Mark Pallen's video: Origin of Species in Dub HD: Natural Selection

Rationale for the track This track consists of a series of verbatim quotes from Chapter Four, with a few Jamaicanized sound bites from these quotes used as chorus. Lyrics We a study selection— natural selection! We are studying selection— natural selection! “It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life. W e see nothing of these slow changes in progress, until the hand of time has marked the long lapses of ages, and then so imperfect is our view into long past geological ages, that we only see that the forms of life are now different from what they formerly were.” “...you know ...” “...different from what they formerly were...” “...the hand of time...” “...natural selection...” “...natural selection...” “...you know ...” “The affinities of all the beings of the same class have sometimes been represented by a great tree. I believe this simile largely speaks the truth... As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever branching and beautiful ramifications.” “...beautiful ramifications...” “...the great Tree of Life...” “...beautiful ramifications...” “...the great Tree of Life...” “...natural selection...” “...beautiful ramifications...” “...natural selection...” “...beautiful ramifications...” For more information on the Tree of Life project see: http://tolweb.org/tree/ Notes on the Video In this video we exploit, with permission, video clips that were published as supplementary material for a recent paper in Nature: Nature. 2005 Dec 22;438(7071):1148-50. Dance reveals symmetry especially in young men. Brown WM, Cronk L, Grochow K, Jacobson A, Liu CK, Popovic Z, Trivers R. Center for Human Evolutionary Studies, Department of Anthropology, Rutgers University, 131 George Street, New Brunswick, New Jersey 08901-1414, USA. wmbrown@rci.rutgers.edu Dance is believed to be important in the courtship of a variety of species, including humans, but nothing is known about what dance reveals about the underlying phenotypic--or genotypic-- quality of the dancer. One measure of quality in evolutionary studies is the degree of bodily symmetry (fluctuating asymmetry , FA), because it measures developmental stability . Does dance quality reveal FA to the observer and is the effect stronger for male dancers than female? To answer these questions, we chose a population that has been measured twice for FA since 1996 (ref. 9) in a society (Jamaican) in which dancing is important in the lives of both sexes. Motion-capture cameras created controlled stimuli (in the form of videos) that isolated dance movements from all other aspects of visual appearance (including FA), and the same population evaluated these videos for dancing ability. Here we report that there are strong positive associations between symmetry and dancing ability, and these associations were stronger in men than in women. In addition, women rate dances by symmetrical men relatively more positively than do men, and more-symmetrical men value symmetry in women dancers more than do less- symmetrical men. In summary, dance in Jamaica seems to show evidence of sexual selection and to reveal important information about the dancer. Other images are largely taken from photos and videos by Pallen, apart from: • an image of the Grand Canyon at the foot of the T oroweap - Looking East . By W .H. Holmes • a phylogenetic figure from the Origin of Species (the only diagram in the work.) • Stammbaum des Menschen ("Pedigree of man"), a lithography by Ernst Haeckel (1874) Source: Haeckel E (1874) Anthropogenie oder Entwickelungsgeschichte des Menschen. Gemeinverständliche wissenschaftliche V orträge über die Grundzüge der menschlichen Keimes- und Stammes-Geschichte. Leipzig: Engelmann • Some footage from NASA