An Alternate Human

B0b Barker writes "What has six limbs, a prehensile tail, its brain in its chest, and reproductive organs in its mouth? The alternate human designed by biologist PZ Myers in Remaking Humanity, a story in Forbes.com's package on Reinvention. It may sound fantastic, but researchers are already working to re-build DNA, proteins and cells in a new field called synthetic biology, and we may have to meet these bug-eyed freaks sometime in our lifetime."

Comments

The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[TripMaster Monkey]

From TFA:

There's no particular necessity that the brain would form in the head--that's again a product of convenience, since more sensory organs were located in the front of the animal, and induced an enlargement of the local part of the nervous system to cope with their input.

So let's meddle again, and instead put the brain somewhere near the middle of the animal. In that position, it can be better protected by the mass of bone and muscle in the chest, and also be more conveniently located relative to the heart and circulatory system. It changes our head from a bulbous housing for a crucial, delicate organ, all poised on a fragile stalk of a neck, to a flexible sensory and feeding apparatus.

In addition to convenience, there's a good reason the brain is located in the head...in close proximity to the major sensory organs (eyes, ears, nose, mouth). This placement minimizes the time lag of neural impulse conduction, by minimizing the necessary length of nerve connecting the sensory organs to the brain. For this reason, I wouldn't expect many species to evolve with a larger-than-necessary distance between their brain and their sensory organs (unless such creature evolved a much faster method of conducting nerve impulses than we possess).

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[Total_Wimp]

For this reason, I wouldn't expect many species to evolve with a larger-than-necessary distance between their brain and their sensory organs (unless such creature evolved a much faster method of conducting nerve impulses than we possess).

The sense of touch in my feet does not appear to be having a problem with distance. Maybe I just don't notice the latency, but I definately have sensory receptors all over the body that work just fine.

TW

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems that the central-brained creature in TFA would, in most practical terms, resemble a mollusk. However, on this planet, invertebrates aren't the creatures that developed sentience....so what's the big deal with the author's contention, anyway?

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[rbarreira]

But it does make a difference. That's why some of your reflexes are controlled from your medula and not from your brain - so that they are both uncounscious AND faster.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[michael_cain]

This placement minimizes the time lag of neural impulse conduction, by minimizing the necessary length of nerve connecting the sensory organs to the brain.

In addition to this, add that it puts the high-bandwidth inputs -- audio, and particularly vision -- on dedicated "buses" rather than trying to run them through the same system bus (spinal cord) that handles the low-bandwidth signals for muscles. And allows direct connection to the higher brain structures, rather than routing through all that antique brain-stem nonsense.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[hazee]

I wonder if heat dissipation is a better reason. IIRC, the brain represents about 2% of your mass, but radiates about 20% of your body heat.

Whether that's a good thing (brain needs cooling because of all the circuitry in there), or a bad thing (unneccessary heat loss), I'll leave to the biologists. Also, the question of whether it might actually be more efficient to cool the brain in the chest due to liquid cooling.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[Cervantes]

The sense of touch in my feet does not appear to be having a problem with distance. Maybe I just don't notice the latency, but I definately have sensory receptors all over the body that work just fine.

The sense of touch in your feet also updates a helluva lot less frequently than your sense of sight.

It's one thing to have a bit of latency on a low-bandwidth sense like touch... it's another thing alltogether to have high latency on a high-bandwidth application like sight... especially when reflexes determine how long a creature survives.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[Hoi Polloi]

Speaking of neural wiring. One very important nerve, the vagus nerve, is very likely the most important nerve in the body. It runs to the heart, larynx, lungs, and internal organs yet doesn't go via the spinal cord, it runs directly from the brainstem down the neck. This means that no matter how much damage your spine suffers your automatic functions will still work (explaining why people can be total paraplegics but stay alive). This may be an evolutionary advantage but I find it hard to believe that anything that survived a severed spinal cord would live long enough to reproduce.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[Mattcelt]

I would design something that incorporates the best of both worlds... The sensory input and auto-response can be incorporated into a small secondary brain in the cranium, while all the higher-order functions could be handled in the primary brain in the center of the body. Or you could take it even a step further and incorporate the basic/instinctive functions relative to each sensory organ into the organs themselves - so the eye would have its own neural network incorporated within or nearby.

As a matter of fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that we (v1.0) humans have some distributed sensory response capacity outside the brain itself already.

As far as sensory input response goes, however, I don't think that most functions require the absolute smallest distance. For instance, it's been said that the groin response to sensory input (especially pain) is eight times faster than anywhere else in the body except the eyes, and the groin is hardly the organ closest to the brain...

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[Corgha]

For this reason, I wouldn't expect many species to evolve with a larger-than-necessary distance between their brain and their sensory organs (unless such creature evolved a much faster method of conducting nerve impulses than we possess).

Hate to dash your expectations, but our optic nerves don't exactly take the shortest route to the brain. They start at our eyeballs and go all the way around our head before connecting to the visual cortex in the back of the brain, switching left and right as they do it.

This is a larger-than-necessary distance -- if we flipped the brain back around, we could make it much shorter (and get rid of the left/right swap).

Or we could keep it about the same length and move our brain into our chests as the article proposes, or put the eyes on stalks or something. This is not to mention the fact that we have many, longer nerves that work just fine, and that there are animals with even longer optic nerves who see just fine. Length isn't the issue.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[Zordak]

Wait a minute, are you questioning the scientific authority of an article in Forbes, the leading peer-reviewed, highly-respected scientific journal with a proven and unblemished history of unimpeachable accuracy?

Who was it that called Forbes something like a sort of corporate porn for middle management?

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[SatanicPuppy]

Who cares about the sense of touch in your feet? All our major predator avoidance senses...Sight, Hearing, Smell...ALL of them, are proximate to the brain. Evolution clearly favors this (since all things that actually HAVE brains, have them right next to their major senses), and common sense would suggest that traveling three inches is faster than traveling 3 feet, given a constant velocity.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[iolaus]

For this reason, I wouldn't expect many species to evolve with a larger-than-necessary distance between their brain and their sensory organs (unless such creature evolved a much faster method of conducting nerve impulses than we possess).

So you're saying they should add fiber-optic nerve pathways to this new super human... I like the way you think!

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[ceoyoyo]

It does. In fact, unusually tall people often have trouble with their feet. They can't feel infections and things very well.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[ceoyoyo]

Some of your reflexes are controlled from your spine as well. Very much faster than waiting for nerve impulses to travel up to your brain and back.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[It doesn't come easy]

Couple of other advantages with the brain/head: Better (and faster) cooling (brain in the chest with current body design would overheat too easily) and higher position for eyesight (see predators and food further away).

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[PalmKiller]

Yea, that was just another scientist talking out his ass. They are constantly trying to find problems with the way things are...personally I think our designed works pretty well. He is exactly the reason genetics and stem cell research need to be closely monitored.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[Verteiron]

Oh there's a latency, and you probably have experienced it, too. Think on the last time you stubbed your toe. You know that "oh shit" moment, the moment between when you know you've stubbed your toe, and the moment when the blinding pain makes you start hopping about and swearing? That moment begins when your sense of balance and motion tells you that your foot has stopped moving and ends when the nerve impulses from your toe reach your brain and are processed. It's not long, but it's plenty long enough to perceive conciously.

Now if the brain were in the chest cavity and the eyes were in the head, there would be a delay, and probably a lot more blind or one-eyed individuals. Ever see something like a tree branch or a rock speeding toward your eye, and blinked or ducked to save your vision? The increased delay would make that sort of reaction time impossible, and *pow* you just put your eye out!

I've always wondered if Niven's Puppeteers had this problem, and perhaps that's why they started to hide all the time.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[TripMaster Monkey]

I don't know where you got those facts, but you ought to demand your money back...

From eMedicine.com:

The optic nerve extends from the back of the eye, traverses through the orbit and optic canal to the optic chiasm. The intraocular optic nerve is about 1 mm in length, the intraorbital segment 25 mm, the intracanalicular segment about 9 mm, and the intracranial component is about 16 mm long.

Sorry, but that all adds up to about 51 mm, 5.1 cm, or about 2 inches. Hardly 'stalk' length, and certainly not long enough to justify placing the brain in the chest.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[DarkSarin]

Have you ever dissected a brain? Really? I mean open it up and look at the structure?

The optic nerve connects into the brain straight back from the eyes. Straight path, single crossover in the optic chiasm. The signal is eventually routed to the back of the brain (posterior) where the visual cortex is located, but there are several important things that seem to happen first.

Get your physiology straight.

Length may still not be an issue, but there is a definable cost to longer nerves. We typically don't notice, but the speed of nerve impulses is, IIRC, about 200mph. Thus in an object the size of a human, the longest distance is still very short and the trip time is barely noticeable. Compared to electricity, however, this is abysmally slow. This is why in the game ShadowRun the concept of 'wired reflexes' sort of made sense. The concept was that they replaced all muscle controlling nerves with copper wires that provided extremely fast reflexes. The idea is accurate, although currently unworkable and likely completely pointless (at some point processing speed is more of an issue than actual nerve-impulse speed.

Just a few thoughts.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[cmallinson]

More distance between the brain and the sensory organs also presents the problem of having greater risk of damage to those (now longer) nerves. With the brain in the head, a blow to the neck can cause paralysis of the limbs. With the brain in the torso, a blow to the neck (or perhaps even lower vertebrae) would cause paralysis of the face, as well as rendering the individual deaf and blind. As bad as it would be to be quadriplegic, I'd take it over the alternative.

As far as I'm concerned, if I'm going to lose my head - my brain may as well go with it.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[Gogogoch]

I dont think our brains like to be cool. Thought it was important that brain and heart were maintained as a constant core temperature. This could be so much easier to do if you kept them in one place instead of two. Temperature control is another matter.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[CFTM]

I'm no expert in this sort of stuff but my guess would be that the spinal cord is actually a newer more advanced system and the vagus nerve is the more primative of the two structures. I would guess the vagus nerve dates back to when hearts and lungs started appearing in organisms and not the other way around as your post implies. The importance of that is the vagus nerve was not something that decided the survivability of our ancestors; it was some other species a billion years ago or so who developed it to survive.

Kinda like Windows, just keep building on top!

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[ceoyoyo]

It's already kind of like that, except the reverse. We have a big brain in our heads that handles sensory input except for touch, and conscious action. Really, when you add up sight, sound, smell and the mechanics for managing speech, that's most of your brain.

We have some little distributed brains too. The gut has it's own neural control and the spine takes care of a lot of reflexes itself (you can sever the spinal cord of a cat but if you support it and put it's feet on a treadmill they'll still move in a coordinated walking pattern). The heart will beat on it's own too.

Not sure about the groin pain thing, but a reflex action from the spine could easily explain it. The eye is properly an extension of the brain as well, not just a sensory organ. The retina does a LOT of processing.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[moultano]

This happens because you have so much blood flowing through your brain. Your brain doesn't need cooling. It's not a friggin processor. Why do you think you have hair on your head? It's to insulate all of the blood carrying oxygen to your brain so it doesn't leak off as much heat.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[CFTM]

I believe I read an article on slashdot about some scientists making an argument to say that the bundle of nerves at the base of the spinal cord act in a brain like manner with respect to the stomach. The argument going something along the lines of the proximity to the stomach allows for faster recognition of contents in the stomach to react accordingly.

Too bad I can't find the articles and I can't seem to find anything on google about it :-/

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[Crizp]

As a matter of fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that we (v1.0) humans have some distributed sensory response capacity outside the brain itself already.

I heard scientists have found a layer of tissue in the colon and stomach very similar to the brain, with neurons and all, which they think might explain the fact that when you get nervous, your stomach does also.

It might be that in the future, the "colon brain" will process more data than it does now, perhaps relegating only main (sight/sound) sensory processing to the brain itself. Now it seems to work semi-independently - it's self-regulating with regards to what its function is (processing and expunging food), though responds to "scare-signals" from the brain.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[Perl-Pusher]

I read somewhere the brain produces alot of heat. It needs to be able to be cooled easily. The brain in the center mass of the body would cool much slower, so it would be more difficult to maintain it's core temperature during illnes, physical stress and environmental heat. The fact the brains being located near the center body mass is not normal for any creature tells me there is a fundamental reason for it. What creature has a central body mass brain?

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[Urusai]

One of the relatively new theses about human evolution states that man becoming upright was directly related to increased cooling of the brain, which permitted it to enlarge. Placing it in the chest would tend to remove that cooling capability. IIRC, the brain consumes over 10% of blood oxygen with only 2% of the body mass, meaning like a CPU, it's gonna run hot. Also, since big brains are such a turn-on to the ladies, our noggin has to be readily presentable for mating rituals. Uh, I may have made up that last part.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[Anonymous Coward]

You exhibit such a stark misunderstanding of the biology involved that I put a pox upon you and any idiot that mods you up.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[BamZyth]

I thought men had their brain located between his legs.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[operagost]

I heard scientists have found a layer of tissue in the colon and stomach very similar to the brain

Oh great. I really AM a "shit-for-brains!"

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[jsebrech]

But if we could redesign humanity the way we want it we could design it so that the brainless head, when dismembered, would regrow within a few months. Then losing your head becomes just a period of forced down-time. Annoying, but not disastrous.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[AndersOSU]

Well mostly, I'd settle for redesigned knees, spines, and pelvises before we go crazy and start mesing with the plumbing.

And why limit yourself to things like tails and extra limbs? I want new senses. Sharks can sence EM fields, I'd like to do something like that. Or add a sense that hasn't evolved yet, like being able to sense velocity or thermal radiation.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[Anonymous Coward]

Your sense of sight gets routed to the bottom middle-rear of your brain, (the primary visual cortex) and then moves forward as it is processed. It doesn't connect to your frontal lobe, which is where the decision making and personality aspects of your brain are housed.

Think of it like the OSI networking stack, the application layer is in the top towards the front, the physical layer is towards the bottom in the back. Vision still goes through the whole stack.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[jonadab]

This is why you want to add the ability to grow new eyes, like some creatures can grow new tails. So then if you lose an eye, it's inconvenient for a few months, but as long as you don't lose both at once, you're not blind, and even if you do, it's not permanent.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[AviLazar]

The brain needs to maintain a certain balance. Too cold and it shuts-down (killing you)...too hot and it "melts-down" killing you. On a processor - too hot and it "melts-down" too cold, well now you can overclock it through the nose :D

The brain needs to maintain at a certain temperature...that is one of the reasons when people have fevers they put cold towels on their forehead. On occasion, if a person is REALLY under a strong fever (or say on too much ecstacy) they will submerse the person in ice to cool the body down so it does not over-heat the brain.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

['nother poster]

Where in the world did you come up with this gem? I am 6' 4 and 3/4" tall. That puts me in the top 1 or 2% of the population for height. I have absolutly no problems feeling any part of my extremeties. The signals take a fraction of a second longer for me compared to my wife who is 5' 2", Umm I mean 5' 4" dear, but they still get there. They don't get tired somewhere around my knees and give up. I also know a couple of guys who are closer to 7' tall. I've heard enough bitching about feet hurting after playin ball that I'm betting that they can feel their feet just fine too.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[agallagh42]

Unusually tall people have trouble with their feet due to bad circulation in their later years. It has nothing to do with nervous system latency. BTW, I'm 6'6".

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

['nother poster]

Some snakes and lizards can detect "thermal radiation", so it has already evolved. It's what the pits on a pit viper do.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[Soporific]

Hey, I'm 6' 3" why are you picking on all of us tall people like that? ;)

I would say taller people seem to be more uncoordinated than shorter people though but I think that's due to the fact that some people don't quite adjust as well as others when the growth spurt hits. Especially when you gain 6 inches in a year, etc.

~S

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[Lord Ender]

A blow to the neck can already cause paralysis of the face. Goole Bell's Palsy if you are interested.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[ceoyoyo]

I did say unusually tall. You don't really count.

I expect if you did a properly controlled test you would find that your 7' friends have less precise and sensitive feeling in their feet than your 5'2" (and 3/4) wife. It's not that tall people can't feel their feet (sore feet from basketball isn't exactly subtle) but that they aren't as sensitive.

The world's tallest man Robert Wadlow, at 8'11" died of just such a problem. He had poor feeling in his lower extremities and died of an infection from a blister on his ankle.

No, the nerve impulses don't "get tired somewhere around the knees and give up" but there are significant signal losses through nerve conduction. The longer the nerve, the more losses, which means not only is the signal delayed but weak signals may not be detected.

