Yea I realized I'd said that in my own post. But if there's a better term out there, I'm willing to learn.

Insect colonies such as ant and bee colonies was a biological puzzle for quite a while because of what looked like altruism which is not adaptive. If you take honey bees as an example, typically there's only two individuals who reproduce, the queen and her male sperm donor. From that perspective only, the worker bees seem very altruistic, working hard to keep the queen satisfied while not reproducing themselves .. doesn't sound like it could evolve.

It wasn't until one understood and took into account inclusive fitness and the genetic relationship between the bees that it finally made sense. Traditionally, kids learn that having a high fitness is adaptive and that you gain that by reproducing, but it's not entirely correct. You gain a higher fitness when your genes are replicated, but not necessarily from your own reproduction. In a beehive, the bees are so genetically related that each worker bee gains a benefit to her own fitness from servicing the queen, helping her make them more sisters.

The reason they're so related is bee males are haploid and have only one set of genes which is always passed on. All his sperm contain the same genetics. When the male fertilizes the queen's eggs, she gets diploid female offspring which becomes worker bees. Because the only genetic variability between sisters comes from the queen, worker bees are so closely related that they share ~75% of their genes on average. Sisters themselves are more related to eachother than they would be to their own offspring would they have them (~50%). Because of that, it becomes adaptive for any worker bee to help the queen make her more sisters rather than getting her own offspring.

.. I think it's quite interesting :)

Pandas. And these mother****ers right here:

http://www.taintedsong.com/wp-conten...chow-chow2.jpg

http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p...-chow-0047.jpg

^Chow chows? I wonder if the really do taste good.

edit : Meh, chow chow means puffy-lion dog. Someone told me it was the chinese equivalent to "yum-yum" once. It did seem a bit cruel to simply name something "tasty".

=O :eek:

Leave the chow chows out of this dude... =/ :nono:

ARMADILLOS FTW
hippos are also epic

why doesn't that ever work... It's a tapir. Tapirs are amazing.

Fixed :)

You have to use the img-tags : [img]http://address.to/picture/here.jpg[/img]

BBCode Tutorial

Probably strange to most people, but my favourite animal would have to be bats.

http://www.netstate.com/states/symb/...eared_bat2.jpg

I've studied them in depth as pat of my degree, and they really are fascinating. Not only are they amazingly diverse (more than 1,200 species which makes up ~20% of all classified mammals) but they're the perfect vector to explain all of the major functions and models involved in biology. This can range from their fascinating dual evolution, the amazing ability to echolocate which can incorporate evolutionary niches as well as bioacoustics, as well as being able to be used to explain hibernation, roosting patterns, altruistic behaviour, conervation and a variety of breeding behaviours. In a way they're an ideal model species, and I was lucky enough to work alongside one of the leading World researchers in this area, being able to handle them, take blood samples and ring them to monitor populations year by year.

They're even kind of cute when you get used to them! There's some amazingly weird species out there.