Convergent Evolution - Tumblr Posts

Theory: clocks restrain the passage of time, most efficiently while you are looking at one, but even just having a clock handy to keep checking slows things enough. One day, your phone dies so you can't check the time before and after you shower to know how long it took. You exit the shower and find that everything has evolved into crabs. Based on a true story (something like this happened to me on Thursday).

In the best selling book The Four Agreements don Miguel Ruiz gives four principles to practice in order to create love and happiness in your life. Adopting and committing to these agreements is simple. Actually living and keeping these Four Agreements can be one of the hardest things you will ever do. It can also be one of the most life changing things you will ever do. As you practice living these four practices your life will dramatically change. In the beginning these new habits will be challenging and you will lapse countless times. With practice these agreements become integrated into your being and every area of your life and become easy habits to keep. The Four Agreements are: 1. Be Impeccable with your Word: Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the Word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your Word in the direction of truth and love. 2. Don’t Take Anything Personally Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering. 3. Don’t Make Assumptions Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life. 4. Always Do Your Best Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse, and regret. Understanding how to Integrate and Live the practices Upon reading don Miguel’s wisdom many people have their eyes opened to a new possibility for living life. They get excited when they see the potential for happiness, love, and respect with themselves and their relationships. What they fail to see is the challenges and resistance the mind will have to living just one of the agreements. Don Miguel briefly mentions these challenges in his book, but people fixate on the four chapters with the agreements and seem to miss these other important points. This is often the set up for expectations that lead to disappointment and frustration. Domestication During our early life we began making agreements. Our parents rewarded us when we did what they wanted and they punished us when we didn’t. We also learned behaviors and habits in school, church, and from other adults and children on the playground. The tools of reward and punishment were often emotional and sometimes physical. The impact of other people’s opinions and reactions to us became a very strong force in the habits we created. In this process we created agreements in our mind of who we should be, what we shouldn’t be, who we were, and who we were not. Over time we learned to live our life based on the agreements in our own mind. We learned to live according to the agreements that came from the opinion of others. In this process of domestication it turns out that the choices we make and the life we live is more driven by the opinions we learned from others than one we would choose on our own. Why Living the Four Agreements Is Such a Challenge We have out of years of habit not paid attention to how we express our self. The responses that come out of our mouth are often automatic. They were learned from years of habit living by the agreements we learned. We do not consciously choose our words, or the emotion, tone, and attitude that we express. Over years our mind has filled with beliefs that generate incessant thinking. In all that thinking we have many assumptions that we are not aware of. We even make the assumption that what we think is true. We imagine and assume what others think of us and how they will react. We also assume that the judgments and self criticisms we have are true. We have learned to make so many assumptions that we aren’t aware of. These assumptions are not the truth. These assumptions and the faith we express in them is just one way that we are not impeccable with our word. Through our domestication we have also learned to take things personally. We assume that when someone has an opinion about us that their opinion is valid. Their opinion becomes our belief about our self. We end up having an emotional reaction to our own belief because we assumed their opinion it is true. We can also take personally our own opinions. We take personally our own self judgments. These self judgments are nothing more than an assumption. Over years the mind has developed many habits of making assumptions and taking them personally. Just because you adopt the Four Agreements doesn’t mean that all these habits in the mind will stop with that commitment. When you decide to change your life and adopt the Four Agreements you are challenging the beliefs you learned and the habits you practiced since your childhood domestication. Adopting the Four Agreements creates a conflict in the mind between expressing your self Impeccably with love and your existing fear based beliefs. Avoiding Double Jeopardy One of the hidden assumptions that people often make when adopting the Four Agreements is about time. Without awareness the mind makes the assumption that they should immediately be able to keep the Four Agreements 100% of the time. The mind completely ignores that there are already existing agreements and habits of taking things personally that have been in place for years. With the expectation of the new agreement that we will not break any of the Four Agreements we are set up for failure. We have an emotional reaction and take something personally which feels bad. (but is completely normal part of our old habits) But then the inner judge reprimands us for failing to not take something personally. Now we feel twice as bad. The inner judge tells us that we failed and the voice of the victim in