People are generally short enough that it's not a big deal, although it can be, especially if a disease damages the nerves.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[ceoyoyo]

Which adds to the problem. It's quite possible to test the resolution of your feeling in an extremity though. Taller people tend to require a higher level of stimulation in their lower extremities become aware of the touch.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[ceoyoyo]

Wow, I think everybody over 6' tall on Slashdot just jumped out out of the woodwork with some variation on "I can too feel my feet, you insensitive clod!"

Sure you can, but while your five foot wife gets tickled to death by a feather on her big toe you can't really see what the big deal is. Just like you can get 100mb/s over your cat 5 if it's three feet long even if you mess up a few of the ground wires, but if you run it fifty feet over an old refrigerator you might expect a bit lower signal to noise ratio.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[Grishnakh]

You hit the nail right on the head.

The article's ideas about protecting various body parts are really not nearly as useful as the ability to regenerate bodily damage, a la X-Men's Wolverine and various microorganisms. Who cares if your testicles get damaged if you can just regenerate them (well, it might hurt some, but long-term it wouldn't be a problem).

More than any of these other ideas, effective and fast regeneration would be an extremely useful modification to make to people. No more paralyzed people, no more missing limbs, no more ugly scars...

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[Soporific]

I have gout, trust me I can feel my feet as well as anyone I know... But I wasn't jumping out of the woodwork I was making a joke of people jumping out of the woodwork.

~S

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[Ithika]

No, he's questioning PZ Myers, an evo-devo professor.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[Grishnakh]

There's a lot of things that could be improved in humans. I think #1 would be regeneration ability, so we could quickly repair any damage. Redesigned knees, spines, pelvises, and ankles would be nice too.

For sensing, I'd like to have better color vision (more cones than just red, green, and blue), as well as ultraviolet and infrared.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[lawpoop]

"... I can feel my feet as well as anyone I know..."

Now how could you know that?

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[Anonymous Coward]

So... A creature with a brain in its chest, probably eyes somewhere in the same region, and a penis for a face? I know some people like that now.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[rebelcan]

I've come to the conclusion that my guts have sh*t for brains.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[Level45Batman]

If your testicles would grow back, there wouldn't much of an evolutionary point to pain if they get damaged. The only reason I am so concerned about protecting them is the nauseating pain I would feel if they got kicked. No need to protect, no need for pain.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[RalphSleigh]

Next time I am really cold I'll just do some maths problems to warm up then...

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[adisakp]

As far as I'm concerned, if I'm going to lose my head - my brain may as well go with it.

Assuming you're a normal male, You would be losing your "brain" since the author wants to move your sex organs to that sensory/feeding stalk as well.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[shawb]

He's had a lot of people feel his feet.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[shawb]

Isn't Bell's palsy thought to be cuased by a viral infection localized on the facial nerve?

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[RockModeNick]

Mix ecstasy with an MAOI and you'll get that reaction every time - the serotonin floods the synapses, and it just can't be cleaned up my monamine oxidase anymore. Very bad things happen.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[mi]

Who cares about the sense of touch in your feet?

Based on this theory of mine, whatever part of human skin is particularly ticklish, is (or was) an important sensory organ.

Feet sure qualify. I explain this by the need to react automatically to stepping on a snake or a scorpion.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[Anonymous Coward]

This happens because you have so much blood flowing through your brain.

No, not exactly. There is a blood-brain barrier: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_brain_barrier

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

['nother poster]

Ah, you pick out one person who was not simply unusual, but a medical anomoly and generalize to meet your desires. There is no evidence that Mr. Wadlows sensory issues were because he was tall. He wasn't a tall person with a normal physiology, he was tall because he had an abnormal physiology. Those other abnormalities are more likely the cause of his sensory issues than long nerve paths.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[RockModeNick]

Some people have deeper color vision, effectively an extra type of cone - they have are women with a mutant cone that is slightly differently sensitive on one of the paired chromisomes, and a normal cone on the other in the pair. Men can't have it, since this isn't carried on Y at all, so they can't have both the mutant and normal cone gene. They can see several more colors in a standard spectrum than genetically normal people do.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[Vinnie_333]

there's a good reason the brain is located in the head

The protection the skull gives the brain would be a major benefit, as well. If the brain was located centrally in the body, if you got punched in the gut you could suffer major brain damage!

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[P3NIS_CLEAVER]

I think your brain actually radiates and is sensitive to heat. There is a reason a hat will make you feel so much warmer in the winter.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[Cervantes]

It's not so much your brain, but rather the fact that it has so much blood going to it, and your skull is such a poor insulator. No, we couldn't just pop your head off and shove it in your chest... but with slight modifications a brain could be put in a chest cavity and perform better.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[Anonymous Coward]

instead use a distributed system of multiple interconnected brains to minimize latency to limbs/organs..

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[P3NIS_CLEAVER]

I thought the brain was a calorically expensive organ? Your explanation does make sense though.
And who is we? I will am not interested in any brain popping :)

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[Anonymous Coward]

How am i gonna make headshots in Counter-Strike with the brain in the torso? duh!

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[Suidae]

Anecdotal story:

One evening while driving in light rain with the window down about half an inch I noticed that when a raindrop made it in through the window and landed on my face near my eye I would flinch before I felt the drop. It was a split second difference, but it happened a number of times that evening, so I had a chance to pay attention to it. Very eery, I could distinctly feel the blink and jerk of the head before the impact of the drop (I also felt the impact before the coldness of the water, which I attributed mostly to the fact that heat conduction through skin should be slower than the impact).

I don't know why I'd feel the flinch first, since the signal from the raindrop would have been transmitted first and therefore received first. Perhaps information about movements of the body are more quickly processed than information about skin touch.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[Maxo-Texas]

We could probably design redundant pathways for higher bandwidth.

Also, there is no reason you couldn't design in a set of eyes near the brain and a second set of eyes on stalks. You could have a set of cat eyes for night time and a set of lizard eyes for the day time too.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[PenguiN42]

Think on the last time you stubbed your toe. You know that "oh shit" moment, the moment between when you know you've stubbed your toe, and the moment when the blinding pain makes you start hopping about and swearing?

How much of this delay is due to nerve conduction, and how much is due to the fact that damaged body parts generally don't start sending pain information right away?

Last time I bumped my head there was a perceivable gap between the bump and the influx of pain. That can't be explained through nerve conduction.

Ever see something like a tree branch or a rock speeding toward your eye, and blinked or ducked to save your vision? The increased delay would make that sort of reaction time impossible, and *pow* you just put your eye out!

But quick reactions like this can be handled somewhere other than the brain. Just like our spinal cord handles fast reactions for our hands and feet, some nerve center could handle involuntary eye blinks or flinches.

But conscious vision processing -- like recognizing a shape as a predator or finding a path through the woods while running -- would definitely suffer due to the increased latency.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[Suidae]

The few children born without pain receptors generally survive, but by the time they are adults they look pretty rough, missing eyes, covered in scars, etc. Teething babies with no pain receptors tend to happily chew the skin off of their fingers. When they break bones they only complain if the protruding bone ends get in the way.

Now, if we as adults could easily learn to limit pain pereception to the level of "persistant, attention-drawing annoyance", that would be useful.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[ceoyoyo]

Not sure about your eyes, but various reflexes (which are what flinches are) are controlled by things other than your brain. Your eyelids are probably controlled by your brain, but a lower part of it that responds well before the sensory information gets around to becoming conscious.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[thebudgie]

Brain in chest? Nice idea but last I heard the brain doesn't like getting squashed. Where would we move the lungs to to stop this?

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[Grishnakh]

Yeah, this is what I was getting at. It was in a Slashdot article about a week ago I think. This ability should be added to everyone (men and women), but near orange-yellow so that it's evenly spaced between the red and green receptors instead of being really close to one or the other as it is in these mutant women. And some extra cones would be nice too, on the other side (between green and blue, another at violet, etc.).

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[ElAsturiano]

Excellent point! Also, The body has developed a tiered approach to sensory input processing. If you step on a nail, the amount of information that needs to travel to your head is minimum before your 'reflex' pulls your foot up. on the other hand, the amount of information going from your retina to your brain to help you decide wether a girl is pretty or not is pretty massive and needs to be processed in parallel by many parts of the brain. The advantage that our nervous system has is NOT the speed at which signal travels (electro-chemical is one of the least efficient known ways) but the capacity to parallel process and prioritize at a sub concious level (you are already pulling your foot up from the nail before your brain even knows what is it that is hurting down there) (I am paraphrasing info learnt from a book called Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil and a Scientific American Article from a couple years ago but I dont remember issue #, sorry)

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[Johnboi Waltune]

"Who cares about the sense of touch in your feet?"

Anyone who is a runner knows how important this is. While running, hundreds of times per second you have to adjust your balance and the complicated forces generated by your dozens of various leg muscles, or else you will sprain something or simply trip and fall down. You can't see the surface directly beneath your foot. All you can do is feel it. Without any feeling in the toes or the sole of your foot, you would find running a hazardous activity that is next to impossible. There are some people who can run with double prostheses, but I daresay they have adapted to get the terrain information from whatever nerves are left at the termination of their natural appendages.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[Johnboi Waltune]

That 8'11" man probably had circulation issues as well, and that can cause problems with slow healing and lack of sensation in the lower extremities. Who knows what such a massive overdose of human growth hormone could damage the immune system as well. I wouldn't be so sure that the length of his nerves had anything to do with it.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[bluephone]

Temperature sensations aren't transmitted as quickly as pain sensations are. Plus, you flinched before the impact because the eye detected somethign close to the face unexpectedly, which is separate from a flinch from an impact that you don't see coming. It's anticipatory rather than reactive.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[Johnboi Waltune]

I'd rather have some sort of ACTIVE vision system, that did not depend on the passive availability of ambient light. Like millimiter wave radar or something.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[bluephone]

Actually, according to a height study dome for redesigning airline chairs from 1999 or 2000 (I don't recall) we in the 74+ inch height range are in the top 0.1% of the population. When the airline was redesigning their chairs, (I think it was United, but I could be wrong) the targeted 99.8% of the population which was 4'10" or 4"11 to 6'3" (I remember the top height because I don't care about short people ;)). So, if 0.@% are taller or shorter than that range, then only 0.1% is taller, and that's us. So airline seats still suck for us.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[gfody]

Why does the modified human have to be stronger bigger and more structural protection. I would rather design one even more light weight and maximize on brain size and minimize on body size. Then we could get better power to weight ratio in cars and airplanes.

It'd be nice if our bodies didn't allow so much variance in size. We could design better more confortable controls and cockpits. Maybe the ideal body would be something like a giant slug covered in cognitive slime that can interface with our mechoskeletons. Even reproductive organs should involve some sort of external interface to be practical.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[jez9999]

In addition to this, add that it puts the high-bandwidth inputs -- audio, and particularly vision -- on dedicated "buses" rather than trying to run them through the same system bus (spinal cord) that handles the low-bandwidth signals for muscles. And allows direct connection to the higher brain structures, rather than routing through all that antique brain-stem nonsense.

Wow, that sounds like a really efficient system. Who designed it again...?

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[Anonymous Coward]

"no more ugly scars..."

Chicks dig scars.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[ross.w]

Actually for a lot of people, the groin is what they do most of their thinking with.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the GP was referring to the sense of touch in your feet being not that important when making quick life and death high-level decisions involving large amounts of data (e.g., like which way to jump/duck/run when you first detect the hungry lion).

It's actually the spinal chord that does most of the work implementing a gate (relative timing and strength of signal patterns to the muscles for walking, trotting, etc.), and when things are going smoothly the sense of touch in your feet isn't really needed. It certainly helps with the feedback system, though. You can even correct stumbling without the brain being involved. You have more time to react if the corrective (unconsious) decision is made close to the legs. The brain only needs to intervene when more difficult decisions or other senses become involved.

Search for some of the cat stuff that's been done - they sever various things (like the whole brain...) and put them on treadmills; it's surprising how well a cat can move without any data from or to the brain.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[Grishnakh]

Sorry, I'm not interested in biker chicks.

Besides, guys don't dig scars on chicks.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

['nother poster]

Oh, testify brother! And on top of that the people sitting in front of us think they have some god given right to recline their seat when our knees are already pressed into their seat back. I have had to have a flight attendant inform them that the price of their ticket does not entitle them to cause me additional pain. One time the attendant was able to finally get someone to switch seats with the irate woman in front of me, but I think she was about this close > to simply having her arrested for interfering with a flight crew. I believe her comment when we deplaned was "My, she was a nasty little bitch, wasn't she?" Unprofessional, but very accurate.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[Toba82]

Me too, and I don't have any problems feeling my feet.

Wait, where are my shoes?

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[Forge]

Not actualy true.

If you step on a hot coal the reaction time (to jump away) will be slower than if you tuched it with your hand, which in turn is slower than a head burn.

Don't ask what I did to discover this. :)

Sufice to say it wasn't in a text book and I have the scar on soal of my foot to prove it.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[bitspotter]

Consider, though, that strong pain impulses from the limbs can prompt autonomic movement reactions immediately upon reaching the spinal cord, before it even has a chance to reach the brain.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[kaligraphic]

AMD, I think. ;)

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[rbarreira]

That's exactly what I meant - part of the medula is contained on the spine. But I'm not a doctor or anything close, so your statement might be more accurate :)

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[hhman]

Remember that many Morthans already have optical nerves, according to David Gerrold.

Now immagine a beowulf cluster of optical nerve Morthans running an.. well... .xxx domain... no, that would be just plain wrong. Lucrative, but wrong.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[Verteiron]

I am so confused by your sig that I find myself incapable of responding to your post. ...but if it's true, then it must be false... but it can't be true which means... *HEAD A SPLODE*

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[ceoyoyo]

You're quite right that there's a lot of reflex and other involuntary behaviour processed in the lower brain structures. The medula is one of the most primitive parts of the brain stem, where the spine turns into the brain.

It's been a while since I took physiology but I was surprised to learn that the spine is more than just a communication channel. Way down, far from the brain, there's circuitry that's responsible for some reflexes. Sensory information comes in and immediately triggers a motor response. Your brain finds out about it later. I think I remember that some of these reflexes involve four neurons between sensory input and motor output, all local and so VERY fast.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[fotognome]

Our vision is ALREADY on a separate "bus" -- the optic nerve has its own signal conduction system, totally separate from the spinal cord, that doesn't go to the brain stem at all. It DOES go to the thalamus and hypothalamus, where emotional context, memory fetches (object recognition.. things and faces, language, that sort of thing), all gets processed or routed, and then gets shunted back for enhancement and edge recognition. You, sort of need.. all of those things. Though, I admit, the human thalamus is a bit shy on the processing power.. giving it a bit more muscle would mean no more PTSD (technically, emotional trauma is when that system "crashes".. and as often and as easily as it BSOD's, you would think it was designed by Bill Gates). There is a big difference between antiquated, and layered.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[fotognome]

ugh.. my bad, I misunderstood the post you made.. yes I'm a noob, and I can't get the system to let me edit OR delete my previous message.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[Fastolfe]

If you step on a nail, the amount of information that needs to travel to your head is minimum before your 'reflex' pulls your foot up

In fact, your brain hasn't received anything yet before your reflex is activated. The pain signal makes its way to your spinal cord, where it hits a reflex arc, which sends a message right back to your muscles telling them to withdraw.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[Fastolfe]

But quick reactions like this can be handled somewhere other than the brain. Just like our spinal cord handles fast reactions for our hands and feet, some nerve center could handle involuntary eye blinks or flinches.

This nerve center would have to do some rudimentary image processing, or else you'd be ducking and flinching every time a bee flew by or a shadow passed over you. This image processing would take a lot of work. The reflex arcs within your spinal cord are very simplistic.

I'm not saying it couldn't be done, but it would greatly complicate image processing and thus your ability to see.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[Lord Ender]

Technically, swelling around the nerve causes it. And this swelling can be caused by an infection OR by a blow to the neck. I know someone who wiped out skiing and had the same effect as someone else I know who had Bell's Palsy.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[plunge]

You're simply assuming that we take the modern brain and place it in the chest. That is NOT what the TFA is about. It's about what life would be like if life took a different direction way back in the evolutionary path. That's simply not the same thing as imagining the current brain in a different place. All the things you note are adaptations that took place in RESPONSE to the brain's location over millions of years of it being where it was. But taking those into account and NOT taking into account any other possible adaptations that might arise under a different schema isn't a fair comparison.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[LifesABeach]

Ummmm, not only is the posterior sphinctor muscle used to deficate, but it gives taskings as well; Sounds alot like my boss is a prototype.

