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About Butterflies

Last week I went to the St. Louis Science Center to view the IMAX movie "Flight of the Butterflies." I learned many of the details of the 2,000 mile migration of monarch butterflies. It was a superb story, beautifully filmed. Today, I went to the "Insectarium" at the St. Louis Zoo seeking to mingle with butterflies and take some macro photos. The butterflies were quite trusting, allowing me to often get within a few inches of them. These are amazing animals, stunningly beautiful. IMG_6786 Portraits - zoo ape butterflies IMG_6731 Portraits - zoo ape butterflies [More photos]

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Meet the rat-sized common ancestor of mammals

It lived 66 million years ago, and it might be your ancestor:

Humankind’s common ancestor with other mammals may have been a roughly rat-size animal that weighed no more than a half a pound, had a long furry tail and lived on insects. In a comprehensive six-year study of the mammalian family tree, scientists have identified and reconstructed what they say is the most likely common ancestor of the many species on the most abundant and diverse branch of that tree — the branch of creatures that nourish their young in utero through a placenta. The work appears to support the view that in the global extinctions some 66 million years ago, all non-avian dinosaurs had to die for mammals to flourish.

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Modules and evolution

In "The Parts of Life," Karl Zimmer takes a close look at evolving computer networks and concludes that modules and minimal connections facility efficient evolution.

[A]s networks become more efficient, they become more modular. But once the parts of a system emerge, natural selection may then favor modules themselves, because they make living things more flexible in their evolution. Once life’s Legos get produced, in other words, evolution can start to play.

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