the mind accepts this proposal. The result is that we are not only upset, but we also feel like a failure. If you just look at your emotional state at this point it will seem like things are getting worse instead of better. It can seem like attempting to keep the Four Agreements is causing more problems and making you feel worse. If you are aware that you are judging your self for taking something personally, you can feel even worse. Your inner judge might use that awareness to judge and reject your self for judging your self for taking something personally. In the beginning the myriad of voices in your head are likely to use your new found awareness as material for self judgment. This is when the fourth agreement, Always Do Your Best, is most important. It gives you immunity from self judgment. Your best isn’t perfect practice of these agreements on day one. Your best will include a lot of stumbling in the beginning and improve over time as you practice. Just like walking, learning a language, or playing a sport, you can’t play at top level on your first day learning. Awakening In actuality the problem is not that you adopted the Four Agreements. Nor is the problem that you are a failure. What is really happening is that you are having an awakening. You are waking up to how your mind makes assumptions, has emotional reactions, and is so quick to make self judgments. These realizations about the belief system in your mind are not usually pleasant but are part of an awakening. It is usually uncomfortable realization, but through it your awareness is growing. With some more awareness and practice you can move beyond this uncomfortable awakening about the mind. You will come to see that it is not You that is judging your self for failing. It is the inner judge. With practice you will see the ridiculous expectations and assumptions for what they are and not feel like a failure when you lapse in your journey to impeccability. This comes as you gain more awareness and gain more personal power over your agreements. The Challenge of a Spiritual Warrior Don Miguel refers to some of these challenges throughout the book. However, in the excitement of the Truth in what don Miguel writes, people often overlook where he points out that this endeavor is not easy. The agreements may be simple, but he never says they are easy to keep. At the same time living the Four Agreements has taken me on the most rewarding and profound journey of happiness and fulfillment beyond anything I could have imagined. The hard work in the beginning is rewarded to me in every interaction every day of my life. This is a very big return for a small investment of time and effort. Don Miguel refers to people who decide to adopt the Four Agreements and create love and happiness in their life as Spiritual Warriors. It is Spiritual because it is about living your Life. It is also referred to as a war because you are challenging the old fear based beliefs in your mind. It will take more than a week and a half to break free of fear, the tyranny of the inner judge, and old emotional habits. There will be some battles lost along the way, but that is of minor concern in the longer term strategy of creating happiness in your life. The Quest for Personal Freedom The quest of a Spiritual Warrior is for Personal Freedom. Personal Freedom means freedom from fear, illusions, and the fear based beliefs in the mind. In essence it means to win the war over the beliefs in the mind. It is with Personal Freedom that we are free of the human condition of emotional suffering. Spiritual traditions around the world have their own names for this state of awareness including nirvana and heaven. It is a state that is simply described as living your life with unconditional love, gratitude, and respect, for your self, and for others. The Opportunity I’ve spent many years personally studying with don Miguel Ruiz. After my life and relationships were completely transformed I asked him if there was anything that I could do for him in return. He said, “If you want to, share with others what you have learned and how you live your life so they can be happy as well.” That help has taken the form of material on my web sites, personal coaching guidance, online audio course in Self Mastery, and Spiritual Intensive Journeys. I am also working on a book about my experiences. There are many practical actions you can take to speed up changing your life and live more impeccably. In my years of study with don Miguel what he has written in his books is a small fraction of his teachings. While don Miguel is no longer teaching, you can still learn the practices, process, wisdom and insights from those he trained. You are invited to take advantage of the material in my web sites, my personal coaching services, and the workshops and Power Journeys I lead. The best place to start is the Self Mastery Audio Series. It is a self paced program of mp3 audio files that you download and listen to. Each session has very specific practical exercises to help you implement aspects of mastering the Four Agreements. The first four sessions are free so that you can sample the material and see if it will work for you. The next 10 sessions are only $99. As an alternative you can listen to many of the free mp3 audios that I have placed on line that deal with issues like, How not to take thing personally, Changing Core Beliefs, Free Will, Feeling Not Good Enough, Hidden Assumptions, Do We Have Free Will, and others. I wish you much Love, Joy, and Laughter in your Journey, Gary van Warmerdam

Gary van Warmerdam is a Guide for individuals seeking a life of Love, Gratitude, and freedom from fear and judgments. He has spent over 15 years personally studying and learning from don Miguel Ruiz, author of The Four Agreements and other best selling books. He is available for personal coaching. You can reach him at 805-742-4131.