Coinsidence? I think not.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction

[TheDreadSlashdotterD]

By your logic, people wouldn't go bald since they would die without the hair to help retain heat. However, while I might be losing the hair on my head, I've grown a fashionable fur coat EVERYWHERE ELSE.

reprod organs in mouth?

[eosp]

how's that a change?

Re:reprod organs in mouth?

[bartyboy]

I for one don't welcome our new penis-tongued overlords.

Re:reprod organs in mouth?

[MustardMan]

I just had a Urotsukodoji (sp?) flashback... *shudder*

Re:reprod organs in mouth?

[operagost]

I think that's where the French keep theirs.

Re:reprod organs in mouth?

[GmAz]

It kinda redefines oral sex. Now it only requires one person to be present.

Re:reprod organs in mouth?

[Rude Turnip]

For one thing, your video store would have to move Urotsukidoji from the anime section to the nature film section.

Re:reprod organs in mouth?

[chillmost]

Wow, you really do have no excuse to leave the basement.

Re:reprod organs in mouth?

[gstoddart]

reprod organs in mouth? how's that a change?

Your own, not someone else's. If that's not a change for you, we don't wanna know.

I mean, every time you had food stuck in your teeth you'd run the risk of cumming in your own mouth. Eeeww! ;-)

Re:reprod organs in mouth?

[Rimbo]

You must be new here. Welcome to Slashdot!

Re:reprod organs in mouth?

[zCyl]

how's that a change?

It would probably reduce the popularity of hot peppers...

Re:reprod organs in mouth?

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be kind of like that scene in Alien, only hotter

Re:reprod organs in mouth?

[cfuse]

Still a dickface.

OK.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sex organs in the head? Okay PZ, I don't care what anyone says. That's DEAD SEXY.

New meaning to old insults

[multiOSfreak]

reproductive organs in its mouth

I guess this will lend new meaning to the phrase "cock sucker".

Re:New meaning to old insults

[Borg453b]

or "dickhead" for that matter. I seldom swear - but Ill probably never find a situation better suited for the term :)

Re:New meaning to old insults

[Anonymous Coward]

Beavis and Butthead would hold a WHOLE new meaning

I don't know, but...

[Buckler]

...Having reproductive organs in the mouth would make my life far too complicated.

Re:I don't know, but...

[cmeans]

Seems like it "kills two birds with one stone".

Re:I don't know, but...

['nother poster]

And when the females suffocate during birth...

That part of the body already does double duty. The guy in the article doesn't say anything about seperating the respritory and alimentary systems.

After spending a few minutes thinking about it there are dozens of drawbacks to some of the suggestions he makes. Attachment and fulcrum points for the additional limbs could be a major issue. Where do you put the musculature that is needed to move the arms in useful ways? A new world monkys tail works wonderful under tension, but sucks under compression. You can dangle from the bedroom cieling, but can't lift anything much heavier than a cup of juice.

Re:I don't know, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

lifting cup of juice would be tension too so if u could hang from tail u could lift similar mass as well.

Compression would be like sitting on ur tail... but then what would u do with ur ass i wonder?

Re:I don't know, but...

[Profane MuthaFucka]

I could save time by simultaneously brushing my teeth and shaving my balls.

Re:I don't know, but...

[AcidLacedPenguiN]

It would also suck for that one time you bite your tongue while chewing your food. . .

Re:I don't know, but...

['nother poster]

No, you could reach down with the tail, grab a cup of juice, and lift it to the attachment point of the tail or a bit above. At that point you would have to reach down and take the item with your hands because parts of the tail will start to compress. The actual action of gripping the cup has that part of the tail in tension, but some parts of the tail trying to lift the cup higher than the attachment point will be in compression due to the weight of the tail and the item being lifted.

Re:I don't know, but...

[rtaylor]

Having reproductive organs in the mouth would make my life far too complicated.

It's not small, I was eating ice-creme!

Re:I don't know, but...

[beoswulf]

Not to mention the tail would just be extra stress on the heart of an already densely packed body.

And when we do meet them...

[meisenst]

I hope that the first thing out of our collective mouths is not "bug-eyed freaks"!

Re:And when we do meet them...

[Billosaur]

I hope that the first thing out of our collective mouths is not "bug-eyed freaks"!

Personally, I wish to welcome our Bug-Eyed Freak Overlords...

Re:And when we do meet them...

[JustOK]

Welcomed overlords or not, do they run linux? Could you imagine a beowulf cluster of the them?

Re:And when we do meet them...

[Thing 1]

I hope that the first thing out of our collective mouths is not "bug-eyed freaks"!

Judging from the article, the first thing out of our collective mouths will be our penises.

PS: 420! All day today!

Uh...

[Anonymous Coward]

It may sound fantastic, but researchers are already working to re-build DNA, proteins and cells in a new field called synthetic biology, and we may have to meet these bug-eyed freaks sometime in our lifetime.

With that sentance structure "bug-eyed freaks" clearly refers to the subject; the researchers.

Re:Uh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking of bug-eyed freaks, they're already here:

http://www.shoutwire.com/viewstory/9311/Bizarre_ba by_born_in_Nepal

Re:Uh...

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a bug-eyed freak you insensitive clod!

Re:Uh...

[jez9999]

Amazing what people can do with Photoshop, isn't it?

Giggle

[Anonymous Coward]

Did anyone else giggle a little bit when they read "reproductive organs in its mouth"

Re:Giggle

[lucky_me]

Yep. I guess this will got more attention than the article itselve...

This joke is too easy

[Hoi Polloi]

"reproductive organs in its mouth"?

I hate to break it to you but many, MANY people have done this already.

Re:This joke is too easy

[amigabill]

Yea, but then the old rule "your mouth can't get pregnant" no longer applies...

Re:This joke is too easy

[rrohbeck]

I hate to break it to you but many, MANY people have done this already.

Not that anybody here would know...

Is it just me, or does the 'Alternate Human' ...

[ColdCoffee]

...look suspiciously like the Flying Spaghetti Monster?

Oh boy...

[Noryungi]

Wait until the religious nuts learn of this one!

Seriously, though, I am all for science and genetic engineering and all that, but this is simply crazy. We are talking about a world where some people hate other's guts, simply because their skin color is not the same as theirs, where wackos cut other's throats simply because they are not worshipping the same deity*... And you want to release genetically re-engineered humans into society? Sheesh. Talk about premature.

(*) Even though 99.9999% of all gods are about as real as the Easter Bunny.

Re:Oh boy...

[eln]

Even though 99.9999% of all gods are about as real as the Easter Bunny

You're off by .0001% there, buddy. Next time don't do the calculation on an old Pentium.

Re:Oh boy...

[LWATCDR]

"where wackos cut other's throats simply because they are not worshipping the same deity*... "
Actually in this century you are far more likely to be killed for worshipping any deity than for not worshiping the right one. At least since 1945 atheists have racked up more murders than any religious group. Not that all atheists are mass murders however any humanitarian benefits that such belief has is not demonstrated by statistics.

http://www.genocidewatch.org/genocidetable2005.htm

Re:Oh boy...

[Billosaur]

Seriously, though, I am all for science and genetic engineering and all that, but this is simply crazy. We are talking about a world where some people hate other's guts, simply because their skin color is not the same as theirs, where wackos cut other's throats simply because they are not worshipping the same deity*... And you want to release genetically re-engineered humans into society? Sheesh. Talk about premature.

For more information (and a ripping good yarn to boot), read Heinlein's Friday, which carries his usual cogent thought on a society containing "Artificial Persons."

Re:Oh boy...

[Anonymous Coward]

God, or at least god-like powers, can often be found through a buffer overflow...

Re:Oh boy...

[oliverthered]

What about the 0.0001% of Gods that do exist but aren't really Gods, surely someone's built a religion around a real person who wasn't actually a God .... Umm.... and called it Christianity.

Re:Oh boy...

[vinnythenose]

I'm intrigued. Which one falls into the 0.0001%? Finally, someone that can tell me which diety is real! Oh wait, they all say that. Nevermind, keep your 0.0001% to yourself.

Re:Oh boy...

[DigitalWar]

And what is that table supposed to demonstrate? Are we assuming that the people who perpetrated the crimes are all atheist? The genocides may not have been driven by religion, but that doesn't make the perpetrators atheists.

Re:Oh boy...

[Anonymous Coward]

Which one falls into the 0.0001%?

Jesus Christ, some people think he's a God, he may have been real but he wasn't a God. There a God non God that's real.

Re:Oh boy...

[Anonymous Coward]

Their just trying to make up for the 5000+ year headstart the organized religions have on them.

Re:Oh boy...

[LWATCDR]

Simple do the math.

China in china. 35 Million
China in Tibet 1.6 Million
USSR in the USSR 21 Million
North Korea 2+million

These are STATE genocides run by the government. These where all communist governments and the state theology of these communist states is atheism.
I am sorry for bring forth uncomfortable facts but these are the numbers. Basically it is just some facts to try and stop the "religion is the root of all evil" bashing on slashdot. If anyone that is a totally rational person with a strong belief in science sees that table it will show clearly that any idea that a none belief in God insures a moral superiority over a belief in God has no foundation in fact.
It also shows that democratic societies are historically far less likely to commit Genocide. As to the belief system of the individuals that committed each killing? Well we have no way to know what that is in any case. Many Christians would state that no true Christian would ever freely commit murder. So that is something we can never know.

Re:Oh boy...

[buswolley]

Well, people will accept it if there is twice the number of tits involved.
If it enters the porn world it will be accepted.

Re:Oh boy...

[visgoth]

where wackos cut other's throats simply because they are not worshipping the same deity*

No, its even more fucked up than that. Muslims, Jews, and Christians all worship the same god. We slit eachother's throats because we don't worship the same god in the same way.

Someone stop this planet, I want to get off!

Re:Oh boy...

[Jesus_666]

You're off by .0001% there, buddy. Next time don't do the calculation on an old Pentium.

Oh, come on. They can't all be real!

Re:Oh boy...

[Anonymous Coward]

And you didn't even mention how much Protestants hate Catholics, or Sunni vs Shia, which is why Iran never supported Hamas before now (you'd think they would).

Re:Oh boy...

[Anonymous Coward]

The problems arise because the various religions mistakenly worship some stupid-assed DUDE instead of worshipping God, i.e. Christians worship Christ, Muslims worship Mohammed.

We could all get along fine if we would toss those posers (Christ, Mohammed) on the ash-heap of history and recognize that it is in God that we trust, not in fellow humans.

Worshipping humans like Christ or Mohammed is an outdated vestige of a foregone era of obiescence to kings. It is well past time for humanity to stop worshipping other humans and focus on nature's God.

Re:Oh boy...

[mrpeebles]

(*) Even though 99.9999% of all gods are about as real as the Easter Bunny.

Um, you should really think about what feelings you might hurt before making a comment like this. I just hope the Easter Bunny doesn't read slashdot...

Re:Oh boy...

[oliverthered]

Wrong, the Christians worship The father, son and holy spirit, they worship the same God as the Jews and the Muslims but as part of that God they also worship Christ which in my books make it the same 'God' but different.

Re:Oh boy...

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

Muslims, Jews, and Christians all worship the same god. We slit eachother's throats because we don't worship the same god in the same way.

The usual Slashdot anti-religious bigotry rears its ugly head again, but I do give you mad props for at least not blaming everything on Christians. Since the end of WWII, I am not aware of any Jewish vs. Christian warring. Do you see which of the 3 groups I haven't mentioned, which group coincidentally DOES engage in throat slashing?

Re:Oh boy...

[Trogre]

Nope, wrong.

Muslims worship Allah, a moon god. While they claim the same lineage as Jews they don't worship the same god. Allah most definitely is not Yahweh as some would have you believe.

Christians worship Yahweh as "God the father", but regard that as one view of the Godhead (the other two views being the Christ (Jesus) and the Holy Spirit).

By the way, when was the last time you saw Christians and Jews slitting each others throats? Most religious agression is now muslim against Jew or muslim against Christian. Occasionally you'll see Hindu against Christian or even muslim v1.1 against muslim v1.2 but the former are much more common.

bug-eyed freaks

[Apostata]

"we may have to meet these bug-eyed freaks sometime in our lifetime"

Dare to dream. Personally, I say we drop everything and try to make the reception on cell phones better.

Octopus Date.

[Anonymous Coward]

"What has six limbs, a prehensile tail, its brain in its chest, and reproductive organs in its mouth?"

My last date.

Re:Octopus Date.

[TWX]

Well, that picture floating around the Internet of the woman with the "Wish these were brains" shirt on appears to meet two out of four...

Reproductive organs in its mouth?

[Anonymous Coward]

is this a story about cmdrtaco?

Bah at these useful applications...

[Ceriel Nosforit]

Bah at these useful applications! I want a tail, like the rest of my primate cousins! =D

Re:Bah at these useful applications...

[Cervantes]

Bah at these useful applications! I want a tail, like the rest of my primate cousins! =D

You have one already. It's just vestigial. Some lucky buggers are born with a few inches down there... unfortunately, you just happened to get stuck with a stubby (aka tailbone).

Reproductive organs in its mouth

[ettlz]

I guess that precludes chilli and bony fish — just cold rice pudding and hot grits from now on!

Ha!

[radiumhahn]

"What has six limbs, a prehensile tail, its brain in its chest, and reproductive organs in its mouth? "

Now that's kinky!

Mindless dribble.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a feeling this was written to scare christians.

They're already roaming the streets

[Yvan256]

http://www.tigerntigress.com/images/Mithra%20in%20 Line.jpg

Way too easy.

[IainMH]

..and reproductive organs in its mouth?

Way too easy.

The problem of temp regulation

[rewinn]

The brain stops working when the temp goes outside a certain range; most other organs in warm-blooded critters are less temperature-sensitive. Isolating the "special needs" organ is good design.

Re:The problem of temp regulation

[Anonymous Coward]

The brain stops working when the temp goes outside a certain range

Salaried employees aren't much better either.

Re:The problem of temp regulation

['nother poster]

Ack. You beat me to it. Remember your mom telling you to wear a hat in winter because you lose so much heat through your head? There's a reason for that. Cooking your brain is a bad idea.

Re:The problem of temp regulation

[rewinn]

When I was a kid, we didn't have hats. We used rocks ... and we LIKED it!

Re:The problem of temp regulation

[Martin Blank]

I remember reading years ago about limited experiments suggesting that people that wore special caps that circulated cool water through them performed better on intelligence tests than those that didn't. Those first tested without the cap saw their test scores improve when tested with the cap. I wonder if this was ever expanded upon; if it's true, it wouldn't be that hard to build something like that.

Re:The problem of temp regulation

[Ansonmont]

Check out this study WARNING PDF! http://ajpregu.physiology.org/cgi/reprint/00205.20 02v1.pdf

It seems to find that core temp increases help brain function.

I couldn't find the study I remember, which was one where test subjects wore special caps that heated just their heads only 1 degree (which is why they didn't just wear hats I guess). I vaguely remember that it increased a math test performance metric by about 5%.

Anyway, the article writer did not even consider, "hey I put my brain in my chest, now how do I eat with my brain in the way? How do I keep it from getting squished by my supersized meal or lungs, etc." Lots of design issues need to be worked out before you he gets this one off the planning board.

Here would be my favorite adaptations.

1) Better back and knees!
2) Maybe some retractable claws with poison.
3) Gills

-A

It's not that simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Reminds me of an old joke:

Two sperms are swimming along and one says to the other: "How much further to the ovaries?" The other one answers "A long way, son. We're just past the throat."

Behold!!!!

[gasmonso]

I present you the five-assed monkey!

http://religiousfreaks.com/

Re:Behold!!!!

[chris_eineke]

Look! A Three-Headed Monkey!

Other ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

What other changes would people suggest, given complete freedom on the subject?

How about a new finger with an eyeball on it - for finding things in drawers.

Re:Other ideas

[JustOK]

drawers, knickers, that type of thing?

Re:Other ideas

[Hogwash McFly]

How about a new finger with an eyeball on it

Dildo Cam!

Re:Other ideas

[john.q.avatar]

There is a really funny cartoon on this topic at http://www.unripe.com/pages/cartoon%2057%20Genomic %20Metaphors.html It is about human genome extension and shows an funny example of what can happen.

Why not improve

[GreenPlastikMan]

Many anthropologists, socioligist, and biologists agree that humans have essentially stopped their own evolution, or at least slowed it to a crawl. Evolution is the long-term response of continuously having to adapt to your environment. However, because of civilization, the large majority of humanity simply adapts its environment around them instead.

