🌊✨️ At the beach of Baltrum, the sea washed up the delicate skeleton of Echinocardium cordatum, a heart urchin. Its sharp spines are gone, leaving only the pale, fragile shell with fine patterns.

🫧🤍 The heart urchin lives under the sea, buried in soft sand or mud, up to 15 centimeters deep. It uses its small spines to dig and feeds by filtering tiny food particles like the decomposing remains of organisms and plants (detritus) from the sand around it.

👽🪸 Sea urchins may look very alien at first glance, yet they are actually more closely related to us humans than to snails or insects. This is because sea urchins – just like starfish – belong to the echinoderms.

🪞🤔 If you only look at their appearance, you might think: Wait a minute! Starfish and sea urchins look nothing like most animals. Many animals – including humans – have two mirror-image halves (bilateral symmetry). Echinoderms, however, are radially symmetrical, usually with five identical sections. That might make it seem like they’re even less related to us than snails or insects, which also have two symmetrical sides.

🧬🔬 But appearances can be misleading. Echinoderms, like all vertebrates, belong to the deuterostomes. Snails and insects, on the other hand, are part of the protostomes. A key clue: echinoderms are bilaterally symmetrical in their larval stage. It’s only later in life that they develop their characteristic radial symmetry.

👄♻️ The fundamental difference between protostomes and deuterostomes shows up very early in embryonic development: in deuterostomes, the first body opening (the blastopore) becomes the anus, and the mouth forms later. In protostomes, it’s the other way around – the blastopore develops into the mouth.

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🦥🇩🇪🌞 Megatherium germanicum heliophilum - the sun-loving giant sloth from Germany.

☘️ In recent posts, I've shown you living fossils - the ginkgo and the magnolias. The term "living fossil" is actually avoided in science because it's very superficial. It essentially refers to morphological characteristics.

🧬 If we look deeper, all living things are simultaneously living fossils and then again not, because our characteristics go beyond our appearance.

🧠 Take my ADHD, a neurological abnormality, for example, and follow current knowledge, then ADHD is partly a living fossil: the genetic component is a relic from hunter-gatherer cultures, or even dates back much further. ADHD is therefore referred to as an evolutionary maladaptation because it has advantages in nomadic cultures but disadvantages in a sedentary lifestyle.

🏚⛺️ However, some futurologists assume that humans will return to a nomadic lifestyle once the resources to maintain our civilization are no longer available.

🪸 We carry characteristics that developed billions of years ago. But we have also evolved, and so we are all interwoven between past, present, and future.

🪱 Each of us, whether earthworm or rocket scientist, is equally wonderful and deserving of a future.

🌞 On the topic of future prospects: This March was the warmest in Europe since records began.

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🌼 🦕 💕 🦖 🌸

Magnolias are among my favorite flowering plants. I suspect that's because as a child I was always so excited when I could admire the flowers from my dinosaur book in real life. Magnolias are sometimes called living fossils because they have been known since the Cretaceous period. I still remember the artist's impression from my book of the Triceratops surrounded by blooming magnolias.

A special feature of magnolias is that they specialize in pollination by beetles. Beetles are evolutionarily older than bees, and magnolias have retained very close to their primal characteristics.

I saw this star magnolia yesterday in Frankfurt. Not far away, a huge tulip magnolia was also in bloom. In Oberursel, the magnolias I saw are not yet in bloom, but are also about to open their blossoms.

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🐯🔥 I have a "spotted coat" made up of light blonde, dark blonde, red, white, and gray hairs. This variety of colors reminds me of the patterns seen in animals like lynxes or tigers, where irregular colors serve the purpose of camouflage.

🦣 In prehistoric times, my multicolored hair structure could have served a similar function. The light and dark strands would have mimicked the interplay of light and shadow in the environment. Light hair, such as my blonde or white strands, would reflect the light filtering through the treetops, while darker hairs would have imitated the shadows of the vegetation. This irregular pattern would have helped me blend into the shaded surroundings of forests or open landscapes, making me less visible—similar to animals whose fur patterns merge with their environment.

🐅 In addition to camouflage, the striking hair color could have also played a social role, such as in group identification or mate selection. My "spotted coat" could therefore have been not only an aesthetic feature but also a remnant of a functional adaptation to nature.

🧬 Genetically, the variety in hair colors can be explained by complex inheritance patterns. Hair color is influenced by several genes, with the MC1R gene being the most important for red hair. This gene regulates whether the hair predominantly produces the red pigment pheomelanin or the brown/black pigment eumelanin. Variations in this gene lead to different hair colors, from red to darker or blonde shades. Other genes, such as the ASIP gene, influence the intensity and tone of hair color, particularly the production of dark hair.

