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SO ENDS this meditation on imperfection in nature, a reflection of the processes of the random forces of evolution, and the multitude of accommodations and work-arounds that resulted. This perspective turns on its head centuries of thinking that assumed a march towards ever increasing perfection. Living things are a weird hacked menagerie of hybrid parts cobbled together on the fly. View in LinkedIn

VESTIGIAL EAR. Humans have a Neanderthal-like inner ear, it was recently found. A messy situation simply got worse. https://lnkd.in/dXSe7HJ View in LinkedIn

BIG MESS. "You can really think of the human genome as the epitome of an unintelligent design. It's the biggest mess of a genome." (Lynch) https://lnkd.in/dwDevSE View in LinkedIn

ACCUMULATED DROSS. "The understanding that evolution is an inherently messy and inefficient process that often produces junk. This junk may be retained if it's not causing trouble." https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/three-reasons-to-like-junk-dna/ View in LinkedIn

JUNK DNA. "The reason why most of these useless pieces have not been weeded out is simply because there was no need to. We should remember that evolution does not work toward a best possible outcome, it can only do the best with what it already has. It's too much of a risk and too much work to get rid of all these defective and non-functional sequences if they aren't a burden; the work of simply duplicating these sequences is much lesser than that of getting rid of them." https://lnkd.in/dmueWnQ View in LinkedIn

WHY DO BABIES CRY? If your face had to do this in nine months, you would cry too. http://m.9gag.com/gag/a09XLGX/the-formation-of-the-human-face-as-found-through-scans-of-a-developing-embryo View in LinkedIn

HACKED MENAGERIE. "Why I love the most awkward, absurd, hacked-together species. The result is a remarkable menagerie of weirdness. Fish with eyes that migrate across their heads as they develop. Lizards that defend themselves by shooting three-foot streams of blood from their own eyes. Pigs with tusks that grow back toward their faces and occasionally grow so long that they fatally pierce the pig’s skull." https://lnkd.in/dkABWYn View in LinkedIn

TWO HISTORIES. "Life is a dynamic process, and organismal structures disclose the history of the two principal levels of biological change: evolutionary and developmental. Vestiges (from the Latin vestigium, for footprint) reveal traces of prior states. Like actual footprints, vestiges offer glimpses of what was once there but is no longer present. In biological terms, they reveal former evolutionary and developmental conditions, and in this way they offer valuable keys to unlock the past." http://evolution-outreach.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s12052-014-0012-5 View in LinkedIn

SUFFICES SUFFICE. "Natural selection is not ‘progressive’. It does not inevitably lead to an harmonious and stable state. It does not optimize. It merely suffices." https://lnkd.in/dPY22fc View in LinkedIn

CONTINUAL TINKERING. "Evolution is far more likely to reshape existing structures than to throw up novel ones. The lobed fins of early fish have turned into structures as diverse as wings, fins, hoofs and hands. We have five fingers because our amphibian ancestors had five digits, not because five is necessarily the optimal number of fingers for the human hand." https://lnkd.in/dv-JiV6 View in LinkedIn