posted by
janrinok
on Wednesday May 07 2014, @12:45AM
from the but-you-never-see-a-squid-wearing-spectacles dept.
from the but-you-never-see-a-squid-wearing-spectacles dept.
A nature.com story reports that humans and squids evolved the same eyes using the same genes.
Eyes and wings are among the most stunning innovations evolution has created. Remarkably these features have evolved multiple times in different lineages of animals. For instance, the avian ancestors of birds and the mammalian ancestors of bats both evolved wings independently, in an example of convergent evolution. The same happened for the eyes of squid and humans. Exactly how such convergent evolution arises is not always clear. In a new study, published in Nature Scientific Reports, researchers have found that, despite belonging to completely different lineages, humans and squid evolved through tweaks to the same gene.
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Humans and Squids Evolved the Same Eyes
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by black6host on Wednesday May 07 2014, @02:31AM
I find it simply amazing that there is so much diversity and yet so many similarities between living things. So many differences and yet creatures of all types share so many things in common. Couple that with the dependencies between species that exist and allow life as we know it to persist and I'm in awe.
That's one of the things I'm trying to teach my little one now. Everything has a role to play, in some way, in making our planet what it is (supportive of life for one, at least for now...) That and we need to share this rock with all living things. There's not a lot of bug squishing that goes on around here... Plenty of observation though and it's either catch and release or catch and eat :)
(Score: 5, Informative) by SlimmPickens on Wednesday May 07 2014, @03:01AM
So, "same" doesn't mean what it sounds like, they're saying human and squid eyes are both camera eyes and are both achieved by RNA splicing of the PAX6 gene, which predates the Cambrian explosion. Insect eyes by contrast are achieved by duplicating PAX6.
I guess there are strong similarities, but at the end of the day the cephalopod eye [wikipedia.org] is as different as you would imagine. No blind spot, no cornea, focuses with movement (rather than a flexible lens), potential awareness of polarizationand who knows what else.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 07 2014, @03:12AM
Yawn. Just about everything has similarities and differences. A car tire has similarities and differences with a bike tire. What does that prove?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 07 2014, @01:50PM
That an intelligent being designed one based on the other.
(Score: 4, Funny) by krishnoid on Wednesday May 07 2014, @06:34AM
It wouldn't be very intelligent design not to reuse a working sub-assembly in another product, now would it?
(Score: 3, Funny) by Thexalon on Wednesday May 07 2014, @12:17PM
What really happened:
The Pirates were sailing the sea blindly under the divine guidance of the FSM, when the FSM decided that it would be less work for him if the Pirates could see where they were going. He called to his greatest follower, Pegleg, and spoke to him from his bowl of pasta: "It will soon come to pass that you shall come into possession of a sea creature with eyes and tentacles. You shall place the eyes on your face, and I shall make them see for you, that you may prosper." The next time the Pirates cast their net looking for fish, they pulled up a squid. Pegleg did as he had been told, and lo, His Noodlyness had blessed him with Sight. Pegleg now saw that the Pirate Wenches were quite attractive, and even if he looked like a chumbucket they would be none the wiser. And so it came to pass that those Pirates with Sight continued to reproduce more than those without, and after 40 years all Pirates were born with eyes.
Thus endeth the lesson.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Thursday May 08 2014, @01:11AM
Please be sure to give Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye a copy of this story the next time they're in a creationism debate. Talk about muddying the waters ...