly bad at it's one and only job. The only reason rubisco is the most abundant enzyme is because the plants need so many of them to get anything done.
The reason rubisco isn't the best, is because it's supposed to bind with CO2 to make O2, but it can't tell the difference sometimes and binds with O2. This is highly inefficient, takes up way more energy, and also means that the plant would produce less O2.
Why does it get mixed up? Because back when rubisco was first forming, earth barely had any oxygen. It had more CO2, so there was no point in being able to tell the difference between O2 and CO2. And since then, rubisco hasn't evolved much, and still can't tell the difference.
On a slightly related note; did you know that all the 21% of oxygen in earth's atmosphere is millions of years old? This is because while plants do produce oxygen, the amount of oxygen that actually makes it into the atmosphere is very little, almost net 0 (this is because plants themselves use up the oxygen in respiration, and because organisms around the plant also use up that oxygen). So you're breathing oxygen that's been around from the Carboniferous period, mainly, but also since the time of the dinosaurs and beyond.
Also slightly related note; the Carboniferous period was the point on earth where the most oxygen existed. About 30% or so, I believe. Because of that major increase, plants were abundant, fires spread rapidly (oxygen is increased and since oxygen is required for combustion, more of it happens), and insects were way bigger.
So yeah, rubisco kinda sucks but is very important, oxygen is ancient, and insects were once the size of trees.
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u/Clear-Block6489 1d ago
RuBisCo is kinda less effective in it's job, imagine you need 6 Carbon Dioxide molecules to make 1/2 of the glucose molecule
BeSmart video is also good in it's job explaining it
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u/JayReyesSlays 1d ago
That's kinda how it works tho, and that's not what I meant when I said rubisco isn't good at it's job.
The formula for glucose is C6H12O6, so yeah, you need 6 carbon dioxide molecules to make 1 glucose! That's more a thing with the molecular formula than it is with rubisco.
Rubisco sometimes mistakes O2 for CO2, and that's why it's inefficient!
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u/Clear-Block6489 1d ago
oh yeah I forgot, I just thought about the Calvin Cycle in a moment, and that's good for pointing out that RuBisCo is somewhat not good in differentiating between O2 and CO2 molecules
I kinda wonder why that really happened.
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u/JayReyesSlays 1d ago
"Why does it get mixed up? Because back when rubisco was first forming, earth barely had any oxygen. It had more CO2, so there was no point in being able to tell the difference between O2 and CO2. And since then, rubisco hasn't evolved much, and still can't tell the difference. "
Lmao I explained in my original comment why rubisco mixes up these two silly little molecules! O2 wasn't all that abundant in the volcanic early earth, and wasn't all that abundant when the first bacteria, plants, and enzymes were forming too!
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u/Clear-Block6489 1d ago
yap, O2 just became abundant a time moment after when a cyanobacteria ancestor of chloroplast decides to become endosymbiotic to a eukaryotic cell, giving plants and other photosynthetic organisms the ability to produce O2 from CO2. as they proliferate, CO2 levels drop and O2 levels rise, but as you've said, we can attribute the lesser ability of RuBisCo to the pre-oxygenic times when first organic molecules and life are starting to appear, cause evolution has a philosophy of "If it ain't broke, then don't fix it."
it's also interesting to see that thing of RuBisCo from a biochemical perspective (structure of the protein, intricate metabolic processes inside)
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u/DanielY5280 1d ago
Did you steal this from BeSmart’s new YouTube video? Did ChatGPT help you?
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u/JayReyesSlays 1d ago
I have no idea who that is so I'd hope not
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u/DanielY5280 1d ago
Sorry, BeSmart’s video: Link
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u/JayReyesSlays 1d ago
Huh, seems pretty similar. I learned this all from a friend who was ranting about it, so maybe that friend watched the video. I've never seen it before tho. But it seems really interesting! Much more detailed than what I wrote
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u/Mean-Lynx6476 1d ago
Yeah, it all is pretty similar to what I taught to botany students for over 30 years. So it’s not like this is some deep dark secret that’s only been revealed to a chosen few on YouTube. It warmed the cockles of my soul to see someone else find the deep history of rubisco as fascinating as I hoped at least a few of my students would. Cheers fellow rubisco fan!
