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Animals' shared ancestor with fungus is thought to be among https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choanoflagellate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choanoflagellate, w
by __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
Animals' shared ancestor with fungus is thought to be among https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choanoflagellate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choanoflagellate, which kinda look like sperm.
My guess is that they were predominantly haploid (like sperm/eggs), and just had a diploid (like most other human cells) phase for reproduction. Somewhere along the way this switched (which is thought to have happened in plants also, mosses are primarily haploid while flowering plants are primarily diploid).
...which is totally bonkers. It's like if sperm/eggs went around making all of the important decisions and only bothered to spin up a human briefly for reproductive purposes. But then the sex got a bit out of control and got a job and an apartment and now it's the sperm who look like they're just for reproduction.
Disclaimer: I took Bio 101 two semesters back, so I'm pretty much an expert.
- kridsdale1 3y agoYour comment reminds me of another biology tale: The natural, most efficient, and optimal state of an animal is napping. Wakefulness, and everything that happens during that time, is just an annoying distraction to maintain homeostasis.
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- throwup238 3y agoThat is the natural state of the domesticated cat because we have artificially selected them to match our aspirations. The optimal nappers. They’re awake just long enough to remind us that they’re the boss and our sole function is to feed them.
- nebula8804 3y agoAre you sure thats not just the toxoplasmosis gondii talking? [0]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii#Behavioral_differences_of_infected_hosts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii#Behavioral_d...
- throwup238 3y agoNo, but it would explain the irresistible urge to poop in a sandbox.
- EarthLaunch 3y ago> It's like if *humans* went around making all of the important decisions and only bothered to spin up a *machine* briefly for reproductive purposes. But then the sex *bot* got a bit out of control and got a job and an apartment and now it's the humans who look like they're just for reproduction. This perspective could kind of also apply to plants, a la The Botany of Desire (good book). From a certain plant's perspective, humans exist to help them reproduce.
- canadiantim 3y ago[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- layer8 3y agoYou can go even further: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene-centered_view_of_evolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene-centered_view_of_evolutio...
- __MatrixMan__ 3y agoI subscribe to that view, but I don't think it's any more wild than https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternation_of_generations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternation_of_generations Sure, it's the genes that are doing all of this, but the fact that they would chose two totally separate body plans, each which is a reproductive system for the other... It just seems a bit too scifi to be real.
- wahern 3y ago> It's like if sperm/eggs went around making all of the important decisions and only bothered to spin up a human briefly for reproductive purposes. That's very close to the thesis of Richard Dawkins' seminal book, the Selfish Gene--we're just machines constructed by genes to replicate them. It's literally true, of course, but we don't often take that perspective; yet many things in biology aren't intuitive unless and until we do.[1] [1] OTOH, some things in biology become inexplicable when we do take that perspective, such as non-kin altruism. IIRC, Dawkins admits as much in the book. (Contra some subsequent sociopolitical interpretations, Dawkins never used his "selfish gene" model to refute the possibility of non-kin altruism, just that the model in isolation was insufficient to explain non-kin altruism, the existence of which he seemed to take for granted, at least in humans.)
- skolskoly 3y ago>seminal book Don't think that we don't see this.
- andrewljohnson 3y agoReminds me of a Tweet circa 2021 where someone asked if they should stop using the word seminal because it might micro-harm people.
- mock-possum 3y agoPie’s Law still holds strong
- Enginerrrd 3y agoI've seen people sensor themself on the word "retarded" in a physics context. Which.... Is absurd.
- alexsereno 3y agoYea there was a lot of that going around
- anigbrowl 3y agoI'm something of a scientist myself*, and every time I delve into cellular biology I find myself wondering if there is a primitive consciousness on the cellular level, because lives of many cells are complicated. Consider Memory B cells, which are formed early during foetal development. They hang around in the body for years - sometimes decades - looking out for new and unusual pathogens. When they encounter one, they internalize the peptides and then (typically, but not always) rush off to a germinal center to help manufacture new T cells that can recognize and defeat the unwanted interloper. then the B cells leave again and go back to their vigil. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_B_cell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_B_cell Conversely, when you look at the dynamics of large groups, organizations, and corporate entities (institutions as well as business, up to whole nations), it's hard not to see them as organisms in their own right that have a sort of meta-consciousness independent of their component humans. * This is a joke
- __MatrixMan__ 3y agoI have that thought quite often, both for cells and for aggregate things like countries or religions. Most recently I found myself framing zoonotic diseases (e.g. Lyme, Covid, Malaria) as ecosystem-level weapons against habitat loss i.e. as a manufactured reason to keep humans away.
- neofrommatrix 3y agoAs an expert myself, I say both of you deserve the Ig Nobel.
- patcon 3y ago> I have that thought quite often, both for cells and for aggregate things like countries or religions. You both might find this interesting :) Information Closure Theory of Consciousness (2020) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/342956066_Information_Closure_Theory_of_Consciousness https://www.researchgate.net/publication/342956066_Informati... > However, only information processed at specific scales of coarse-graining appears to be available for conscious awareness. We do not have direct experience of information available at the scale of individual neurons, which is noisy and highly stochastic. Neither do we have experience of more macro-scale interactions, such as interpersonal communications. Neurophysiological evidence suggests that conscious experiences co-vary with information encoded in coarse-grained neural states such as the firing pattern of a population of neurons. In this article, we introduce a new informational theory of consciousness: Information Closure Theory of Consciousness (ICT) Still watching the seminars, but this is the clearest text summary I've found online so far: https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/dco3t1/comment/f2hw67o/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/dco3t1/com...
- a_gnostic 3y agoI heard sex exists to reshuffle genes to make it difficult for parasites
- __MatrixMan__ 3y agoI guess if your offspring has an entirely different body plan than you and it's only their offspring that resembles you then it would take a very clever parasite indeed to complete the cycle and follow the germ line across both transitions.
- a_gnostic 3y agoParasites will often suppress the host's immune system. Reshuffling immune attack vectors should suffice.