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Friday, March 16, 2012

The Essentials: Striped Horses, Oversized Monkeys & Other Telling Observations


People of all walks, ages and experience notice similarities in organisms.  When looking at zebras in a zoo a little kid might ask, “Why do the horsies have stripes?” and who hasn’t called an orangutan or gorilla a monkey.  My favorite is when someone calls any old insect a bug. Sure a bug is an insect and they are related but that doesn’t mean all insects are bugs (to dig deeper into this entomological nerdery Google Hemiptera).  The point here is that we naturally see connections between different organisms.  Evolution is a theory that says –“Yes organisms are definitely connected - here are some nice examples to illustrate the point…” then goes on to show in great and diverse detail that organisms are connected in lineage to each other and to all other organisms from the deep past. 

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