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Articles on Evolution

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A new study has shown better-than-chance recognition of gay people by participants. Official U.S. Navy Imagery

Our ‘gaydar’ seems to be working well … but why?

In the last few years, several laboratory studies have shown that, to some extent, we can tell whether someone is gay or straight, just by glimpsing their face. When asked to categorise male and female…
Female wasp spiders often eat their mate straight after intercourse. Wikimedia Commons

Sticky and picky: why male orb-web spiders like heavy virgins

When it comes to selecting a mate, females are traditionally thought of as the choosy sex; males, meanwhile, aren’t thought to be particularly picky. This makes sense for many species – the sex that invests…

Species with multiple colours evolve faster

Australian researchers have provided the first support for a 60-year-old evolution theory - that species with multiple colours in the same population evolve into new species faster than those with one…
Humans and spider monkeys are the only primate species without a penis bone. Chris Makarsky

The human penis is a puzzler, no bones about it

The penis. It comes in so many different shapes and sizes … and that’s just in humans. As you would imagine, different species have very different penises. The males in most mammal species, including cats…
We might expect dramatic sex ratio fluctuations when a whole population experiences extreme food shortages. Teeejayy

Little China girls: how history’s worst famine shifted the sex ratio

People often ask me whether natural selection continues to operate on modern humans in industrialised societies, even though technology has liberated so many from hunger and early death. My answer is always…
Bones recovered from northern Ethiopia have forced a major rethink about how bipedalism evolved. Lars Plougmann

Ancient toe gets a foothold in bipedal evolution

A report published today in Nature by Yohannes Hailie-Selassie and co-workers outlines the importance to our evolutionary story of some very ancient foot bones discovered recently in the Rift Valley of…
This is just asking for trouble. Wikimedia Commons

Sex and death … not-so-strange bedfellows

Few of us consider that having sex could result in a violent, instantaneous death. But in nature, where sex and violence are often two sides of the same coin, many animals are routinely subjected to such…

Fishy ‘alarm substance’ analysed

Researchers from the Agency of Science, Technology and Research in Singapore have analysed the nature of the “alarm substance…

Bees shake abdomens to say ‘I see you’

Asian honey bees attempt to ward off would-be predators by vibrating their abdomens from side to side, researchers at the…

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