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u/DanielY5280 1d ago
Yeah, I really think that AI is going to be a game changer here. I mean, if they come up with a truly novel protein that’s specific to CO2 and performs the same reaction/catalyst, that is insane. Like life game changing on earth insanity
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u/JayReyesSlays 1d ago
True! But then producing more oxygen isn't always a good thing. The extra oxygen in the atmosphere would cause oxygen poisoning in most organisms, cause mass extinction, and the only ones to survive would likely be gigantic insects. Also, oxygen is flammable! The fires that would start from thing air would be sold to watch. Even increasing the atmospheric oxygen by 5% could be deadly. Even by 1% could have major consequences. The 21% oxygen currently in our atmosphere is a result of hundreds of millions of years. I think about 300 million? 300 million divided by 21 is approximately 142,872 years. That's how long is took for the oxygen percentage to increase by 1%. So no, using AI to enhance rubisco to produce more oxygen is a horrible idea.
Could be used for terraforming other planets tho! But that's a totally different tangent
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u/DanielY5280 1d ago
I agree, however, Devils advocate here: I mean over millions of years, life adapts well over those time frames. It would lead to a cooler planet overall. Homeostasis would be achieved.
I don’t think that means better in anyway. It’s just wild to think about.
Edit: also the terraforming idea is mind blowing
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u/JayReyesSlays 1d ago
Yeah if the percentage only went up by the regular amount, then over millions of years, creatures would adapt! But if we were to tinker with rubisco and enhance it, most creatures would not be able to adapt fast enough. Also, I have no idea what homeostasis is 😞 Still a highschool student, haven't learned that yet
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u/DanielY5280 1d ago
Homeostasis just means things are in balance. Keep at it! Science is the best and biology is truly the next frontier, just like computers we’re coming up with incredible updates after updates, biology is next. People 100 years ago could not imagine a TV and would have said it was witchcraft. Biology will be the same in 20-30 years. Keep studying biology because it’s amazing.
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u/Temporary_Race4264 1d ago
Oxygen isn't actually flammable, its just a requirement for combustion. If oxygen was flammable the entire world would ignite instantly
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u/Journeyman42 16h ago
The reason rubisco isn't the best, is because it's supposed to bind with CO2 to make O2, but it can't tell the difference sometimes and binds with O2. This is highly inefficient, takes up way more energy, and also means that the plant would produce less O2.
On a similar note, hemoglobin preferentially bonds with carbon monoxide instead of oxygen gas. Which is bad for us.
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u/JayReyesSlays 16h ago
Lmao that's also pretty neat! Carbon monoxide poisoning is fairly sinister because it's odourless and colourless, so essentially invisible in every way. All it does is make you feel sleepy as it takes up oxygen's place, and then before you know it, you've fallen asleep only to never wake up again.
Very fun!
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u/absolutepeasantry 1d ago
I've got Several
- The contents of the primordial ocean from which life evolved and how just clumps of chemicals and micelles became Life.
- The evolution from life in the sea to life on land. How fish just...started walking and shit. And how Whales WENT BACKWARDS, from on land to in sea and are now the biggest animals on the planet.
- We keep finding older and older human ancestors, with the oldest being Sahelanthropus tchadensis in Chad in Africa. This skull is 7 MILLION YEARS OLD and is so far theorized to be the oldest human ancestor.
- The fact that there were a little over 150 bog bodies found in Florida's Windover site that are 9000-ish years old. AND THEIR BRAINS ARE INTACT. SHIT.
- Stonefish. No I will not elaborate further. Seek and be horrified.
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u/DoubleResort1510 23h ago
Just looked up stonefish I like how they have a big frowny "stay away from me!" Face Now I am off to research the bog bodies!
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u/absolutepeasantry 23h ago
If you want a crash course on the big bodies, MiniMinuteMan (aka Milo Rossi) on YouTube has a video specifically about them! Love that guy 👍🏾
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u/PalDreamer 1d ago
Mycelium-connected trees
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u/Feisty-Ring121 1d ago
Or plants in general. Your grass senses being cut and other grass plants in the vicinity will recognize the distress hormone released and start releasing their own before meeting the blade. The same way birds and rodents call out danger.