Source: a guy in a bar, but technically here: http://www.toltecspirit.com/ 

Everyone loves to talk about carcinization but nobody talks about how unrelated clades of plants repeatedly evolve into trees.

Have any of you ever heard of the hummingbird moths we get in Britain?

So, I thought I saw a hummingbird last year. It was much bigger than a bug could be, I thought, and it hovered around flowers and looked like it had feathers.

I got pretty close but it was never still enough to see clearly. Then, when I told my parents they said "oh! it was probably a moth!" and I was baffled for a long time. Like, how could a moth look like and act so much like a hummingbird?

Until I googled "hummingbirds in the UK" and this fucker comes up:

Everyone, meet the hummingbird hawk-moth; one of the weirdest and coolest cases of convergent evolution on this planet.

This is the kinda thing I'd see in fiction and go "oooh cool, bug hummingbird! Wish we had those on earth!" But we do. We really do have them on earth!! Isn't that nuts?!?!?

https://bioone.org/journals/annales-zoologici/volume-73/issue-1/00034541ANZ2023.73.1.010/A-Dung-Beetle-Impostor--Revision-of-the-Australian-Weevil/10.3161/00034541ANZ2023.73.1.010.short

Only just learned for the first time in my life that Australia has dung *weevils* and it was only just noticed that some species roll dung balls like a scarab however I also have to acknowledge the species they were studying is called Tentegia stupida

More on this when I’m actually done my paper (lol so like at 4 am or so I’ll be here again) but basically there’s a marine hypothesis and a terrestrial/burrowing hypothesis on snake origins.

The former came about because the only well-characterized early snakey fossils are...

I read this study for class the other week! I feel like a bit of an idiot for not remembering it, but it's still awesome!

Inspired from the new tumblr blog fuckyeahconvergentevolution.tumblr.com i wanted to make a convergent evolution post. This is an example i like to use often in my presentations because it portrays convergent evolution remarkably, but i will get to that later on.

This…

@fuckyeahconvergentevolution (I haven't had the chance to read the whole article yet, but it sounds like something you might like!)

Yakutian horses adapted to the extreme cold of eastern Siberia in less than 800 years, according to researchers.

The study team said the change happened almost overnight in evolutionary terms, covering only 100 or so generations. The process involved changes in the expression of a raft of genes, including some also selected in human Siberian groups and the extinct woolly mammoth.

The researchers, in a new scientific study, compared the complete genomes of nine living and two ancient Yakutian horses from Far-East Siberia with a large genome panel of 27 domesticated horses.

The analysis shows that the current population of Yakutian horses was founded after the migration of the Yakut people into the region in the 13-15th century AD. Yakutian horses thus developed their striking adaptations to the extremely cold climate of the region in less than eight centuries.

This represents one of the fastest examples of evolutionary adaptation yet seen within mammals.

The international team of researchers, whose findings have been published in the early edition of PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA), said horses have been essential to the survival and development of the Yakut people, who migrated into the Far-East Siberia, probably from Mongolia.

There, Yakut people developed an economy almost entirely based on horses. Horses were crucial for communication and keeping the population in contact within a territory slightly larger than Argentina, and with 40% of its surface area situated north of the Arctic Circle.

Horse meat and hides have also been revealed as crucial for surviving extremely cold winters, with temperatures occasionally dropping below -70 degrees Celsius.

Horses have been present in Yakutia for a long time, as 30,000 year-old Late Pleistocene fossils from the region show. Yet, the study team, led by the University of Copenhagen’s Dr Ludovic Orlando, showed that ancient horses of this region were not the ancestors of the present-day Yakutian horses.