That being said, wouldn't it make more sense to look at our evolutionary development and compare it with the rest of the animal kingdom. In this way, scientists might identify actual possible improvements which would simply be considered the evolution of homo sapiens (I shudder to think what would happen if I include the word homo in a sentence on Slashdot). For instance, if our legs bent inwards (backwards) at the knee, like say a stork's legs, we could run faster, jump higher, and sit down more easily.

The meddling in this article, and that is all it is, would in the end create not an alternate human but an altogether different and completely unrelated species.

Re:Why not improve

[Nijika]

Good point indeed. Nature has already provided some decent design ideas to embrace and extend. My thoughts echo yours and others on this; starting from scratch, we probably couldn't do much better than what our planet has already provided.

The design proposed by PZ Myers would probably highlight why it wasn't done that way if this new human ever manged to appear out of thin air.

Re:Why not improve

[Anonymous Coward]

Many anthropologists, socioligist, and biologists agree that humans have essentially stopped their own evolution, or at least slowed it to a crawl.

Can you point to any other mammals whose evolution is faster? Because of human proliferation, other animals have to had to adapt to rapidly (relatively) chaning environment, can you point out other higher order animals that show that this is related to environment vs some other factors?

Re:Why not improve

[HarvardAce]

For instance, if our legs bent inwards (backwards) at the knee ... we could ... sit down more easily.

Perhaps you're talking about moving to a sitting position, on a flat surface, but I think having our knees go the other direction would make sitting on a chair extremely difficult -- where would I put my feet, slung over my shoulder?

Re:Why not improve

[Tlosk]

You've got it backwards. Reducing reproductive pressures increases variability in the population (more gene mutations survive) so evolution is actually sped up by our ability to survive and reproduce.

The idea you refer to is based on an erroneous assumption that we are progressing towards something, that we're being shaped towards some ideal of one sort or another.

Evolution isn't good change or bad change or measured in aproximations towards something, it's just change over time.

If you corner any of those anthropologists, socioligists, and biologists you refer to you'll find that the whole "evolution is ending" is just a provocative slant, similar to how most psych courses might start with a discussion of free will vs deteriminism, even though few of those professors really considers the question meaningful. It's just a hook.

Re:Why not improve

[SchrodingersRoot]

where would I put my feet, slung over my shoulder?

why not? I can do this now.

Re:Why not improve

[Carnivore]

I don't agree. We're the product of evolution. The take-home message about evolution that's relevant here is "good enough is fine". As long as some design is good enough, there's no pressure to improve it.

I can think of several examples right off the top of my head:

• Combined sexual/excratory organs
  
• Inefficient use of water for waste transport/removal
  
• Lack of redundancy in significant organs (heart, brain, stomach)
  
• Lack of control of immune, piloerectory, etc functions
  
• Limited spectral range of vision and hearing, relatively pitiful sense of smell

There are all kinds of improvments that you could make to the regular human if we were able to. I'd love to be able to see into the UV and IR. That would kick ass.

Re:Why not improve

[utexaspunk]

Maybe we'd sit in the chair facing the other way?

Re:Why not improve

[The Wicked Priest]

I don't think "stopped our evolution" is quite the right way to look at it. Rather, our cultural evolution just vastly outpaces our biological evolution... which continues at its old (slow) pace, but has been rendered largely irrelevant to the future of the species.

Re:Why not improve

[boingo82]

I can think of several examples right off the top of my head:

* Combined sexual/excratory organs

Uh yeah, the religious right will really like that. Isn't that one of the bigger reasons they argue against (male) gay sex?

Re:Why not improve

[WilliamSChips]

I don't think anuses were even the point here--the penis and vagina are also excretory organs.

Re:Why not improve

[adpowers]

The vagina? I thought that was a purely sexual organ. It does excrete stuff, but only stuff necessary for reproduction. However, I have had a glass of wine or two, so I might not be thinking straight :).

Re:Why not improve

[WilliamSChips]

Unless I'm mistaken, the vagina releases both urine and sexual substances, like the penis.

Re:Why not improve

[adpowers]

While they are near each other, the urethra and vagina are separated. Also, the wikipedia page for Vagina bluntly says:

"In common speech, the term "vagina" is often used improperly to refer to the vulva or female genitals generally; strictly speaking the vagina is a specific internal structure and the vulva is the exterior genitalia only. Calling the vulva the vagina is akin to calling the mouth the throat."

Re:Why not improve

[SteveAstro]

Slashsdotters should get out more. ;-)

Re:Why not improve

[WilliamSChips]

Well, in that case just s/vagina/vulva in my original statement.

Re:Why not improve

[Trogre]

I don't agree. We're the product of evolution.

I don't agree.

Ousters

[Anonymous Coward]

Reminds me of the Ousters in Dan Simmons' Hyperion/Endymion series.

Do we ostracize them as per the Church in the series because they're not "real" humans, or do we accept them as the next stage in the evolution of humans?

The problem of boot up the ass.

[Anonymous Coward]

"The sense of touch in my feet does not appear to be having a problem with distance. Maybe I just don't notice the latency, but I definately have sensory receptors all over the body that work just fine."

I'm happy to report the ones in the ass work just fine.

Dynamic tension

[wombatmobile]

There's no particular necessity that the brain would form in the head

In modern humans the heart is positioned midway between the brain and the genitals, pumping blood to both.

Re:Dynamic tension

[Vegeta99]

Not only that, but notice the proximity of the eyes, ears, and nose - our most important sex organs - to the brain. A 3 inch nerve works a lot quicker than say, the 5' one from your brain to your big toe.

Re:Dynamic tension

[Anonymous Coward]

Empiric evidence has shown that in the case of us males it must be closer to the genitals.

Re:Dynamic tension

[Peteee]

....our most important sex organs - to the brain. A 3 inch nerve....

Must...resist...joke...

Re:Dynamic tension

[Anonymous Coward]

In modern humans the heart is positioned midway between the brain and the genitals, pumping blood to both.

Just not at the same time.

Re:Dynamic tension

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no particular necessity that the brain would form in the head

In modern humans the heart is positioned midway between the brain and the genitals, pumping blood to both.

And there's STILL only enough blood to run ONE set at a time.

Re:Dynamic tension

[Vegeta99]

oh wow, screwed that one up...

Should probably have a cup of coffee and a cigarette before posting.

Also...

[sevenoverzero]

Pharyngula, PZ Myers's blog, is good reading.

WTF?

[thebdj]

I think I can cope with the extra limbs and pre-hensile tail. While certain evolutionary changes did reduce us to four-limbed tail-less creatures, I suppose there could be certain circumstances where at the least we could've kept the tail. The notions about reproduction and the brain are a bit odd.

As others have pointed out, the human brain would make most logical sense in the head. Being near the sensory organs is rather important to ensure fast response to external stimuli. Also, the chest cavity makes for a lousy place for brain storage. I guess the ribs and like could've evolved differently, but it just doesn't seem like an effective barrier. It is also mid-mass so your brain would get bounced around with just normal moving and sleeping. Not really a great idea. At least in the head it is fairly protected from that sort of stress.

The reproductive organs...well I just would not want to think about the trouble this would cause. Our mouths already have a confusing time with the eating and breathing. There are problems with this system mind you. Our bodies don't seem to like the idea of eating and breathing much at the same time. Also, I think I would rather have my less pleasant bodily functions sharing space with my reproductive organs than with place where I eat, drink and breath. Also, reproductive organs would have bad protection in your mouth. Besides the dangers of self mutilation (I mean imagine if this thing bit its own balls), the area is grossly exposed. The mouth is technically an external area that receives a great deal more bacteria then your lower regions.

For any major change to have occured in the evolutionary path, something major would have to happen to the environment. Environment played a huge roll in our evolutionary path, and I would like to think that genetics, natural selection and all that fun stuff worked together to produce the best form possible.

Re:WTF?

[Qzukk]

to produce the best form possible.

Thats the problem with evolution, it doesn't produce the best form possible. All it does is guarantee that you'll have at least the worst form that is still capable of reproduction. Anything better than that is just luck.

This guy scares me....

[Offtopic]

Kyle: Watch out Stan, genetic engineers are crazy!!!

    South Park, Episode 105, An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig

Question

[dwalsh]

"...reproductive organs in its mouth"

Whose?

Re:Question

[Linker3000]

New crimes on the statute books:

Yawning in public

Attempted cough

Re:Question

[SnailNobra]

Answer, you saw it in a movie once. Here is a hint, it stars a woman whose name beings with 'L' and ends in 'inda Lovelace'.

well, one reason to be glad

[MORTAR_COMBAT!]

that the religious right exists. so we don't "have to meet these bug-eyed freaks sometime in our lifetime."

Why should it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does not the Bible say, "Blessed are those with six limbs and reproductive organs in their mouths?"

I did *not* need to read that

[TheCreeep]

FTA:

What has six limbs, a prehensile tail, its brain in its chest, and reproductive organs in its mouth?

So are you fond of alien fetish or what?

Games section

[mapkinase]

I would put this post into the Games section. The article has very little to do with science.

Skewed statistics

[mengel]

Ah, yes, "since 1945", conveniently avoiding Hitler's pseudo-Christian Holocaust, and the pseudo-Muslim genocide of Armenians in the early 1900's, etc.

(I use "pseudo-", above, to indicate that those people claimed they were adhering to that religion, regardless of the actual tenets of said religion...)

Re:Skewed statistics

[LWATCDR]

I picked 1945 because that is all the data that was available from that source
But even when you through in Hitler who was not a christian and the Armenian holocaust you still are far below the death toll from atheists.
Do the math.
China in china. 35 Million
China in Tibet 1.6 Million
USSR in the USSR 21 Million
North Korea 2+million

For the atheists you have an estimate of 59 million deaths.
It is easy to classify those deaths as atheists simply because they are all communist dictatorships and atheism is the state policy.

Nazi Germany 6 million.
Armenians 1.6 million.

Re:Skewed statistics

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Textbook example of the True Scottsman fallacy.

Re:Skewed statistics

[LWATCDR]

Only if I was trying to prove the having a religion was morally superior to being an Atheist. I am not making that claim. I am only claiming that being an atheist is not proof of moral superiority.
Those that think I am trying to prove that religious people are better than none religious people are simply reading their own fears or desires into what I am stating.

Re:Skewed statistics

[Gulthek]

...I'd like to point out that atheism may be the state policy but not the beliefs of the people. China is not quite as easy to classify as you claim.

Re:Skewed statistics

[Skreems]

Don't you think it might be a little more accurate if you separated those that are killing BECAUSE of religious reasons, as opposed to those that aren't? China and the USSR were doing all their killing for governmental/control reasons, to maintain their fascist state or during a revolution. That's pretty distinct from religious types who are killing people simply for worshiping the wrong gods. It's dishonest to try to put the two groups together. What you should be comparing are religious nuts who kill for religious reasons, and atheists who specifically target believers because of their religion. And if you actually do that, I'm pretty sure the religious types will win.

Re:Skewed statistics

[Profane MuthaFucka]

I think you made a mistake in responding to my comment. My comment was made to this comment http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=183626&cid=151 65574, not yours. I don't dispute your comment, except for the point that Adolf Hitler was a Catholic. He said so quite clearly.

The other guys you mentioned were either certainly atheist, or you can make a well-supported judgement that they were atheist.

Re:Skewed statistics

[LWATCDR]

But these are state sponsored killings.
Killings for the state and by the state.
No country or belief system is easy to classify. That is the entire point! I am not trying to condemn atheists. I am just trying to show that religious groups are not the single greatest source of evil on the planet.
Someone accused me of using Skewed statistics to prove my point because I picked 1945 as the start of my data. I only picked that because that is all of the data I could find. When someone accused me of picking that data so I could leave out two terrible religion based genocides, I then put that data in. However I didn't put in the killings in the USSR before 1945 because I wasn't sure that data had not been included in post 1945 death count. I didn't want to count that twice.

Like it or not Communist states that have a state policy of atheism have killed far more people than even Hitler did. These are just the documented facts. Just like it is a fact that way too many Christians in Europe willingly cooperated with the Nazis during WWII. How many is too many? I would say one is too many.
My statistics are not skewed. The number do not lie. Any one that says that Christians, Muslims, or Jews have killed more people than any other group are just wrong.

Re:Skewed statistics

[madcow_bg]

IT IS ALWAYS ABOUT CONTROL!!!

Re:Skewed statistics

[JollyFinn]

Firstly I'd like to point out one thing. It looks like in this forum atheists are majority they moderate up the atheist comments and moderate down the other comments, so in this kind of discussion most people see only one point of view not the other.

Islam is not just a religion, Islam is a political system and state. They mandate the killings, as a way to spread their way of living and their law, and getting rid of elements they considered evil or bad for their state. Same way communism promoted revolutions and killings, they promoted it because it was part of THEIR ideology of state without elements they considered bad.. The nazis, well they where secular party which hunted down the priests and jews. They killed because their ideology of master RACE, and slaughtered all the elements they considered bad. The christians in the middle ages, killed because of the religion, mostly because no-one except priesthood actually knew what the bible said and priest hood was mostly interested in keeping their own power and control and luxurious living style. A lot of those killings where just a mere imperialism to gain more resources and areas and to control the people, and pretty much people just framed a acceptable cause for their own secular quest for power and wealth.

So here we are in the conclusion, nearly all genocides, are struggle to create some ideological state or spreading their own state to new lands. The ideology could be created to accept these slaughters. The ideological state can have some religion, atheistic or what ever ideology that allows the killings. As atheism doesn't in itself say wheather you could kill someone or not, its quite good template for creation such ideology. Islam by definition means war. Christian well, the new testament is pretty clearly against those slaughters, but with enough illiteracy there is way for creating slaughtering ideology on top of that which happened in middle ages. In imperialism period it was just a pretext that justified actions. But more than often that was just a Kings secular decision machine that did killings and peoples personal lusts, they just needed some pretext to make it acceptable, and wrote one completely discarding what ever christianity said but using the language to make it acceptable.

With the exception of Islam, the religion or atheism do not automaticly mandate those killings, nor support them directly. Its the Ideology that is build in top of one that gives reasons for the slaughters, or just plain imperialism and quest for wealth.

As for saying I hate what Islamists have done. Christians are their main victims since atheists chooce between conversion and death differently. Also Islam is a system that is designed to grow and spread and its pretty much clear that unless something radical comes over half the worlds population will be Islamic in few decades.

Now the atheists, in the west are not the communists in the east, nor the Islam is Christianity. Nor christianity before Luther is same as it is today.

Re:Skewed statistics

[mshurpik]

I'll summarize this kid's post because I think it's hard to read:

So here we are in the conclusion, nearly all genocides, are struggle to create some ideological state or spreading their own state to new lands.... As atheism doesn't in itself say wheather you could kill someone or not, its quite good template for creation such ideology.

Re:Skewed statistics

[Skreems]

You need to have a sit-down with a good grammar book, my friend.

Re:Skewed statistics

[oliverthered]

Hitler has a Chatholic up bringing that game him the hatrid of the Gypsies and Jews.

Re:Skewed statistics

[Anonymous Coward]

Religious governments are religious because They Hold the Truth and it shuts out competing loyalties of other religions, and strengthens loyalty to the state, the Protector of the Faith.

Atheist goverments are atheistic because saying There Is No God shuts out the competing loyalty of religion, and strengthens loyalty to the state, the Protector of the People.

Agnostic governments are that way because enshrining Freedom of Religion in their law cuts down on sectarian violence and preserves the power of the state by keeping the citizens/subjects alive and paying taxes.

Sorry, I will never trust a government that is Officially Atheist. Smells too much of self-promotion and philosophical/ideological proselytizing. Same with Officially Jewish/Islam/Buddhist/Flying-Spaghetti-Monster.

Officially Agnostic is the best State Religion of choice for *any* people who just want to mind their own lives without crazy govt. bullshit. At least, I *think* it is. Could be wrong, ya know. ;)

A nice soft and warm fur coat like my dog's one.

[chris_sawtell]

And the ability to curl up to go to sleep. That's what I'd like.
The tail idea, or 3 hind legs, would be useful. So would more hands. 3 hind legs would mean that we wouldn't have to bother with chairs any more, because we'd have a built-in 3 legged stool to sit on.
I don't think much of the idea of only one eye in the head, and the brain in the chest, Isn't the optic nerve as short as it is because if it was made longer the bandwidth would be insufficient to see details properly. Only one eye means an end to binocular vision and the ability to judge distance properly. No thanks
Reproductive organs in the mouth? Wouldn't that give an entirely new meaning to the words "Blow Job"?