🏔🏞 The genetic diversity in hair color could also be an adaptation to climatic conditions or habitats. In northern regions, where there is less sunlight, gene variants may have favored lighter hair colors to absorb more UV light and promote vitamin D production.

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I am a great ape! 🐵🍌

Even in my childhood I was interested in the systematic classification of living things. I was given a set of a few thousand information cards. There was a picture on the front and information on the back. There was also a large index card box. I sorted all living things according to their relationship. Humans and their ancestors were listed in a separate family, which was next to the great apes. However, this made no sense to me. The fact that chimpanzees are more closely related to humans than to orangutans told me that they must at least be in the same family, or each should have their own family.

When I was at school, humans were not considered great apes. The idea that humans are just apes is still met with a lot of rejection today. But not in science, where, based on genetic research, humans are listed in a common family, the great apes (Hominidae), together with the orangutan, gorilla and chimpanzee species.

Many people, even those who are inclined towards scientific explanations of evolution, have a problem with this because they see it as a threat to the uniqueness and specialness of humans.

I often argued with my mother that humans are animals. She - who studied biology - was strictly against this. She said that humans have unique characteristics and abilities and that the mind is something that separates us from animals. A widely held view - still today. I do not share this. Humans are animals and, like every animal species, humans have special abilities. The mental abilities that were once only attributed to humans have long been observed in other animal species - albeit in different ways: self-knowledge, logic, language, culture, grief and more. But the idea that animals are similar to us in their perception and thinking is a tough pill for humanity to swallow.

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Seeing in the Dark and the Green: How Eyes and Leaves Share a Lighty Secret

The world of biology reveals surprising connections, and the human eye and a seemingly ordinary leaf share a fascinating one. Both organs rely on sophisticated light-sensing mechanisms to function effectively in their environments, despite their vastly different purposes.

Within the human eye, the retina houses two crucial photoreceptor cell types: rods and cones. Rods, responsible for low-light vision, utilize rhodopsin, a specialized protein, to capture even the faintest light signals. Cones, responsible for color vision, rely on various forms of iodopsin to differentiate colors in bright light conditions. Both rhodopsin and iodopsin function by undergoing a shape change upon encountering light, triggering a biochemical cascade that ultimately translates light energy into electrical signals the brain interprets as vision.

Plants exhibit a similar strategy. Nestled within their leaves lies phytochrome, a remarkable molecule that, like its counterparts in the eye, acts as a light receptor. Phytochrome exists in several states depending on the specific wavelengths of light it absorbs. By sensing variations in light intensity and spectrum, phytochrome provides the plant with vital information about its surrounding environment. This information plays a critical role in processes like photosynthesis, where plants utilize sunlight as an energy source, and regulates growth patterns based on light availability.

In both the eye and the plant, the photosensors function together with chromophores: retinal in the eye and phytochromobilin in the plant.

This unexpected parallel between the human eye and the leaf underscores a fundamental principle in biology – the ability to detect light is a powerful evolutionary advantage. By harnessing the power of light, both humans and plants gain the ability to navigate their environments, grow, and thrive.

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"Survival of the fittest" is often misunderstood. It was originally meant to imply that the most well-adapted species prevail, not necessarily the "fittest" species. This means that the success of certain traits is not solely dependent on the efficiency of those traits. Rather, it is a complex interplay of environmental conditions, competition, pests, and much more. The success of a trait can largely depend on luck, such as favorable conditions for its spread within a stable population or its extinction due to an event. The fragility of populations is evident in the many species currently facing extinction—evolutionary marvels that suddenly disappear. Traits may take millions of years to develop or may never emerge again. When applied to humans, this is an important realization as it undermines race theories and eugenicist ideologies. The sole basis of these dehumanizing ideologies is a perceived superiority easily refuted by evolutionary insights. There is no basis for considering any physical traits as inferior. However, there is a good reason why this argument is rarely heard: a discussion about the value of human life is incompatible with insights from ethical philosophy. Human dignity is inviolable, and every individual determines their own worth. A discussion about the value of human traits or peculiarities should not even be entertained, as such a discussion is inherently undignified. Unfortunately, there are increasingly societal concepts that garner support with antiquated and dehumanizing views. It is important to employ reason and humanity to oppose such developments.

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The howling honey worm is the neotenic larvae of the sugar dragon. It only develops into adulthood in very rare cases. It smells like cinnamon and cucumber. I don't know more yet, but it's howling all the time. Maybe some nice words would make it feel better. The drawing is from 2007.

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The snifftong is a furry animal from planet Aromaoma. It feeds on smells, which it licks up with its nose tongue. Everything on Aromaoma feeds on smells. Also this flower. Right now. The drawing is from 2007.

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Some may ask why, I ask why not! This is a fish with a palm in its mouth (drawn 2007).🌴🐟 Any questions?😝😝😝

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