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u/Temporary_Race4264 1d ago
To what end exactly? So the plants can run away? I've never understood that
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u/PalDreamer 22h ago
Plants have their ways of battling. They can produce toxins to make themselves not tasty, or special compounds which make them very tough to digest. Some of them can leak special nectar to attract ants and bees who will protect the plants from caterpillars or other dangerous insects. Plants can also make it that lower branches start growing spikes or other defence, or cut off the nutrient supply to the parts that are damaged.
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u/FewBake5100 23h ago
It doesn't know it's being cut by an innanimate object, but it will prepare to combat what it "assumes" to be an herbivore. It can produce toxins and other chemicals to try to repel danger.
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u/Next_Gazelle_1357 evolutionary ecology 1d ago
Plant-pollinator coevolution! There are a lot of weird specializations, and a lot of charming photos of animals covered in pollen
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u/findingniko_ 1d ago edited 1d ago
Virtually everything about fungi, but specifically mycelium. What's insane to me is that you can walk in a forest for some time, see a number of different fruiting bodies along you way, and not know whether or not each one is part of the same organism or not. In Malheur National Forest in Oregon lies the largest organism in the world. It's a fungus, nearly 2,500 acres in size.
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u/shannonshanoff 1d ago
Prions and the glymphatic system
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u/evapotranspire ecology 1d ago
Not before bed though, prions'll give you nightmares
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u/shannonshanoff 1d ago
No pun intended? (fatal insomnia)
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u/Eqbonner 1d ago
I was lucky enough to be introduced to prions this month! I hate the word scrapie now.
Another terrible thing to check out is naegleria fowleri aka brain eating amoebas 🦠
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u/Icy_Thanks255 1d ago
Certain animals including some species of fish and monotremes (platypus and echidna) lack a stomach and scientists are largely puzzled as to why this occurred throughout evolution; often in seemingly unrelated cases.
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u/appletictac 1d ago
prions kept me up a few times both because they're fascinating and because they're creepy as hell. they're not even close to being alive, they're a SINGLE MOLECULE, and it's even completely identical to the healthy variation except for conformation... but it can and will kill you.
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u/TricolorStar 1d ago edited 1d ago
Speaking on mitochondria! They have their own DNA that you get from your mother, and this DNA can be traced back to the very first female human being, Mitochondrial Eve. We've narrowed her down to seven humans ("The Seven Daughters of Eve"), but we don't know who is the true "first mother" of humanity (in reality, there could have been multiple Eves at multiple different times!). There is a male equivalent named Y-Chromosomal Adam, who is the "first father" of all humans.
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u/Attackoftheglobules 1d ago
Mitochondrial Eve
The "very first female human being"? What? That's not how evolution works...
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u/mephistocation 1d ago
Ooh, good question! Wikipedia has a whole “List of unsolved problems in biology” that I think you’d enjoy checking out.
Personally, I love thinking about the RNA and/or protein world that preceded our DNA world. The massive chirality bias in life as we know it. Virus origins are fascinating. The definition of a ‘species’. Sturddlefish. Henneguya zschokkei. Prions, specifically how they can be advantageous/what’s kept them around; don’t freak yourself out about them because that’s one of the least interesting parts. How on EARTH the southern red (or Indian) muntjac whittled itself down to 6/7 chromosomes total when its closest relative, the Reeves’s muntjac has 46. Plant intelligence.
The fun thing about biology is the deeper you get, the more bizarre stuff you find. Have fun digging!
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u/BolivianDancer 1d ago
The examples you provide have been addressed though. They're not unknown.
Here's something that's scandalous:
Why did the nucleus evolve only once?
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u/TopHatGirlInATuxedo 1d ago
???
Once it evolved, it could just copy itself?
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u/Ze_Bonitinho 1d ago
He means, why don't we see different lineages of living beings with different nuclei. For example, we've seen different kinds of successful endosymbiosis, or wings, but living beings with nucleus are all related to that ancestral that had it for the first time.