I am not a Tichologist, but...

[xenotrout]

This reminds me of Ijon Tichy's Twenty-first voyage (The Star Diaries, Stanislaw Lem).
With the ability to have any body form they want, people create all sorts of highly practical and highly impractical forms...and legislation, changing over time, to restrict the body forms people will take.
I don't think I really have a point...maybe it's Read Lem.
..."'Off with the head' (too small for them), 'Brain in the belly!' (more room there)"

MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

MOD PARENT UP - I can't believe the whole article talks about PZ Myers but doesn't once link to his website.

Problems of design

[Bob3141592]

What has six limbs, a prehensile tail, its brain in its chest, and reproductive organs in its mouth? The alternate human designed by biologist PZ Myers

This goes to show the problem of trying to use any design on such complicated systems as biological organisms. Reproductive organs are relatively external in the male because their requirements are very different from the other organs like the heart and kidneys. In they female they also require unique capabilities. The jaw cannot be as functionally flexible as the pelvis and cervix is. What woman would want to deliver through her mouth? A brain in the chest might have some serious overheating problems on top of the wiring issues mentioned elsewhere. Etc...

Evolution has proven superbly effective at creating workable systems because any component which is serious suboptimal causes the extinction of the entire line that contains it. Nature is extremely wasteful in the trial and error process which is natural selection, but nature is also extremely prolific so those creatures that survive can thrive on the failure of others. No designed organism can compete with an organism that evolved, even if that evolved organism has some defects like vestigial organs or an enhanced tendancy towards cancer in the post reproductive years.

I find this one of the biggest defects in the whole (un)intelligent design argument, what I call (u)ID. Design is not a desirable process, it is actually undesirable. A designed creature is not at all to be considered better or more noble than one that wasn't designed. Quite the opposite, as the preposterous article shows. Designs are oversimplistic, inflexible, assume fixed conditions in the environment, and cannot function beyond their designed requirements specifications. For things as trivially simplistic as watches or cars or air traffic control systems, the process of designing the product may be profitable (though even there it can be difficult or impossible to achieve all goals), but not for something as complex as a living organism.

Re:Problems of design

[Anonymous Coward]

For that matter, what woman would want to deliver through her vagina?

Re:Problems of design

[minus_273]

you know, reading the first two paragraphs of your post i almost thought you were talking about ID.

Re:Problems of design

[pikine]

Designs are oversimplistic, inflexible, assume fixed conditions in the environment, and cannot function beyond their designed requirements specifications.

You must be a Windows programmer.

Evolution has proven superbly effective at creating workable systems...

Suppose I design an evolution process that is effective at creating workable systems, then by your claim, my design (evolution) must be oversimplistic, inflexible, assumes fixed conditions, and cannot function beyond specification. This is a contradiction to your claim, so evolution process must not be effective, or your statement about design is wrong.

...because any component which is serious suboptimal causes the extinction of the entire line that contains it

Instead of "serious suboptimal causes" you should use the word "defect." Of course, no matter which words you use, your claim is a useless tautology, since a component that extincts is a component that has defect and vice versa.

But if you just say suboptimal, you can easily find someone who is biologically superior than you, then by your claim you should be extinct. But (I hope) this is not the case for you. There is observably some give or take on how suboptimal you can be. However, this implies that evolution is not so effective because it allows suboptimality, therefore a contradiction to your claim.

I hope other scientifically curious people are much more logically rigorous than you when defending evolution.

Re:Problems of design

[zippthorne]

Over time however, the designers would evolve their process to become more refined. In fact, with exhaustive testing and the retention of knowledge of things that didn't work, the evolution of designers would progress far more rapidly than natural evolution.

Re:Problems of design

[Gleemonex]

Suppose I design an evolution process that is effective at creating workable systems, then by your claim, my design (evolution) must be oversimplistic, inflexible, assumes fixed conditions, and cannot function beyond specification.

It most certainly would.

Evolution isn't some flowchart of fixed and discrete processes. It's simply the result of the survival of the fittest. You can't design it, any more than you can design Schroedinger's cat.

-Glee

Re:Problems of design

[pikine]

What do you mean "Evolution isn't some flowchart of fixed and discrete processes. It's simply the result of the survival of the fittest."?

1. Genetic mutation.
2. Natural selection.
3. Repeat 1.

Didn't I just express evolution in terms of a flowchart? The whole process may be much more non-deterministic and concurrent subject to race conditions everywhere, but you can write it down in a plain language.

By the way, Schrödinger's cat is a concept of logical exercise, not a process. Please don't mention things that are off-topic.

Re:Problems of design

[Gleemonex]

Didn't I just express evolution in terms of a flowchart?

You did, quite eloquently if I might say so. But you didn't design jack squat, any more than weeding my garden makes me a genetic engineer.

By the way, Schrödinger's cat is a concept of logical exercise, not a process. Please don't mention things that are off-topic.

I won't if you won't.

-Glee

If I know the internet...

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone wanna bet that there's already a well-developed community based on this creature as a sexual fetish?

Watch it!

[interactive_civilian]

Your "bug-eyed freak" is my welcome overlord!

head as a radiator

[harshaw]

Doesn't the head function as a radiator in some capacity? I would think that having the brain internalized would necessitate another mechanism to cool that part of the body.

Instead of...

[gadago]

bothering around with all this DNA stuff, why not just remove the bottom two ribs?? Then, we can our own reporductive organs in our mouth!

Re:Instead of...

[Anonymous Coward]

why not just remove the bottom two ribs?? Then, we can our own reporductive organs in our mouth!

What is it with guys giving up their ribs to get s*x? First Eve, now this suggestion!

Re:Instead of...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I've actually done it on a couple of occasions, massive gut notwithstanding.

in its... mouth?

[phorm]

and reproductive organs in its mouth

May that'll lend some true to when fathers say kissing boys will end up getting you pregnant. On the other hand, bad breath would be pretty nasty.

Seriously though, while there are disadvantages to the current location (as mentioned in the article)... the mouth isn't exactly a 'clean' place either and I doubt it would be much better suited to the job.

Finally!

[Junior J. Junior III]

An intelligent designer!

Re:Finally!

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems to me that you have hit on their agenda. ie. Evolution is not needed. "Look at what us mere mortals can design. A deity would have no trouble designing from scratch."

I am pissed off

[BitterAndDrunk]

Why didn't I get the beta to Spore too?

So Does this Mean....

[neuraljazz]

We will wear our underroos on our head?

Yer brain is like yer gonads

[backwardMechanic]

It hangs out of your body to stay cool. Curiously they're both hairy to.

Re:Yer brain is like yer gonads

[kinnell]

Curiously they're both hairy to

Hair serves as a cooling mechanism by increasing the surface area of the body part in question, thus increasing the rate at which heat is dissipated to the atmosphere.

Re:Yer brain is like yer gonads

[DJCacophony]

Hair serves as a cooling mechanism by increasing the surface area of the body part in question, thus increasing the rate at which heat is dissipated to the atmosphere.

I'm sure that's why you see so many people wearing fur coats in texas in the summer.

Re:Yer brain is like yer gonads

[Laur]

Hair serves as a cooling mechanism by increasing the surface area of the body part in question, thus increasing the rate at which heat is dissipated to the atmosphere.

I'm pretty sure that is incorrect. Hair is an insulator, and so it will not act as an extended surface as you claim. While you are correct that increased surface area increases heat transfer (that is what the fins on heat sinks are for), the extended surfaces must be conductive. Try replacing your metal heat sink fins with foam ones and see how long your processor lasts. FYI, I am not an evolutionary biologist, however I am a mechanical engineer with some experience in heat transfer.

Re:Yer brain is like yer gonads

[treskel]

a lot of heat dissipation on the skin occurs through evaporation of sweat on the hair.

Re:Yer brain is like yer gonads

[Laur]

a lot of heat dissipation on the skin occurs through evaporation of sweat on the hair.

Okay, now that actually sounds possible, however this would be a completely different phenomenon than just "increasing the surface area of the body part in question" as the original poster claimed. Incidentally, does this effect work on the long, thick hairs on the head, or just with the relatively fine hairs found on most of the body?

Re:Yer brain is like yer gonads

[mshurpik]

I agree, I think hair on the head is sun protection and hair on the genitals is physical protection and/or a visual cue towards mating.

Hair is definitely NOT pro-cooling in any way shape or form.

Re:Yer brain is like yer gonads

[treskel]

I would say it works only on a short distance, longer hairs are there for the insulating effect obtained when climate gets colder (wooly mammooth comes to mind). If you want more heat dissipation at high temperatures you effectively have to increase skin surface (larger ears of elephants). hairy dogs have to use their tongue and breath to effectively eliminate heat as the hair are indeed insulating.

Re:Yer brain is like yer gonads

[Anonymous Coward]

I think hair on the head is sun protection and hair on the genitals is physical protection and/or a visual cue towards mating.

How about hair in the armpits..? I read a claim that it prevents chafing somehow. If so, that could also explain hair between the genital + buttocks area.

Re:Yer brain is like yer gonads

[kinnell]

the extended surfaces must be conductive

Everything is conductive to some extent, as you know ;-)

I actually read this in "The Human Animal" by Desmond Morris, if my memory serves me correctly. There was a hypothesis that humans lost hair because they would have more need to run than apes, and would therefore need to dissipate more heat. Experiments showed, however, that apes were in fact better at dissipating heat because their hair acted as a heat sink. This obviously depends on a lot of factors - polar bear fur is obviously adapted to keeping the body warm - and there are no doubt a lot of other factors affecting the evolution of body hair patterns.

Answer

[Anonymous Coward]

"What has six limbs, a prehensile tail, its brain in its chest, and reproductive organs in its mouth?"

Japanese Hentai demons

Re:A nice soft and warm fur coat like my dog's one

[swordfish666]

Wouldn't that give an entirely new meaning to the words "Blow Job"?
and "Skull Fuck"

We're just evolving differently

[bigtrike]

We haven't stopped it, we've only altered the rules. Finding food and escaping predators is no longer much of an evolutionary influence. There are quite a few new things which can cause us to fail to reproduce. Humans will likely evolve in time to become less susceptible to cancer and asthma caused by air pollution, more likely to survive car crash trauma, be more tolerant of lead and mercury, and less likely to suffer negative effects such as heart disease from overconsumption of food. Women whose genetics prevent birth control from working well are currently far more likely to reproduce than others, so we will likely see some tolerance in the general population (although the medications will likely change at a much faster rate than we can evolve around). This is all just speculation though, I'm not a biologist.

Re:We're just evolving differently

[daft_one]

+5 interesting?? I have to wonder... How, exactly, do you think we're going to "evolve" to survive car crashes? Isn't it more likely we'll survive more crashes due to better-designed cars and better/more available emergency medical care? Not to mention a similar argument for cancer or asthma, or the fact that people tend to die of diet-related heart disease long *after* they're of age to have reproduced! The only possibly-valid point you even have there is the one about birth control, but really... women who are too poor to afford birth control or simply don't believe in controlling their own reproduction are even *more* likely to reproduce. Thus making that the single most useless "+5 interesting" comment I've ever seen on slashdot.

Re:We're just evolving differently

[ChrisA90278]

Yes, selective presures have changed. Currently the biggest predictor od how many kids a person will have is economic class. The poorest and least educated have the most kids. Poor, ingle women in Africa "win" with 8 kids each while afluent familes in Tokyo have few ofspring. Whatever it is that make one poor and uneducatedwill spread through the gene pool.

Re:We're just evolving differently

[Anonymous Coward]

But if seven of eight of those kids die (of HIV or war) before reproducing, the rich mother is still ahead in the game.

Re:We're just evolving differently

[danielk1982]

Assuming intelligence is hereditary.

Re:We're just evolving differently

[bigtrike]

While it's likely auto safety and emergency care will improve, cars have been around for nearly 100 years now and they are still a major factor of death for many people, including the young. We're also running into problems with decreasing marginal returns on safety devices. There are several ways we could evolve to deal with the trauma. Stronger bones and skulls as well as improved recovery to extreme blunt force trauma. Perhaps we will evolve to have faster reflexes to avoid accidents entirely as the majority of all automobile deaths are caused by human error.

Evolution is not entirely dependent on only what happens prior to reproduction. There are a number of other factors. Assisting offspring which shares your genes helps them to reproduce and therefore helps your genes to be passed on. This is why mothers in most species protect and feed their offspring after birth rather than abandoning them in and attempting to reproduce again immediately. If reproduction was the only factor, then offspring would be instinctively abandoned at birth.

You're also correct about people being too poor to afford birth control. If there are genetic factors which cause them to be poor, then these will be passed on, for better or worse. While this might sound like an argument to sterilize the poor people to prevent them from dragging humanity down, it's far more likely that poverty is caused by environmental and situational factors.

Re:We're just evolving differently

[Maxo-Texas]

Two variables are involved...

how strong is the selective pressure.

the time span.

If we drive cars for 10 million years and at least a few times a year someone who later reproduces survives because of any type of advantage, then that advantage will become more common.

If we drive cars for 1,000 years and have such violent accidents that 99% of drivers are killed before they can reproduce but 1% survive and reproduce-- then those traits that allowed them to survive will almost certainly predominate by the end of the time span.

If they survive and don't reproduce, then it's almost as if they didn't survive- but they *might* help their cousin reproduce more by giving them a loan and some of their genes are shared with their cousin.

Re:We're just evolving differently

[Anonymous Coward]

Humans will likely evolve in time to become less susceptible to cancer and asthma caused by air pollution, more likely to survive car crash trauma, be more tolerant of lead and mercury, and less likely to suffer negative effects such as heart disease from overconsumption of food.

yes, this is all speculation. I literally laughed out loud when I read this stuff. i will say that humans should be LESS likely to survive serious trauma with the advance of medicine. it is medical advances that allow severely injured humans to survive, and later reproduce. so a human having the natural ability to more likely survive the trauma from a car wreck gives no advantage to that person, because thanks to medical technologies, everyone else can survive it too.

so allow me one speculation:
humans average cranial circumference will increase. this would be due to cesarian-section births. before cesarian-sections, infants with heads too large to pass through the birth canal likely died in child birth, along with the mother.

Re:We're just evolving differently

[Anonymous Coward]

True, but surviving under conditions of poverty is more physically stressful and therefore survival of the fittest should come in to play.

Re:We're just evolving differently

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep in mind that the only factors that affect natural selection are those that act on people before they reproduce. Long term environmental impacts such as carcinogens that gives you cancer at the age of 50 doesn't have any effect on natural selection.

Re:We're just evolving differently

[Invalid Character]

We'll become a race of Stewies!

I say that should be a delightful outcome.

I don't know about brain location

[phorm]

But how about redundancy or backup? Kinda like having RAID or perhaps a multiple-processor setup. Currently the brain already has multiple segments, but they tend to be specializing areas. Why not have, for example, a secondary lump 'o' grey matter in an alternate location. This one could deal more directly with the organs in that area, and/or also act as backup when #1 goes offline.

I wonder how this would work for sleep as well. Take a 1h nap, brain #1 dumps to brain #2 and then offlines. If you've enough physical rest then brain #2 boots up for awhile and you can continue until it needs to rest and let #1 take over again.

Re:I don't know about brain location

[Velocir]

There's a mutant baby in China that does this already... Probably actually a toddler by now.

Careful what you wish for!

[StefanJ]

Fur is high maintenance. It gets all over, has to be brushed a lot, harbors parasites, and makes it hard to keep cool.

My dog has a brutal time in summer:

http://home.comcast.net/~stefan_jones/kira_grinnin g_lo.JPG

Some dog owners just give their pups a full body trim in late spring.

Dribble . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

. . . or did you mean "mindless drivel"?

Go rate something on Amazon.com; They love that word over there. Here, the word to beat to death is pedantic.

Re:Is it just me

[MK_CSGuy]

Oh please... not those accusations again that we try to imitate god! That's just foolish accusInuX! Kolswja herg fwawq erglo FwrgSG, Gewrty lIdgOsr KfasRvadaq - SefrtArc! Qwesc folamo?

Gorcsa fidxa mesa mesa Hsefa, Vsalohj suvs csa. Raex jombale kuzu kaza mio picha. Gsalo mca dgwx Hosfzas farfew, jvyf gisam kupam.

Fun book on human genetic engineering

[coyotecult]

One of the books I had as a kid was Dougal Dixon's illustrated book Man After Man. It focused around an ecosystem composed entirely of genetically engineered humans who evolved in response to environmental pressures. Unfortunately, it's not in print anymore.

um, really bad plan guys.

