Mutating Pictures

I've taken a long hiatus from blogging recently, but luckily I've collected a lot of biological goodies to post over the next few weeks. First up is Mutating Pictures.

Mutating Pictures is attempting to genetically evolve a group of shapes into the form of a face. On the main page, a simple graphic is displayed like the one above. The visitor to the website is asked to rank the image on a scale of one to ten for "faceness." At any one time 1000 faces are in a pool that randomly appear on the mainpage. The most highly rated "faces" are then mated to create the next generation. Overtime you can actually see the random shapes evolve into somewhat face-like projections. [Edit: the website now randomly picks an animal, body, or face for you to rate.]

It's very cool to see just how powerful artificial selection can be: from fruits and vegetables to livestock and pets to computer-generated faces and bodies. It's also interesting to note that the author has switched projects several times: faces to animals to bodies, and yet the final products do not look exactly like the desired form. I'm guessing that the author switched because the the images reached their peak fitness, i.e. they could no longer evolve in the given environment due to some programming constraint. It would be interesting to see if the author can change the code to optimize for selection and variability.

So check out the website and see if you can't help apply some selective pressure, you Darwinian Dogs, you.

The Great Chain of Being

“The inhabitants of each successive period in the world’s history have beaten their predecessors in the race for life, and are, in so far, higher in the scale of nature; and this may account for the vague yet ill-defined sentiment felt by many paleontologists, that organization on the whole has progressed” (Darwin, On the Origin of Species, 345).

Not so beautiful a sentence as it is interesting. Darwin continues his theme of offspring beating their less fit parents in the struggle for survival. Now, however, it is infused with the Great Chain of Being, the ordered list of creatures based on their advancement. Oddly rather than abandon the idea, Darwin chooses to maintain the Great Chain of Being – created through natural selection, not the mind God – in an appeal to the order-bent minds of his contemporaries.

It took many more years to give up the idea of biological progression in the academic world, but it persists to this day among most people as a common notion. For one reason or another, we are raised to have that “ill-defined sentiment” to place ourselves at the top of the chain, and order the rest of life below us. We feel we are most advanced. Apes may use tools, but they do not build cities. Ants may form cities but they do not create wonders of technology. Obviously we are the most intelligent. Self-deception is easy when we use anthropic criteria.

Evolution should make no appeal to the scale of nature. A creature’s success is determined by its fitness, the number of children it has or by ratio the amount of genetic material it passes on. Surely we are ashamed of any ordering based on evolution’s only criterion for we are quickly humbled by the modest rodent, the fertile fish, or the lowly bacteria.

We, all creatures of this earth, descend from a common ancestor. We adapt to life’s challenges not progress for them.

Brittle Star

An order of brittle star known as Phrynophiurida

Honeybee Disappearance Explained

Remember how all those honeybees were disappearing, and doomsayers were forecasting the collapse of agriculture and the economy? Well it turns out the problem wasn't as serious as most had thought. And now a group of scientists has linked the "colony collapse disorder" to the rare Israeli acute paralysis virus. (link via Scientific American).

I wonder if I could still make a stock portfolio to play off of this? Eh.

Sphincter for an eye?

Sorry for falling off the horse. I'll try to get back on it in the next couple of days. I've accrued a lot to write about, but for now: the one, the only, the Vampyroteuthis.



The scariest squid in the whole ocean. The Vampire Squid's ancient eye does not have eyelids like yours or mine. It instead must constrict its skin around its eye in a sphincter-like movement. Disgustingly fun.



Originally found on Pharyngula.

Evolutionist up a tree