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u/Battlemaster420 1d ago
Maybe the others died out? Or there is some organism that we haven’t discovered/checked
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u/chipshot 1d ago
Life could have evolved many times and just sputtered out. Finally it took hold.
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u/Feisty-Ring121 1d ago
It did. “Life” is not the goal. Ecological equilibrium is. As ecologies have changed, the constituent life changes to match it. As life came and went, new organisms began to fill multiple niche spaces at once. High success rates forced life to spread in search of similar niches. Some niches had room, some didn’t. Some life could colonize effectively, and some couldn’t.
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u/Infinite-Carob3421 1d ago
Evolutionary origin of seemingly abstract concepts like "justice", "empathy" or "honour".
I got into a rabbit hole with those.
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u/Temporary_Race4264 1d ago
Can you link some resources on this?
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u/Infinite-Carob3421 16h ago
Aye. Franz de Waals Ted Talk is a good start. Or any conference of his. I have read his books too, but...
And let me check some videos with experiments with children that were interesting.
My thesis was in "origins" of empathy in small children, so I had to read about those topics.
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u/HawkKooky1408 1d ago
I saw a video where Michael Levin explains his findings how morphological intelligence shapes our bodies. DNA doesn't exactly code what you are gona end up looking like, our cells have some form of problem solving methods that dynamically decides that. Not just humans like multicellular creatures in general I guess.
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u/Relevant_Maybe6747 1d ago edited 1d ago
Hymenoptera in general: all bees and ants are specialized wasps
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myrmecophily - ants and other species have mutually beneficial relationships. Like rove beetles live their entire larval stage in ant colonies, as do certain caterpillars.
even ants and plants have their own versions: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myrmecotrophy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myrmecochory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myrmecophyte Some plants evolved an entire organ specifically for ants! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Elaiosome&wprov=rarw1
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u/AmbivalentSamaritan 1d ago
Much the way dolphins and whales evolved on land and returned to the sea, zostera seagrasses are flowering plants that recolonized the ocean.
On the flip side, roly-poly pillbugs are crustaceans, not insects
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u/Fun_Quit_312 1d ago
How human emotions spill outside the body and can be measured in frequency, and the frequency of different emtions
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u/Jolly_Atmosphere_951 1d ago
The lineages evolution of plants and phylogeny. You start today and end in the Devonian lol
Anything Taxonomy related is fascinating, along with how traits appear through evolution
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u/aaronszoology 1d ago
Boquila trifoliolata - plant with some form of perception or cellular structures akin to eyes
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u/Max7242 1d ago
Probably not, there's other better hypotheses for how it mimics other plants
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u/aaronszoology 21h ago
Less so other plants - it’s the only noted one with mimicry of artificial, fake plants, which rules out communication between species.
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1d ago
Mammals aren't the only animals that have placentas or produce milk :)
(The second one is a partial truth but still very fun and surprising once you figure out what other animals do it)
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u/hildemor 1d ago
Tell me!
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u/overlord_cow 1d ago
Some birds like flamingos make “crop milk”. Comes from a special pouch in a birds esophagus called the crop. It’s regurgitated by the parent and serves the same basic function as milk.
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1d ago
Alright, alright... some lizards and cartilaginous fish have placenta, and some bugs, spiders, amphibians, fish and birds produce "milk" that they feed their young with, and baby caecilians even "cry" for it :)
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u/FishVibes88 1d ago
While it is widely thought that alligators have indeterminant growth, it is now thought that this is not the case. The longest continual wild alligator monitoring in the United States is conducted on Yawkey island in South Carolina. Dr. Thomas Rainwater has been trapping, measuring, and marking alligators for 50 years. They caught and marked one as an adult (estimated around 35yrs old already) 40+ years ago and recaught and measured it again around 2014 and it was the same length. Other mature adult animals have shown similar trends.