[illogic]

um, hello? have these people NOT played Resident Evil?

I guess this would be a case where NOT playing video games leads to moral decay.

Tough to shop for!

[StefanJ]

Unless we start building household fabricators that can handle the demand, manufacturers of clothing, medical gear, and personal care products are going to have to come up with whole new lines to support each new model of human.

I mean, dang! Imagine trendy parents who have kids of four different models. Back to school clothes shopping would be a real bitch. "Oh, look Tiffany, Sextopodal Kids "R" Us is having a sale on those . . . RONALD! Get your hands out of your mouth this instance!"

An open letter to the Designers/Creators...

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Creators/Designers,

In your almighty plans please consider the following requests:

1. Please separate the reproductive system from the waste removal (gastro-intestinal/urinary) system
2. Please hard-wire bitching to create excruciating pain
3. Please add more boobies
4. Please match the number of upper-body limbs to the number of boobies
5. Did I mention add boobies?

That is all.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction (and..)

[vmichael]

I seem to remember John Smart talking about "developmental optimum" that evolution settles into. The eye most people get, having one doesn't give stereo vision, and three is redudant so the extra requirements of having a third eye get pared out over time. There are also some reasons having five fingers having to do with gripping a rock so it could be thrown accurately at ninety miles an hour. Get a pack of hairy men all throwing at a single predator/prey and they've got a serious problem. Our thowing abilities aren't too important today, granted, but consider how much engineering and design work would need to be completely redone to accomadate a couple extra digits. Sad to see this sensational article completely ignore the body of reasearch in this area.

Vapour...

[adrianbaugh]

we may have to meet these bug-eyed freaks sometime in our lifetime.

Yeah. Shortly after Duke Nukem Forever hits the streets.

The molluscs shall inherit the Earth.

[gobbo]

It seems that the central-brained creature in TFA would, in most practical terms, resemble a mollusk. However, on this planet, invertebrates aren't the creatures that developed sentience...

You could be right, but we don't know for sure. It depends on how one defines sentience, and what we discover as we explore the oceans, as we're just beginning to do.

The case could be made that the mollusc body plan is the most successful on the planet. Squid, for instance, out-mass pretty much all other animals, in an astonishing variety of ecological niches (okay, not sure about krill... any biologists care to refresh my memory?). Molluscs can be found in just about any part of the earth.

As far as sentience goes, if humans crap out and extinct ourselves, my vote for the next evolutionary chance at the reign of intelligence would be for the cephalopods. They're adaptable, have a proven problem-solving intelligence, are highly communicative in ways we're just beginning to understand, have excellent eyesight, and octopuses in particular are highly dextrous.

Don't underestimate the mighty mollusc.

Re:The molluscs shall inherit the Earth.

[Velocir]

I for one welcome our cephalopod successors.

Ouch!

[Jamil Karim]

"reproductive organs in its mouth"... This makes me feel so much better about the pain of accidentally biting my tongue.

Re:A nice soft and warm fur coat like my dog's one

[Anonymous Coward]

3 hind legs would mean that we wouldn't have to bother with chairs any more, because we'd have a built-in 3 legged stool to sit on.

I already have a built in kickstand, you insensitive clod!

Regarding the attraction of this species

[Lord_Dweomer]

If what he is proposing is to use human DNA to "remix" our form...it brings an interesting question to mind. Lets say this thing could actually be created and it had its reproductive organs in its mouth...can anybody here shed some light on the psychology behind whether it would find other members of its species attractive? I mean...if it had human DNA...would it find regular shaped humans attractive? Or only those of similar form?

What I'm getting at...and I'm entirely serious when I ask this...if a male and female of this species were created...would they even WANT to reproduce with each other? Would they even find the other attractive?

Re:Regarding the attraction of this species

[Xanthir]

It depends. A goodly bit of attraction is genetically based - this is why you get brightly colored males and such. However, the lion's share of attraction is culturally determined. You like who you are raised around. So, as long as the homo novus individuals were brought up around each other, they should be fine.

Re:Regarding the attraction of this species

[vodkamattvt]

Obviously this is an area of uncertainty in all the fields it involves. While the genetics of it involve evoloving traits that are "attractive", attracting is not coded entirely within our DNA. Its not as if a synthetic man could be made tomorrow somehow as an adult with no experiences and be automatically attracted to females.

There is a large social function here, I believe, where social animals modify and reinforce the traits that are attractive, and thus are taught it through social means.

On the flip side ... in the animal kingdom there are dumb animals mating all the time that are not considered "social".

So, short anser ... maybe.

Long answer ... I will give you 5 bucks to see the freaks mate!

Apple and Evolution

[Brown Eggs]

I think it is a bit presumptuous to think that we are the pinnacle of perfection. In fact, our very design is inefficient because of backward compatibility. For example, our brain is designed the way it is (cortex on the outside) because it developed most recently on top of a preexisting brainstem. This is not the most efficient layout for the way it is connected (from an engineering perspective).

If I could make a rather silly analogy, one could compare this to Apple vs Windows/Linux, where the newly designed organism is an Apple machine and the current version is Windows. Sure the current version works fine, but it has some minor flaws and is hampered in its development because it has to support a lot of archaic hardware (backwards compatibility), a lot of which is not used anymore. Contrast this with Apple that tends to "reinvent" the machine with a rather callous disregard (in most cases) for its predecessors. What you get is something that is usually more efficient (from a space and power consumption perspective) and pushes the boundaries of an OS a bit more. I strongly believe that a similar perspective with organism design could yield equally interesting results.

Re:Apple and Evolution

[Skreems]

It's not that the GP and GGP are saying human design is the "pinnacle of perfection". The point is that our mental abilities actually work AGAINST physical evolution, because we can use tools, medicine, and other artifacts of society to keep individuals alive who would have died in the wild. For example, has human eyesight gotten worse since the invention of the eyeglass? There's less selective pressure against poor eyesight now than there was before that invention, so it's a pretty safe bet that the genes for "bad eyes" are gradually spreading through the gene pool. Same goes for a lot of other traits as well.

Re:Apple and Evolution

[Brown Eggs]

Actually I completely agree with what you said - my rebuttle was aimed at the statement "starting from scratch, we probably couldn't do much better than what our planet has already provided". I agree that we have stagnated human evolution due to a lack of selective pressure, but to assume that our end product (current humans) is somehow ideal is wrong.

Re:Apple and Evolution

[Skreems]

Ah, I see. I would have read that as "we aren't smart enough to figure out what evolution has in 4 billion years of trial and error, no matter how flawed", which I completely buy.

Re:Apple and Evolution

[mshurpik]

That's a good point about vision, but I think what eyeglasses have revealed is that there is a recessive gene for perfect vision and a dominant gene for vision that is absolutely fine, but requires constant long-distance training.

Since nobody trains long distance vision anymore (even driving a car is weak compared to staring at a mountain range), the result is that most of us wear glasses. We are all eyeball couch potatoes. Point being, I don't think glasses have been around long enough to affect evolution. Eventually, you might be right. But today, most of us who wear glasses are genetically normal.

Freeman Dyson: "One Species or a Million?"

[StefanJ]

"The question that will decide our destiny is not whether we shall expand into space. It is: shall we be one species or a million? A million species will not exhaust the ecological niches that are awaiting the arrival of intelligence.

...
When we are a million species spreading through the galaxy, the questions 'Can man play God and still stay sane?' will lose of of its terrors. We shall be playing God, but only as local dieties and not as lords of the universe. There is safety in numbers. Some of us will become insane , and rule over empires as crazy as Doctor Moreau's island. Some of use will shit on the morning star. There will be conflicts and tragedies. But in the long run, the sane will adapt and survive better than the insane. Nature's pruning of the unfit will limit the spread of insanity among the species in the galaxy, as it does among individuals on earth.

...
The expansion of life over the universe is a beginning, not an end. At the same time as life is extending its habitat quantitatively, it will also be changing and evolving qualitatively into dimensions of mind and spirit that we cannot imagine. The acquisition of new territory is important, not as an end in itself, but as a means to enable life to experiment with intelligence in a million different forms."

-- "The Greening of the Galaxy," Freeman Dyson, 1979

Re:Freeman Dyson: "One Species or a Million?"

[Anonymous Coward]

-- "The Greening of the Galaxy," Freeman Dyson, 1979

This is also from the man whose vaccuum never loses suction. Ever.

Re:Freeman Dyson: "One Species or a Million?"

[p00ya]

I once read a SF short story about the nth generation of a human team that had landed on a planet inhospitable due to its atmosphere and agressive wildlife. The humans had managed to build a shelter and were holed up in it until they could find a way to face the outside world; meanwhile the outside world was slowly wearing away the walls of their shelter. Over many generations, they made alterations to their genetics and behaviour so that they grew tusks (I think?) and became aggressive; but also they were ultimately unrecognisable as 'human'. The story ends with some of the new-breed being sent out into the outside world and presumably killing everything in the vicinity, but only to replace the animals outside in attacking the walls of the shelter.

A few of my own ideas

[msaulters]

I have a few of my own ideas, as well as comments on his article.

First, while people are arguing about brain in chest vs head due to nerve length, nobody is mentioning one of the other impracticalities of his suggestions. Namely, the brain in the chest would require a larger chest cavity, thus a larger torso, and more weight. As well, the extra pair of arms would add to this. The heart would likely need to be larger to support the extra mass. Also, I think the brain would not be as free to grow/evolve to larger sizes when surrounded by all this ribcage, heart, lungs.

Instead, I think we could really benefit from the addition of one or two more hearts. Why are all our other organs redundant? (even the brain is a dual organ)

In the area of reproduction, instead of putting genitals in our mouths, take another cue from the bird world... Let's keep our reproduction like it is, but make women lay eggs. If sexual intercourse caused a woman to develop an infant-sized egg that she had to lay three days later, we would probably see a lot fewer teen pregnancies. In addition, a fetus developing in the egg would allow much more flexibility in prenatal care. It would likewise put an immediate end to the abortion issue, as the debate would no longer encompass a woman's right to do as she pleases with her body.

One of the more interesting possibilities in medicine today is that scientists may be able to reactivate the gene responsible for regeneration of organs, so you could re-grow lost kidneys, lungs, even limbs, as we can already regrow liver tissue. That's a wonderful bit of evolution that we lost, I can't possibly imagine why.

Finally, while he's taking ideas from some of the animal world, why not give our new and improved human, who I like to call Homo Novo, spinnerets so we can make our own rope, easily glue and fasten things or in a bind even make our own clothes? I admit, it would put the packing tape industry out of business, but it might afford the chance for some exciting new sports, as competitors try to tie each other up, rapell down buildings, or even the new art form of web design (oh, I guess we'd have to come up with a different name).

Re:A few of my own ideas

[uberjoe]

may be able to reactivate the gene responsible for regeneration of organs

If regrowing organs was as simple as flipping one gene, don't you think we would have done that already?

Re:A few of my own ideas

[Delight-Delirium]

...re-grow lost kidneys, lungs, even limbs, as we can already regrow liver tissue. That's a wonderful bit of evolution that we lost, I can't possibly imagine why.

On why we may not have that ability - I am not a biologist in the least, but would hypothesise it has to do with the risk of out-of-control tissue growth, what tissue types there is less risk of it with, and highly structured, non-homogenous organs. For example, in re-growing an arm, it is not just one tissue type/organ which needs to be replicated. Bone has to be grown in appropriate ratios to blood vessels, muscle, etc. The kidneys are full of those concentric structures which I would guess need to be done right in order for the organ to work, so it's not just a matter of "make more meat"

If sexual intercourse caused a woman to develop an infant-sized egg that she had to lay three days later, we would probably see a lot fewer teen pregnancies. In addition, a fetus developing in the egg would allow much more flexibility in prenatal care.

I am a little puzzled by the conclusions you drew here. On the pre-natal care, I think the opposite is true. If the egg has a hard, impenerable shell, additional care during the gestation would be impossible. Furthermore, the nutrients available to the developing creature would be limited to those which were in the mother's body for a short, and likely unmanaged, period of time.

As for discouraging teem pregnancy, I am again lost... do you mean that if they just layed an egg they wouldn't be "pregnant" in the common sense of the word? If anything, I rather imagine these eggs would be a lost easier to dispose of than an internally embedded fetus...

Re:A few of my own ideas

[Thomas Henden]

>by msaulters (130992) Alter Relationship on Thursday April 20, @06:50PM (#15165944)
>
>Finally, while he's taking ideas from some of the animal world, why not give our new and improved human,
>who I like to call Homo Novo, spinnerets so we can make our own rope, easily glue and fasten things or in
>a bind even make our own clothes? I admit, it would put the packing tape industry out of business, but it
>might afford the chance for some exciting new sports, as competitors try to tie each other up, rapell down
>buildings, or even the new art form of web design (oh, I guess we'd have to come up with a different name).

Uh, Spiderman?

Re:A few of my own ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's keep our reproduction like it is, but make women lay eggs. If sexual intercourse caused a woman to develop an infant-sized egg that she had to lay three days later, we would probably see a lot fewer teen pregnancies.

Well, chickens lay eggs about once a day whether they're fertilized or not. So what do we do with all the unfertilized infant-sized woman eggs? I guess it would give new meaning to the concept of "omelette"...

Re:A few of my own ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a wonderful bit of evolution that we lost, I can't possibly imagine why.

We haven't lost it totally, see: cancer. It's a tradeoff between having automatic rebuilding of body parts, and having automatic rabuilding of body parts gone horribly long. Most species which regenerate don't usually live long enough to have cancer kill them. Humans on the other hand have long livespans, and that creates more opportunities for the regenerative abilities to go berzerk.

Re:A few of my own ideas

[Chrontius]

On why we may not have that ability - I am not a biologist in the least, but would hypothesise it has to do with the risk of out-of-control tissue growth, what tissue types there is less risk of it with, and highly structured, non-homogenous organs. For example, in re-growing an arm, it is not just one tissue type/organ which needs to be replicated. Bone has to be grown in appropriate ratios to blood vessels, muscle, etc. The kidneys are full of those concentric structures which I would guess need to be done right in order for the organ to work, so it's not just a matter of "make more meat" Same with the liver, IAABM (I Am A Bio Major)

Re:A few of my own ideas

[nytes]

As for discouraging teem pregnancy, I am again lost... do you mean that if they just layed an egg they wouldn't be "pregnant" in the common sense of the word? If anything, I rather imagine these eggs would be a lost easier to dispose of than an internally embedded fetus...

Exactly! We could have them for breakfast.

Re:A few of my own ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if they are Irish.

Re:A few of my own ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are all our other organs redundant?

The liver, pancreas, spleen and stomach, intestines, bladder and uterus are not duplicated.

I suspect the reason for the duplication of kidneys and lungs is more to do with the need for capacity, and the problems associated with a single organ of twice the size (recall the problems of enlarged hearts).

make women lay eggs

Placental mammals evolved internal reproduction in order to provide a more secure environment for offspring, requiring less investment per successful child (compare the mortality of eggs of reptiles/amphibians/insects/birds). This enables a slower development with less pre-programming, enabling learning and intelligence to develop.

Do not second-guess nature. As others have pointed out, in all probability every idea and variation you can imagine has already been tried. The fact that there are no living examples of certain characteristics (notwithstanding unknown examples) is strong evidence (but not proof) that these characteristics at best provided no evolutionary advantage; at worst - they were a mistake.

Re:A few of my own ideas

[Josh Hiles]

We shouldn't give them spinnerets because spiders are creepy and the future of humanity should be filled with shiny flowers and puppies rather than creepy spider people. Plus a "new sport..." where people try to "...tie people up..." sounds far to much like competitive BDSM.

Re:A few of my own ideas

[Delight-Delirium]

Eeeeeeew, you discect things, gross!! I only discect ideas!

Re:A few of my own ideas

[Chrontius]

only bacteria and lattes at the moment :)

OTOH, theoretical cryptozoology is a neverending source of amusement.

What's being ignored here.

[hackwrench]

Is why there's a front of an animal at all. Why do animals not have sensory organs distributed to all sides equally to prevent attack from any given direction, or at least an even distribution of each.

There's also the question of distribution from top to bottom.

Re:What's being ignored here.

[yarbo]

Predators usually have their eyes facing more forward (dogs, for example), prey usually have eyes closer to the side (rabbits, for example).

Re:What's being ignored here.

[bofkentucky]

Frogs and toads have very small optical gaps, mostly the ground directly under their bodies. Considering their prey and predators rarely appear from directly underneath themselves (trapdoor spiders come to mind). Primates have binocular vision for depth perception in the arboreal environments we lived in, just the same as bears, raccoons, and squirrells.