The genome sequence obtained from the remains of a 5200 year-old horse from Yakutia appears within the diversity of a now-extinct population of wild horses that the team discovered last year in Late Pleistocene fossils from the Taymir peninsula, in Central Siberia.

This new finding extends by thousands of kilometres eastwards the geographical range of this divergent horse population, which became separated from the lineage leading to modern horses some 150,000 years ago. It also extends its presence up to 5200 years ago – a time when woolly mammoths also becameextinct.

“This population did not appear on any radar until we sequenced the genomes of some of its members,” said Dr Orlando, who is with the Centre for GeoGenetics at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, which is part of the University of Copenhagen.

“With 150,000 years of divergence with the lineage leading to modern horses, this makes the roots of this population as deep as the origins of our human species.”

Interestingly, the new genome analyses show that the horses Yakut people now ride, and probably rode throughout history, as shown by the genome of a horse that lived about 200 years ago, are not related with this now-extinct horse lineage, but rather with the domesticated horses from Mongolia.

“We know now that the extinct population of wild horses survived in Yakutia until 5200 years ago.

“Thus, it extended from the Taymir peninsula to Yakutia, and probably all across the entire Holarctic region. In Yakutia, it may have become extinct prior to the arrival of Yakut people and their horses. Judging from the genome data, modern Yakutian horses are no closer to the extinct population than is any other domesticated horse.”

The new genome analyses show that the founders of the modern Yakutian horse population probably entered the region with Yakut horse-riders in the 13-15th Century AD.

“This is truly amazing as it implies that all traits now seen in Yakutian horses are the product of very fast adaptive processes, taking place in about 800 years.

“This represents about a hundred generations for horses. That shows how fast evolution can go when selective pressures for survival are as strong as in the extreme environment of Yakutia.”

The team set out to identify the genes underlying such adaptations. Strikingly, they found that a large fraction of the selection signatures were not located within the coding region of genes, but within their upstream regulatory regions. It thus suggests that the adaptation of Yakutian horses to their environment took place through a massive reprogramming ofgene expression.

“The founder group of the current population was quite reduced in size,” he said.

“The genetic variation standing within gene bodies was, thus, probably limited in comparison to that present within regulatory regions. These regulatory variants probably offered as many possibilities to rapidly modify horse traits in a way that was compatible with their survival.”

Focusing on the genes and their regulatory regions showing evidence of selection, the team identified key biological functions involved in the adaptive process. These concern physical changes, hormonal responses involved in heat regulation and even the production of anti-freezing compounds.

The list of selective signatures also include genes, such as TGM3, which is involved in hair development and might be responsible for the extremely hairy winter coat of Yakutian horses.

Fellow researcher Dr Pablo Librado, who is also with the university, said: “In addition to unveiling their evolutionary origins, our approach helped narrow down the genetic basis of adaptations that are unique to Yakutian horses. In one word, their genetic makeup.

“We also found genes that were reported to have undergone selection in other Arctic populations, such as indigenous Siberian humans, and even the woolly mammoth. It provides a compelling example of evolutionary convergence, where unrelated groups exposed to similar environments end up independently developing similar adaptations.”

Colleague Dr Clio Der Sarkissian, who also took part in the study, said the work showed the power of ancient DNA. “We would have never been able to discover the existence of the now extinct ancient population of horses by analyzing the genome of modern horses.

“With ancient genomes, we can now understand the dynamics of past populations at unprecedented levels and track, through space and time, how these became adapted to changing environments.

“Applied to pre-industrial museum specimens, our approach can therefore help following how extant populations have been affected by ongoing climate changes and recent human activities. This can help develop tailor-made conservation programs, which will be ultimately essential for preserving endangered populations.”

The study group has already implemented such approaches for preserving the Przewalski’s horse, which represents the last truly wild horse living in the planet.

Abstract:  Tracking the origins of Yakutian horses and the genetic basis for their fast adaptation to subarctic environments

tumblr’s “you know he dead” and 4chan’s “did he died” are good examples of convergent meme evolution, in which two memes have evolved to fill similar linguistic niches in separate locations