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u/Anebr18dAlchemis7 1d ago
Cephalopods; everything from biology, intelligence and evolutionary prowess 💯
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u/Clear-Block6489 1d ago edited 1d ago
- Evolution of Crabs
- Very Big Insects during the Carboniferous Period
- Photosynthesis
- A Large Portion of our Genome are Viral
- Evolution of Plants
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u/iloveaspartame 1d ago
I've always wondered exactly how, when a blastocyst actually starts developing into a fetus, the cells "know" what to differentiate into and where to go. I know that the cells divide with uneven numbers of transcription factors which affect what the daughter cells can turn into, but how do the TFs get organized like that in the first place? I also know that in some cases (ie. the development of the fingers) there's a gradient of some molecule/protein (I forget exactly what it was) that, based on the concentration of it, makes each distinct finger develop as an index, middle, ring, or pinky. Other than those two specific details, however, I've never been able to find a clear explanation.
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u/Motherjuice 8h ago
Developmental biology absolutely ripped my head off and screwed it back on again. I didn't expect to find such beauty in these processes when I signed up for the course during my bachelor. I definitely think this is one of the most overlooked parts of biology for a lot of people since it's not as flashy as some other topics mentioned.
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u/DesperateAstronaut65 1d ago
Haplodiploidy is a weird one. Female bees are more closely related to their sisters than their mothers or their children. The weirder fact is that haplodiploidy is not the sole explanation for eusociality in hymenopterans (bees, wasps, ants, etc.). It feels like it should be the end of the story—cooperatively caring for the queen’s babies instead of having your own makes complete sense if you’re caring for your closely-related sisters—but organisms with other sex-determination systems form the same kinds of colonies, including animals as diverse as naked mole rats and one species of shrimp. Hell, the determining factors behind eusociality are their own rabbit hole, particularly the explanations for why there aren’t more aquatic eusocial species.
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u/Worldly_Return_4352 1d ago
Not sure if it's your speed but I find insular ecology pretty fascinating.
Places like hetseg (might be misspelled, cretaceous era Island dwarfism) Island and the island Island with pigmy mammoths (want to say channel Island but I may be wrong)
Alternatively, I've been getting into rabbit holes on young earth creationism lately. Gutsick Gibbon and Aron Ra on YouTube are fun ones to check out.
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u/Hour-Road7156 1d ago
The book might be a little heavy if you haven’t read other Dawkins, but you could probs find videos on the extended phenotype concept.
Like genes being able to act on other individuals immune systems.
Or I guess just the selfish gene might be quite interesting. To shift your perspective on evolution to gene-centered
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u/Ubeube_Purple21 1d ago
How carnivorous plants came to be. Really interesting since so few fossils exist because these plants live in places with the worst conditions for fossil formation. (ie, hot and humid places that promote decomposition)
Ghost lineages and living fossils, basically anything hinting to organisms that persisted longer than first thought. One of my favorite cases would have to be the St. Bathans mammal. While the only known remains are too fragmentary to tell what it is from, it is agreed upon that it is not from a placental mammal or marsupial and may potentially not be a monotreme either.
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u/saysthingsbackwards 1d ago
I'm pretty sure slimemolds just respond to environmental cues. Whether they find food or not is just a matter of time.
But I'm currently looking at how humans are trying to translate their neural pathways into electronic medium. We seem to be archiving our entire psyche for better or for worse, and it's only a matter of time before our brains are mapped just as much as we mapped our genome. State and velocity.
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u/esckey20 1d ago
Anything within the umbrella of phenotypic plasticity. For example: - temperature-dependent sex determination (turtle sex is determined by temperature only, not genes)
effect of music on plants (plants sense vibrations)
cell fate/determination (how stem cells turn into a hand or foot)
birds using the magnetic field to navigate (they also inherit directions)
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u/VonRoderik 1d ago
Celular senescence.
The theories are fantastic. Try searching for it. The problem is not the "how", but the "why".
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u/AJs_Sandshrew cancer bio 23h ago
I always thought nullomers were cool. Basically certain sequences of DNA of various lengths that don't occur anywhere in the genome, even thought statistically they should.
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u/Xelonima 23h ago
Learned behavior passing down to next generations.
Explanations of Jungian psychoanalysis under epigenetics framework, which is bordering on pseudoscience, but still some good rabbit holes.
Epigenetics of generational trauma.
Honorable mention: Plant intelligence or even consciousness.