Re:What's being ignored here.

[mshurpik]

Yep. It defers to the idea of efficiency, which is that if you have eyes in the back of your head, and nobody attacks you, then you're wasting food supporting organs that are useless.

A pound of steak at the supermarket costs 20 minutes of labor at minimum wage. Eating flesh wasn't always so easy...

Flying Spaghetti Monster, anyone?

[SuperNinjaMonkey]

or is it just me?

Spore

[MK_CSGuy]

They just couldn't wait for the release of Spore...

For one thing

[Aqua_boy17]

We can deduce that there were no women on the panel. If there had been, the male reproductive organs would have been located on the chin.

Actually ...

[LukePieStalker]

The description makes it sound more like a Pierson's Puppeteer.

What is "stereo vision"

[hackwrench]

Is it something like depth perception. They keep telling me you need two eyes for depth perception, but I close one eye and I can perceive depth perhaps even better. It's like a hologram. It may even be holographic. In making a hologram, you only need one film.

Re:What is "stereo vision"

[Carnivore]

No you can't. Your brain makes you think you can, but you can't. When you close one eye, you have already seen the scene with stereo vision. Your brain therefore knows what size objects are and how far away they are. Even when you close the eye, you still have this information saved.

You have to have a previously unseen scene, in which there is ambiguity about the correct size of the objects. With stereo vision, you can use parallax to figure out if something is far away or just small.

Re:What is "stereo vision"

[hackwrench]

Oh? Last I checked, you haven't checked me over medically, so how do you know? You're just rehashing what you've been told about what we know can be done to infer depth info.

Re:What is "stereo vision"

[beoswulf]

I don't have stereovision. One eye does near vision, the other does far, the images don't fuse. Our brains are incredibly adept at estimating distances based on expected sizes of things. I don't have any points on my driver's licence and never gave my car any scratches. Though don't ask me to be an professional outfielder any time soon.

Re:What is "stereo vision"

[zippthorne]

No, you really can. stereo-vision isn't the ONLY cue to depth perception. There's also motion parallax and as someone else mentioned, size and brightness cues. They're all ways of reconstructing the three dimensional space around us, but there is no sense that allows a full reconstruction.

Re:What is "stereo vision"

[hereticmessiah]

But what it is is the best method the brain has for depth perception. Where hackwrench is wrong is when they state "but I close one eye and I can perceive depth perhaps even better", which is plainly wrong. All that's happening is they're losing a cue, and a powerful one at that.

Re:What is "stereo vision"

[hereticmessiah]

Well, unless you're physiologically different from the rest of humanity, one shouldn't need to. :-)

Now, I happen to know that stereo vision plays a huge part in depth perception from two source. Firstly, I did technical drawing in secondary school, and one of the things we studied was perspective projection. My other source was in applying what I learned to writing a graphics engine. I might not be an expert, but I've picked up a thing or two, and I check what I'm taught if possible by experimenting.

If you don't have stereo vision, you have to use less powerful cues, such as motion, brightness, knowledge-based heuristics, &c., but all of these are far less potent than stereo vision. You're probably being tricked into thinking closing one eye gives you better depth perception by the fact that one of your eyes--the one you're keeping open--is stronger than the other.

You're also wrong when it comes to hologram: while they appear flat, they are, in fact, embossed on a sliver of some reflective material and rely on defraction to scatter the light rays in such a way that the eyes are tricked into seeing a 3D image. But if you've no depth perception, the resulting image looks somewhat flat unless either you or the image are moved.

Re:What is "stereo vision"

[hackwrench]

Now, I happen to know that stereo vision plays a huge part in depth perception

At first I was going to say you know that it can, then you proceed to list two sources that have no bearing on stereo vision. Even more, to the degree that 3D can be approximated in 2d, "stereo vision" would be of no help whatsoever.

Until recently, every time I got a new prescription my depth perception would improve for a few days, and then go back to my everyday poor perception. When I was much younger I had much better depth perception. I watched a 3D film with the special glasses at Disney World. I've watched a 3D film at an amusement park since then and the two images most of the time did not converge, but when I concentrated on getting the images to converge, the 3D illusion was back, better than my everyday non thinking about it depth perception, even though everyday perception converges. My aunt who has never had depth perception was along with me for the 3D film, saw the image split as I did, and couldn't understand when I told her that seeing the image split was nowhere near what people with depth perception see.

If I concentrate, I can get my depth perception to improve. If I have my mind on aspects of depth perception it improves.

A hologram does not trick the eyes into seeing a three dimensional image, a hologram IS a true 3D image, and while it may have a reflective backing, the hologram itself is transmissive, not reflective. If you don't have depth perception, which I don't much of the time, all 3D images look flat. You must not have much experience with holograms in which part of the image is a completely different image. You also need to read the Wikipedia article, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hologram

A key sentence:
When reconstructed, the resulting light field is identical to that which emanated from the original scene, giving a perfect three-dimensional image

Re:What is "stereo vision"

[hereticmessiah]

At first I was going to say you know that it can, then you proceed to list two sources that have no bearing on stereo vision. Even more, to the degree that 3D can be approximated in 2d, "stereo vision" would be of no help whatsoever.

Not directly, but they do teach you things about how the brain comprehends depth. That is what I was getting at, not stereo vision.

However, in my technical drawing classes, stereo vision was one of the things we studied at honours level. One of the projects I did (and part of the reason I learned more about graphics), was what you could describe as a computerised stereoscope to demonstrate stereo vision.

If I concentrate, I can get my depth perception to improve. If I have my mind on aspects of depth perception it improves.

But that's because you're consciously compensating from the lack of cues you'd get if you'd full stereo vision. I'm astigmatic, which negatively affects my ability to perceive depth, both impairing my ability to focus my eye sufficiently well to take full advantage of stereo vision and focus-based cues. Concentrating helps, but what's critical here is that what's happening is that you're just using extra brainpower to compensate for cues you have difficultly perceiving.

And no, the glasses have never worked for me either.

I'm tired and about to go to bed, so I'll read the article in a few hours and get back to you with a reply.

Re:What is "stereo vision"

[Fastolfe]

Natural selection doesn't care whether or not you can tell how far away trees or the hills are. More likely, better depth perception was an advantage in hand-to-hand or hand-to-paw combat. In the fraction of a second that you have between whipping your head around to face your opponent and your only opportunity to effectively attack, it's far easier to use stereo vision to gauge depth than it's going to be to dodge your head around or take in shadows and lighting to estimate distance.

Round up 10 people that were born with a single eye, throw them into a room with another 10 people that have both of their eyes, and give them all clubs. I strongly suspect the dualies are going to have an advantage.

Re:What is "stereo vision"

[Fastolfe]

I don't have stereovision. One eye does near vision, the other does far, the images don't fuse. Our brains are incredibly adept at estimating distances based on expected sizes of things.

How do you do in a boxing ring?

Natural selection doesn't care about most of the things we use depth perception for today. It's there to allow you to effectively fend off a lion lunging for you, or to succeed in a battle with a warrior from another tribe.

While you can probably make do without much of a problem in today's world, remember that that's not what stereo vision evolved to do for you. I suspect you would have a hard (but not impossible) time performing survival functions as our distant ancestors did. You might get by OK, but those with properly functioning stereo vision would probably have a competitive advantage.

Re:What is "stereo vision"

[Fastolfe]

A hologram does not trick the eyes into seeing a three dimensional image, a hologram IS a true 3D image, and while it may have a reflective backing, the hologram itself is transmissive, not reflective.

I suspect the disagreement here is on the colloquial use of "image", "hologram" and "reflective". A hologram (the physical thing) is effectively a two-dimensional thing. On the two-dimensional hologram is encoded a three-dimensional holographic image (which I suspect is what you were trying to say when you said "hologram"). When light is reflected off of the two-dimensional hologram (thing), it produces a three-dimensional holographic image which is what your eyes see.

The physical hologram is reflective. When you turn off the lights, you can't see it anymore. You could stretch things and say the image is "transmissive" in that the information is being emitted with (encoded using) the reflected light. It might also be accurate to say the light itself is emissive or transmissive in the quantum electrodynamic sense that any photon interacting with matter is a brand new photon. But in the real world we consider the light to be reflective.

Re:What is "stereo vision"

[hackwrench]

The question isn't whether or not people can utillize elements of stereo vision to help them perceive depth. They can. The question is how much of a role does it play in perceiving depth. If you paid attention to my previous post, you'd notice I said that the 3D glasses worked for me when I was young, but when I was older I had to force the images to converge in order for it to look right, but once it did, it looked 3d, so I had to come up with a reason why day to day my eyes converged but didn't produce the 3d effect, and a reason for why the image split into two in the 3d Movie.

Re:What is "stereo vision"

[hackwrench]

No. Transmissive means light has to pass completely through to create the image, while reflective means it strikes the surface and comes back.

Another thing I bring up is that I'm nearsighted and no matter which side of my glasses I look through, my vision is corrected. The way they depict lenses in science textbooks, one would think that it's only one way.

Monkeys monkey with the monkeys

[TiggertheMad]

You make an excellent point about why the brian might be found in the head, but lets go one step further. I am going to state that other than minor changes to the human form (say to remove sicle cell anemia or similar genetic problems), changing people's basic physiology is a bad idea. Here is why:

I'm going to say that we are what we are, because that is what allowed us to survive for the last hundred minllion odd years. The species that we dig out of canyon walls weren't adapted properly to deal with changes to their environment. While it might be cool to have a prehensile tail, I'm going to assume that since evolution doesn't think I need it, it's probably for the best that I don't have it.

Evolution: ~100 million years of keeping the species alive and kicking.
Human Scientific Biology: Going on the big two hundred and fifty...

Re:Monkeys monkey with the monkeys

[Elminst]

Someone needs to go back to school...
Humans have not been around for anywhere near 100 million years.

The longest estimates have humans as a species (Homo Sapiens) arriving around 50 thousand years ago. Some early hominids may have existed as much as 700 thousand years ago. But even that is fraction of what you suggest.

We're barely even a speck at the end of the earth's timeline.
Here's a fun analogy - http://jersey.uoregon.edu/~mstrick/AskGeoMan/geoQu erry16.html

Re:Monkeys monkey with the monkeys

[swv3752]

Actually, that is about 120 thousand years, not 50 thousand, but the earliest hominids are about 700,000 to 1 million years back. If we go by longest survival and not current survival, humans are not in the same league as the dinosaurs, and sharks are probably the winners on both counts. Crocodiles probably come in second place.

Re:Monkeys monkey with the monkeys

[Elminst]

Which is still nowhere near the "100 million years" of the original poster...

Re:Monkeys monkey with the monkeys

[Mortiss]

While that number (~50k years) is true for humans, it certainly is not for all the mechanisms that we incorporate. Humans didnt just spring out of nowhere. For example molecular pathways in our cells were being continually adopted for optiumum performance by natural selection for much longer then 50k years.
Ergo, id stll agree with parent. Lets be careful before we tinker too much with our design.

Re:Monkeys monkey with the monkeys

[Anonymous Coward]

Evolution thinks nothing, ever. It does not use the most efficient models, it only goes with whatever can seem to limp by and produce offspring. People, however, can think and plan with limited success. But even that limited amount of planning, especially when computer enhanced, can make highly survivable yet unlikely changes to the genome. Humans survive by changing the environment and adding things to themselves, such as clothes or cars. Being able to manipulate our genetics is simply one more tool for the armory.

Here is one possible use: space travel. Currently our body relies on gravity for many things, such as muscle development and blood flow. There is no way evolutionary forces could change people to survive in space merely through reproduction. However, by manually altering our genes we could do things like secure our bodies so we don't need to be bathed in atmosphere, set up our circulatory system to not rely on gravity, and set out muscles and heart to continue to grow and function even without constant stimulus though use. And in space there is more room for more people, and more people is generally considered a good thing. (whether or not you agree with that consideration is another story...)

Niven has prior art.

[CreatureComfort]

So, it sounds like they just re-invented puppeteers?

Repro

[eiscir]

With reproductive organs in his mouth, I bet this guy would be a total dickhead. Boom! Boom!

Duck & dive..

[slashmojo]

I'd think also having the brain in the head is actually a safer place than in the chest since its a lot easier to move it out of harms way than it is to move the entire torso.. say for example a weapon is aimed or an animal takes a swipe or someone tries to punch you..

Just look how boxers duck and dive to avoid a punch.. the head can sway all over the place while the body maintains balance and the torso/chest stays relatively central and more at risk of being hit.

Almost 200 comments and nobody's said it yet?

[airship]

"I, for one, welcome our new genetically engineered alternate human overlords."
I can't believe I had to be the one to say this. WTF is happening to /.?

Re:Almost 200 comments and nobody's said it yet?

[muellerr1]

How about, "In Soviet Russia, your genes design you?"

Re:Almost 200 comments and nobody's said it yet?

[dodobh]

Welcome to the real world.

ew

[szembek]

and [its] reproductive organs in its mouth?.... a good way to break one's neck?

Re:A nice soft and warm fur coat like my dog's one

[UncleFluffy]

... and the ability to lick your own balls!

Overheated!

[somejeff]

Unless Myers is willing to install a CPU fan in my chest, I'll keep my brain in my head. While I'm at it, I'll keep other parts that may overheat exactly where they are too.

Recommended Reading on Alternate Humans

[klenwell]

A slightly different take on the issue, but if this topic grabs you, I'd recommend:

The Elementary Particles by Michel Houellebecq
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375727019/

A provocative book. Make sure you read it all the way through to the epilogue.

there no room for a brain

[kdemetter]

I just don't see how there is any space for a brain in your torso
Isn't everything packed up real tight already ?

So you would have to put some of the organs in the head instead ? Sounds weird to me .

Evolution took millions of years to make us who we are . It did a pretty good job.

Faulty premise

[Comboman]

From TFA: There's no particular necessity that the brain would form in the head--that's again a product of convenience, since more sensory organs were located in the front of the animal, and induced an enlargement of the local part of the nervous system to cope with their input. So let's meddle again, and instead put the brain somewhere near the middle of the animal. In that position, it can be better protected by the mass of bone and muscle in the chest, and also be more conveniently located relative to the heart and circulatory system. It changes our head from a bulbous housing for a crucial, delicate organ, all poised on a fragile stalk of a neck, to a flexible sensory and feeding apparatus.

This "improvement" of moving the brain from the head to the chest cavity is (IMHO) based on a faulty premise; that it would be better protected. The brain floats in a liquid suspension enclosed in thick bone container (the skull). It is without a doubt the most heavily protected of our internal organs. The organs in the chest cavity are protected only a thin latice of bones (the rib cage). Take a visit to the emergency room and you'll see far more accident victims with broken ribs and internal bleeding than you will broken skulls and brain damage. I suppose you could put a skull-like enclosure around the entire chest cavity like a turtle's shell, but that would increase the weight of the creature and limit mobility (Aesop aside, the hare usually wins).

Re:Faulty premise

[Grishnakh]

What we need isn't a chest-mounted brain, but an improved neck. First, a better-designed spine in the neck so that we don't get paralyzed or suffer whiplash as easily. Second, metal shielding to protect us from blades which others may use to chop off our heads.

Re:Faulty premise

[mshurpik]

Excellent comments on the skull.

As for running, humans are the turtle. Whereas animals either lose concentration or stop due to overheating, humans have amazing long-distance stamina. 50, 60 miles is common for super marathoners. (I'd like to find out the galloping record for horses.)

Thus, I agree that mobility is a crucial human trait and should not be sacrificed. We're not sprinters though and bipedalism is probably the culprit there.

Re:Faulty premise

[plunge]

The problem is that you are talking as if no further adaptations would happen to take advantage of changes, in the way that things evolved to make the best of the brain being where it is. Sure, if you took the brain and plopped it down in the chest, that wouldn't be too good. But if that's how things evolved, all sorts of adaptations would have made the best of a chest brain: perhaps even plenty of bone and fluid protection there too. And alternate ways of keeping the brain at the right temperature. And so on.

And no more fragile neck.

Re:Faulty premise

[Dan Hayes]

With regards to horses, have a look at this news item :)

This begs the quote:

[KaMiKa-Z77]

"God gave me both a penis and a brain, but unfortunately not enough blood supply to run both at the same time." -- Robin Williams, Live On Broadway (2002?)

And I for one...

[txmadman]

...welcome our six-legged, torso-brained, prehensile-tailed, naughty-organ-mouthed masters.

reproductive organs ?

