September 18, 2008

Getting to the bottom of evolution: Genetic study investigates the origin of the anus. [Via]
posted by homunculus 16 years ago
  • "It's interesting and it makes you think," he says. I'm going to do some serious thinking about this, myself. *tucks newspaper under arm, closes bathroom door*
  • Let's hope a frank talk about this can clear the air.
  • "A long gut makes sorting food and waste through a single opening inefficient," says Andreas Hejnol, a researcher at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu and one of the study's authors. "So they needed to evolve an anus." Really fucks up the back-end of that Châteauneuf-du-Pape, too.
  • Well, it's nice to see that even science writers are genetically incapable of resisting a cheap ass pun.
  • Fundamental research.
  • >>Getting to the bottom of evolution: Genetic study investigates the origin of the anus In the first draft, that colon was just a semi-colon.
  • If this doesn't win an Ig Nobel, I don't know what will.
  • One of the main researchers mentioned - Mark Martindale - I had lunch with him a few years ago, he was visiting my university for an invited talk. Really, really interesting guy, doing some really cool work. Plus he works in Hawaii. (As he put it, when you can see the ocean from your office, why work anywhere else?) He didn't talk about anuses then. He did talk about the origin of bilaterality. That was a neat damn talk, using the same sort of paradigm; examining genes from organisms that resemble the simple forms of life we evolved from.