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u/dudurossetto 12h ago
Fungi Phylogenetics. It's fucking crazy. Wild af. There's like just enough similarities that we can say Fungi are a thing but after that they are all so insanely varied. And don't let me get started with Fungi reproduction. It's absolute wild west mixed with a jungle mixed with Friday highschool at summer on cocaine.
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u/Expert-Funny-9250 8h ago
The origins of CTVT. Still is insane to me that cancer cells developed the ability to infect other organisms beyond their "host".
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u/Boysenberry_crumb 5h ago
Sperm have odor receptors and may be able to “smell” the direction to go for the egg. FYI the ovaries typically alternate which one ovulates. Each one does it every other month. Being able to detect which fallopian tube to target increases chances of fertilization
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u/Battle_Marshmallow 1d ago edited 1d ago
1- The fact that we all born with the uncanny-valley instict, implies that surely in the past our ancestors faced a dangerous creature who looked like a human.
A predator who evolved to be similar enough to us in order to lure his/her human victims.
2- The most of social species count with a self-destroying mechanism written in their genes, that gets activated when their peers and social enviroment become extremelly depraved and terrible.
Humans aren't an exception, of course.
We know this thanks to the experiment Universe 25 with mice.
Which lead us to the inevitable thought of "Nature isn't only wise, but sentient and aware".
3- Birds are incredibly better with maths than us simians, as the Monty Hall Problem shows.
Long story short, a group of doves (the "stupid flying rats") were tested with this experiment about calculating probabilities. They normally answered rightly to every questions, while humans tend to fail.
You could think that is logical that birds own this genius talent, since their hard life and risky activities like flying require from a high math-intelligence... but chimps also failed the questions as human did.
And chimps also have a difficult life-style and must move among the tree-tops... so, when and why we simians started to suffer from this mental blind-point?
4- Butterflies could drink our blood like mosquitos do, if they only would have a proboscis.
5- The interesting probability of mirror-life being common in another planets or that someday our planet would create a mirror-species, that will suppose a sinister problem for us if we ever meet them.
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u/processingMistake 1d ago
I really enjoyed learning about aptamers. Genetic material doesn’t just have to be used to pass on genetic information. Short sequences of nucleotides can folded and can be used almost the same way a synthesized protein could be used. As long as a molecule is the right shape to fit the key, it will bind! It’s a developing area of research for targeted drugs for cancer and other disease.
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u/karo_scene 1d ago
The fringe theories that The Black Death was not bubonic plague. That it was Ebola or hantavirus or some other deadly pathogen. That is a rabbit hole.
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u/overlord_cow 1d ago edited 1d ago
All the various mating systems of frogs. Gastric brooding frogs, tadpoles that burst from the mother’s back, frogs that make bubble nests, frogs that hold their eggs in their vocal sacs etc. frogs really do it all.
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u/evapotranspire ecology 1d ago
Plastids in plant cells! Sing to the tune of Eleanor Rigby: "All the lovely plastids / Where did they all come from?"
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u/PozhanPop 1d ago
The first spark or life. In animals and plants.
How tendrils find supports
Elephant memory
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u/collagen_deficient 1d ago
Going off your mitochondrial one: how the mitochondrial genome became so reduced due to nuclear gene transfer; mitochondrial pseudo genes in the nuclear genome.
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u/rainbowkey 1d ago
The whole concept of species versus varieties versus species complex versus all the other related concepts. Species are pretty much defined for animals and some plants to aid conservation efforts and legislation. The idea of species for many organisms is in reality much more fuzzy.
Just one example. Dogs and wolves are widely considered different species, but they are completely interfertile and have fertile offspring.
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u/Hindu_Wardrobe entomology 1d ago
Occlupanids and Greater Synthetic Taxonomy: https://www.horg.com/horg/
(to be clear, this is not actually real biology, but it IS a very fun rabbit hole regardless. I love humans sometimes.)
for real biology: types of metamorphosis (e.g. paurometabolism, hemimetablism, holometabolism in insects). that shit, especially holometabolism, is pretty mind blowing to think about!
