- All known life is related—plants and animals share common ancestors.
- Trees are made primarily of air.
- Genetic studies suggest we (kingdom Animalia) are more closely related to Fungi than plants (Plantae).
- Of all the cells in your body, the ones containing your DNA are outnumbered by the ones that do not, by a factor of 9 to 1—that is, 90% of "you" isn't you.[3] Consequently, the bacteria in your gut also out number all the humans who have ever lived. WARNING: newer research has revised this estimate down, from 9-to-1 or 10-to-1 to just 3-to-1 or even just 1-to-1.[4] In part this is due to the estimate of the number of cells in a human (not including the microbiota) being revised upwards from 10 trillion to 37.2 trillion. It's also been claimed that a person has about 5 pounds of bacteria living in/on them, but I have yet to see a good source for that.
- Turritopsis nutricula is a potentially biologically immortal jellyfish capable of returning to a sexually immature state after reaching adulthood—possibly repeating the cycle of maturation indefinitely. (Though this has currently been observed in the lab only.)
- A number of ant species farm fungus, thought to have discovered agriculture 50-65 million years ago, long before humans. The most advanced farmer-ants (leaf cutter species) farm a fungus that exists no where on Earth besides their farms, an example of mutualism. There are also species of ants who "milk" aphids, and protect the aphids while they feed.
- The Y chromosome can be used to trace paternal ancestral lines, as the Y chromosome is unique to the paternal lineage. Mitochondrial DNA can be used to trace the maternal lines, as it is only passed through the ovum.
- On one side of a grain of salt, you can put 10 skin cells, 100 bacterium, or 1,000 viruses.
- Horizontal gene transfer—the transfer of genetic material into an organism in any way other than inheritance from it's parents—is now thought to play an important role in prokaryotic evolution (bacteria mostly), and though it's role in the evolution of multicellular life is less clear, it has been confirmed to occur.
- Bacteriophages—viruses that infect bacteria—are among the most common "biological entities" on Earth, with as many as 900 million phages per cubic centimeter in mats of bacteria living on the surface of seawater.
- Endosymbiotic theory suggests that mitochondria, chloroplasts and other organelles originated as individual life forms that were later taken into other organisms, becoming endosymbionts. Viral Eukaryogenesis suggests that this same process was responsible for the cell nucleus of eukaryotes. (Taking these theories together with the development of multicellular life and social structures it seems that cooperation is a very valuable tool for survival on many levels!)
- Nylonase is a set of enzymes recently evolved in bacteria found in the waste water ponds of nylon factories allow the bacteria to digest the recently invented human-made molecules.
- Your body produces approximately your entire body weight in adenosine triphosphate every day. Alhough the body only contains about 250 grams on average, ATP is constantly being recycled in a loop, being broken down in metabolic processes and reassembled by your mitochondria.
- Your eyes subtract the amount of green light they detect from the amount of red light they detect, so you can't tell the difference between a 100% red + 25% green detection versus a 75% red + 0% green detection. (Check out Opponent process for more information, or for even more information read this post on how the filters work; or for the most information check out this in depth treatise on color vision.)
- There are individual living trees nearly as old as written history (~3200 BC vs ~2832 BC).
- Your brain can triangulate an estimated position for a noise source based on the delay of arrival to your ears, with delays as small as 9 millionths of a second.
- In species capable of parthenogenesis there is a potential for mothers to nurture not only their daughters in the womb, but their granddaughters, which is known as telescoping generations, and it occurs in aphids.
- A quaking aspen named Pando in Utah is thought to be the heaviest known organism, estimated to weigh about 6 million kilograms, spanning an estimated 106 acres and having around 47,000 trunks or stems. The root system is thought to be 80,000 years old, making it among the oldest known living organisms.
- Due to pedigree collapse, virtually every human on Earth (except possibly a few extraordinarily isolated peoples is related by no more than about 40 generations.
- A verbatim quote, from Richard Dawkins' book, A Devil's Chaplain, “Molecular evidence suggests that our common ancestor with chimpanzees lived, in Africa, between five and seven million years ago, say half a million generations ago. This is not long by evolutionary standards ... in your left hand you hold the right hand of your mother. In turn she holds the hand of her mother, your grandmother. Your grandmother holds her mother's hand, and so on ... How far do we have to go until we reach our common ancestor with the chimpanzees? It is a surprisingly short way. Allowing one yard per person, we arrive at the ancestor we share with chimpanzees in under 300 miles.”
- Most mammals have a vestibulo-ocular reflex which allows allows us to see even when our heads are moving, (which is why we don't have to bob our heads when we move around).
- Not only can female Komodo dragons reproduce asexually (parthenogenesis), they only produce male offspring!
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