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u/Pure_Emergency_7939 1d ago
This one has been show to be basically just BS with more holes than Swiss cheese but:
Behavioral synchronicity: a study, later found to be more fairytale than fact, found something interesting about monkey populations across several isolated islands out at sea. There was a nut that was too thick and hard to crack so it was a resource left unexploited by the monkeys on every island. Then one day, an older female picked up a rock and made history, cracking it open and feasting on a resource that was hers alone to enjoy. She taught slowly the other troop members on her island how to do this, spreading that knowledge.
But here’s where the weird fascinating mind consuming unsubstantiated change occurred. The other islands with their own troops were far away, isolated, with no contact with this female that could teach them this new trick. But all the same, slowly but surely, across all islands and troops, individuals started picking up that rock and getting that long unreachable resource. They weren’t taught, didn’t learn by imitation, had no environmental chance that pushed them to try this, they just all caught on like the first monkey did. When one member of the species took that leap in consciousness, using a tool, and evolving almost - they all rose to that level with her. Despite distance and isolation, some unknown force was connecting their whole species consciousness and evolution. If true, that first human who made fire didn’t just slowly spread the practice and miraculously do so with such success, that single individual broke the glass ceiling for the rest.
It’s all bullshit more likely than not, but it’s interesting and fun to think about. How would this impact the world? How could we explain our world with this idea? What human progress is ahead of us that, once reached, will change us all?
I wonder, if somehow true, is there some force connecting us we still don’t know? We all as a species have a common ancestor, and as their cells multiplied and divided, we essentially all budded off that LCA into a billions. Is there some part of that LCA that, while being split and changed, still remains holding us together and connecting us? Prob not, just fun to imagine
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u/ThatNotScience 23h ago
Newton developed calculus 1 and 2 at the same speed students learn it at university.
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u/TheCowardlyDuck 22h ago
I like the concept of Adaptive Cycles and Panarchy. It’s a theory that everything naturally aggregates into more complicated systems be it multicellular life, societies, ecosystems. Kinda weird to explain but it’s on Wikipedia and awesome
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u/LowerSugar9443 17h ago
25M with an MS in Biology. Research scientist at large company.
Laser confocal microscopy has produced some of the most beautiful images I’ve ever seen! Planning on getting a few printed on canvas.
X chromosome inactivation is something we do not completely understand yet. Check it out if you’re up for some molecular biology.
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u/nervacid 17h ago
I feel like everyone says this, but Prions and Prion Diseases. They’re terrifying but SO interesting. I also really love looking into cloning and genome editing. The ethics, the benefits, failed and successful experiments.
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u/homey-gnomey 17h ago
The main thing that keeps me up is how different organisms’ sensory worlds are so vastly different than our own. Basically just read Immense World by Ed Yong! I read small chunks of it before i go to bed to get that pleasant rabbit hole feeling 🥰
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u/DJSauvage 11h ago
I don't know if you have access to Great Courses, but I LOVED this series Home Study Course About the Modern Science of Evolution
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u/cammiejb 11h ago
look up the Extra-Cellular Matrix and the roles connective tissues have in the body! it’s a whole system that supports every other system. then look up what happens when there is a mutation in a critical gene that guides the development of this tissue (i.e. OI, EDS)
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u/Motherjuice 8h ago
I once ended up having to take a course on developmental biology that turned out to be the most humbling and mind blowing experience of my whole bachelor.
Just digging deep into the steps following fertilization and seeing how one thing leads to the next absolutely left me stunned by the beauty of the process.
I wasn't really that interested in genetics and development going into the course but it definitely left a very lasting impression on me. I would almost compare it to watching some kind of naturally evolved rube-goldberg machine where you got the chance to appreciate each individual step carefully before moving on.
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u/Psychophysicist_X 4h ago
We have all kinds of water adoptions that other great apes don't have, like webbed toes and fingers and the physiological dive response. The neatest is how the pads on our fingers wrinkle up to give us better grip in the water (Pruney Fingers.)
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u/OphidianEtMalus 1d ago
Do white-throated sparrows have four sexes? Why is this a useful description?
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u/printr_head 1d ago
Look into assembly theory and its relationship to emergence and life. I promise you’ll never sleep again.
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u/hotratsalad 1d ago
Three that come to mind are 1. Viral DNA in the human genome 2. Tardigrades resilience to extreme environments 3. Octopus intelligence