[smoker2]

If a female had her reproductive organs in her mouth, she'd look like a feeding vampyre every 28 days !

Also, what about social kissing ? Would Frenchmen end up with a dick in both ears ?

Enquiring minds want to know ...

This article

[Anonymous Coward]

is a pile of crap.

Brain needs cooling too

[erice]

As if proximity to the eyes isn't enough (the optic nerve is really part of the brain), brains need cooling. It would be difficult to adequately cool the brain if it was in the chest surrounded by a large mass of heat producing muscles and organs.

Some reason that cooling advantages of bipedelism permited the rapid growth in brain size of early humsans.

http://www.fortunecity.com/emachines/e11/86/human. html
http://www.anthro.fsu.edu/people/faculty/falk/radp apweb.htm

(These probably aren't the best referencs available but they came up in a quick google)

Fix other problems first

[aplusjimages]

How about we fix the current problems with humans instead of making new humans with new problems. If I was a doctor I would be pissed, but if I was a sniper I would be happy.

My mommy always told me...

[krautcanman]

that babies are made when mommy and daddy kiss a lot.

Nanoo Nanoo

[orgelspieler]

When will we be able to drink with our finger?

All you need...

[jd]

...is some way of organically growing optic fibre, and you'd be fine. The capacity and latency should be much less than basic nerves, which are store-and-forward electrochemical devices.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction (and..)

[The Wicked Priest]

Five digits go back way, way before our ancestors could throw things. I think it's basically a leftover -- four or six would probably work just as well, but there's been no selection pressure in either direction. But some of our cousins, whose ancestors also started with five digits, have changed -- e.g., horses, who pared down to just one.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/04/2/l_0 42_01.html

Reproductive organs in the mouth??

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn! Now even cunnilingus can cause pregnancy? Screw that! (Pun intended)

Sounds like someone has an oral fixation...

[Anonymous Coward]

Really, sex organs in the mouth? When was the last time this guy got any?

prior art!

[smellsofbikes]

>What has six limbs, a prehensile tail, its brain in its chest, and reproductive organs in its mouth? In other news, both Linda Lovelace and Monica Lewinsky have sued, claiming trademark infringement.

Not living in the real world

[Locke2005]

Since the porn industry is almost always the first early adopter of new technology, I predict synthetic biology will be used much sooner to produce abnormally large breasted women and men with outrageously large genitalia... not the rediculous "improvements" suggested in this article.

Re:Not living in the real world

[mshurpik]

Agreed. In fact I worry we may see it in our lifetimes. I don't want to be small because I'm "natural."

Note: Silicone implants can be used on testicles and other parts of the body. Can't be removed tho because it's injected directly.

and yet nothing on intellect

[Parsec]

Why does the article talk about engineering the human for what seems like manual labor rather than fixing a few things and greatly enlarging brain size/processing/logic capacity? Add an extra eye or two, making them independent and segment the brain to be able to take in multiple data streams better. Or create a dedicated patch of brain cells designed for easy human-computer interface. We could add a sixth, seventh, and eighth sense. Think doctors who could smell viruses, firefighters who could see in infrared, polititians with prosthetic souls and dedicated ethics A.I..
Are they designing a human to watch reality tv 24x7 while doing a factory job?

Re:and yet nothing on intellect

[mshurpik]

Awesome.

Re:and yet nothing on intellect

[Kuscheltier]

Or create a dedicated patch of brain cells designed for easy human-computer interface

Seikai no Senki, anyone?

Re:The problem of nerve impulse conduction (and..)

[PhotoJim]

Given the insane sums of money that US and Canadian football quarterbacks get and major league baseball pitchers make, throwing ability certainly does retain some value, even if its original evolutionary purpose is no longer terribly valued.

Re:Is it just me, or does the 'Alternate Human' ..

[Anonymous Coward]

It is the fulfillment of His great plan. Foolish Christians say we were created in God's image. The truth is that the FSM gave us the capacity to recreate ourselves in His image. In this way shall we prove our worthiness.

What for?

[Anonymous Coward]

The modern human being is a couch potato, not an athlete. Six legs gathering water and straining circulation are not going to help its productivity or longevity.

Re:Is it just me, or does the 'Alternate Human' ..

[Anonymous Coward]

.. And Lo', Behold, the Flying Spagetti Monster created Man in His own image.

- From the heretical texts of the Flying Spagetti Monster

Re:A nice soft and warm fur coat like my dog's one

[nytes]

One eye in the head might be sufficient if we augmented our senses with sonar, like bats and dolphins do. Then we could map our environment for 360 degrees, and even see into solid objects.

Its going to be OK

[dilvish_the_damned]

I doubt they will become the next Great Overlord whilst they got their reproductive organs in their mouth.

The Singularity will make genetics a moot point

[vertinox]

By the time we figure out how to make these kind of humans, the singularity will have brought about nano technology and bio-organize life forms will be obsolete. ;)

Maybe a minor point, but an important one

[sirrobert]

Why do you think you have hair on your head? It's to insulate all of the blood carrying oxygen to your brain so it doesn't leak off as much heat.

Just in the interest of clarity, according to the theory there actually is no 'why' about it. Someone at some point either got hair on the top of the head (or lost hair elsewhere but on the top of the head) as a random mutation. It turned out that that was one of the functions it served. It also turned out the hair wasn't detrimental to reproduction (and was not linked to something that was), or else was beneficial to reproduction (and/or linked to something that was).

It's not for that, but it does do that.

Re:Maybe a minor point, but an important one

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yes, I forgot.

We're just one big accident.

Can you honestly look around you and tell yourself that everyone you see is a product of random mutations? Perhaps you can and do. I pity you.

Re:Maybe a minor point, but an important one

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't pity him, he sees a beauty in the world that you do not.

Eight Fingers

[devnullkac]

Eight-fingered hands would be interesting--imagine what a piano player could do!

Plus we'd have been prepared 360 million years early for thinking in hexadecimal. Just think, no more "GB is one billion bytes" crap!

reproductive organs in its mouth

[GenSec]

I for one welcome our new f*ckface overlords!

(Couldn't resist.)

What could possible go wrong?

[JustAnOtherCodeSerf]

We'll be meeting these freaks soon...
Sure. Just look at how well we deal with people with different skin color. Tails won't even get noticed!

Isn't

[Mad Ogre]

Isn't that the plot of the film "Doom"?

Known this for years

[GunFodder]

We've known for years that many (if not most) people have a brain in their colon. It is the natural result of having your head up your ass.

Temporary Solution

[Master of Transhuman]

Nanotech will obsolete all this stuff a couple decades later.

Nanotech will subsume biotech because biotech is just a specific way of organizing molecoles. Nanotech is all about organizing molecules of any kind.

In other words, biotech will become obsolete because having a biological basis for sentience - not necessarily omitting biological principles of organization entirely, however - will be replaced by other mechanical bases.

Even before that, nanotech will be used to revamp human biology. I don't see any point in "redesigning" the human body in the manner suggested when the body as it exists is perfectly adequate once its flaws and limitations are mitigated by nanotech enhancements.

Think "Bionic Man" before you think genetic re-engineering - then combine the two which is more likely to be done than complete genetic re-engineering. Long before complete genetic re-engineering is both feasible and desireable for humans, better technologies such as nanotech will be available.

Nice speculation, though.

Modifications

[the_odin]

I would make it so Genetic memory is more active. Maybe even have it so we are Asexual. (don't get me wrong... there could be other ways of physical pleasure other than procreation) What if there was an egg within us. With an extremely dense shell. Upon our death, we give life to the next generation in the family line. Would have to worry about raising the infant only a few years, then the genetic memory would kick in, and we would in a sense be re-incarnated. with a new sense of self. like accessing old data on a backup hard drive.

Re:Modifications

[mshurpik]

Hmm...good points. You got me thinking that humans' biggest social burdens are the increasing amount of education and our hyper sex drive.

Sex seems pretty crucial to our societal structure, so I would say, make it so that you can turn birth control on/off by eating certain foods.

I, for one, welcome our new bug-eyed overloards!

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't believe nobody else has said it yet.

I fucking HATE illiterates

[Anonymous Coward]

But even when you through in Hitler who was not a christian...

An illiterate would have little trouble reading that sentence; at least, no more trouble reading it than he would have if the illiterate poster had used the correct word, "throw."

However, for those used to reading prose that had actually been edited and proofread, particularly those of us who have been doing it for decades, it takes a precious two or three seconds to try and understand what the poor fool who wrote it was trying to say.

Your spell checker does NOT make you look any more literate. In fact, it shows you for the moron you are.

No, don't try to tell me English is your second language, if it were you'd have looked it up.

AND, have a little respect, asshole. The word "Christian" (as well as Jew, Hindu, Bhuddist, etc) should be capitalized.

Please go back to Digg. Better yet, stop skipping school.

So what exactly *is* the bandwidht of my eyes?

[Flimzy]

I want a test to tell me my sight's bandwidth... or the bandwidth of my ears. Can I ask my doctor for a visual bus upgrade?

Re:So what exactly *is* the bandwidht of my eyes?

[bluephone]

Well, you can guesstimate some of these things even though it's apples and oranges. In this case, we're still dealing with round fruits. Take sight for example. At about 24 inches away, my 1280x1024 display fills about a quarter of my visual field's width, about a third of the height, and we lose about a "screen full" at where the corners would be. The eye has high resolution around the center, but poorer resolution in the periphery, so let's even it out. We'll say it's 10*(1280*1024), or a pixel matrix with 13,107,200 pixels. At three bytes per pixel for full color, and we'll be conservative and add an extra byte for additional luminance range thanks to both black and white vision, and the dynamic adjustment of the iris, and put each pixel at 32 bits. That's 52,428,800 bytes per "frame" (the eye sees fluidly, but we know high speed images look fluid to the eye, like TV and movies), and while movies are 24fps, TV is 25 or 30fps depending, when we play video games, we tend to like them above 60fps for the best fluidity, so we'll go with 60 frames per second. that's the equivalent of 3,145,728,000 bytes of visual information per second, about 3 gigabytes per second.

Now think about that's just the data. The brain takes all that data, and processes it in real time. Just glancing around you instantly recognize your monitor, your chair, your shoes, your various toys and gadgets, papers, pens, and all the individual items on your desk. You can instantly read all the labels and words and logos. You can watch where the gun in your FPS is and notice that giant monster coing out of the left side of the screen too, so you can process LOTS of data ABOUT that visual information, in real time. You're transforming 3GB of data into a LOT of useful information instantly. That's impressive.

Re:So what exactly *is* the bandwidht of my eyes?

[Flame0001]

Actually, it's far greater than that. You forgot to take in what resolution the eye sees at. Looking at a screen is far less quality than an actual object. You also can't forget that since we see things with two eyes, we see things with depth (Although, I'm not quite sure whether or not that would be a factor at guessing the equivalent of information the eye takes in).

Your screen displays at 1280x1024. Our eye can probably see far, far greater than that. Don't forget that our sight is also limited, and we blend different colors together that the human brain can not process. Anyways, I can only imagine how many tera/petabytes a second the human eye recieves. It was a good attempt though. It just feels funny to describe a human being with computer terms.

Re:So what exactly *is* the bandwidht of my eyes?

[bluephone]

No, actually, if you re-read my post, I guesstimated 1280x1024 as a fraction of the eye's resolution, and further guestimated a "resolution" of 13,107,200 pixels. What I DID forget to do was multiply the whole deal by 2, since we have 2 eyes, doubling the actual bandwidth. So, my guess was really only for each eye individually.

Re:So what exactly *is* the bandwidht of my eyes?

[Fastolfe]

Depth perception occurs where the two images are merged and processed. This would be within the brain and not the eyes, so no depth information would accompany the optical signal.

Re:So what exactly *is* the bandwidht of my eyes?

[Fastolfe]

The bandwidth of the optic nerve is believed to be equivalent to about 100 kbps. You have to remember a few things:

1. Signals travelling through your nerves are electrochemical in nature, not electrical. Since you have the chemical aspect to deal with, you can't send signals along your nerves at anywhere near the speed of light. Think speed of sound.
2. The nerve fibers themselves are massively parallel, with about a million strands
3. All of this is analog, not digital, so a "bit" isn't really isn't even a very good way of measuring this to begin with.
4. All of this was highly evolved over thousands if not millions of generations
5. You only have the ability to pick up details at the very center of your field of vision. Take some text and look a few inches to either side of it and see how easy it is to read. Consider the types of pseudo-compression that your eyes can take advantage of here to encode information about things within your field of vision that you aren't directly looking at.

Re:So what exactly *is* the bandwidht of my eyes?

[bluephone]

"All of this is analog, not digital, so a "bit" isn't really isn't even a very good way of measuring this to begin with.

So, that might be why I said ,"Well, you can guesstimate some of these things even though it's apples and oranges."

"You only have the ability to pick up details at the very center of your field of vision."

And that might be why I said "The eye has high resolution around the center, but poorer resolution in the periphery, so let's even it out."

for that matter...

[wolftone]

where it lowers the threshold for oral sex, it'll raise it for anal sex...

I can hear it now

[Anonymous Coward]

Kkkkiiiiilllllllll Mmmmmeeeeeee...

That's why we walk upright

[Poingggg]

Some time ago I heard of a theory that one of the reasons we went from going on all fours to walking upright was the fact that our brain got better cooling that way, which in turn made it possible to grow more and thus develop our intelligence. Or our brain grew and made it neccesary (sp??) to walk upright to cool it.
However, it seems there is a connection between our intelligence,the fact we walk upright and the cooling of our brains.

I flinch too

[javamann]

I also flinch, but it's when my wife says "We need to talk".

Re:I flinch too

[bluephone]

I flinch when your wife tells me that too. Man, she can go on for hours. She talks forever too.

Problems with potential attributes

[Brad1138]

Camouflage skin-Make sure you don't go hunting with Dick Cheney.

Lame!

[Anonymous Coward]

This article blows, I don't see a mention of bigger breasts for females anywhere!

Socialism thwarts "nature's pruning of the unfit"

[Anonymous Coward]

There will be conflicts and tragedies. But in the long run, the sane will adapt and survive better than the insane. Nature's pruning of the unfit will limit the spread of insanity among the species in the galaxy, as it does among individuals on earth.

Humans have overcome natural selection by inventing socialism and other similar political practices and philosophies that reward the propogation of "unfit" genes.

Gives new meaning to oral sex I suppose ...

[MarkTina]

sorry I tried to resist the obvious, but I'm just to weak willed ... ;-)

Didn't I do this in high school?

[tgibbs]

One of the influences that played a big role in my own decision to go into biology was a very inspirational high school biology teacher, Ivan Evans. And an assignment he gave my class back in 1967 or so, was to redesign the human body. My own effort was a quadruped with its brain in its chest, a prehensile tail and 4 arms (two jointed, two prehensile).

Didn't think to put the sex organs in its mouth, though...

Re:Didn't I do this in high school?

[mshurpik]

Your design (and the author's) wouldn't be able to run very well. According to an article in this month's Discover, humans have adapted to running so well over long distances that we compete favorably with horses.

The link is intro-only so I'll tell you the biggest advantages are sweat glands and long, springy legs. But others include shock-absorbing aspects of the head and free torso movement. Most animals need a tail for balance, but we've evolved out of that one too. I realize your design is a quadruped, but running in humans seems to involve shedding a lot of animal baggage. The fact that a human's stride is longer than a horse's is hard to believe (but documented in the article with a video camera experiment).

But hey, congratulations for beating this guy to the idea.

Re:Didn't I do this in high school?

[tgibbs]

While humans are perhaps the best long-distance runners on the planet, horses come close, and are a lot more versatile. In anything other than a marathon, bet on the horse.

they are out of their minds to state it this way

[koroviev (begemot)]

hate to say this (and sound like a priest) but.. whats the point in meddling with human nature? Why? Who wants to be a freak with reproductive organs in their mouths? Because they think they can, doesnt necessarily mean that they "should". This is a pointless goal - "lets do synthetic biology so that we can make an alternate human". Surely lots will be discovered and invented on the way to such a goal, that is in itself very usefull, but frankly I'd rather be immortal than a freak. And synthetic biology might well have THIS goal - to make people immortal, rather than such a pathetic nonsense goal. The road to both is the same, but there is a big huge difference between the two ends. (not that I think this is in any way acheivable in the near future, but such a goal ensures it will never get done) On the other hand, theres James Blish's "The Seedling stars" where humans gets modified so that they can live in an alien environment. But they still "look" human. Otherwise there is no point, is there, to populate alien environments with aliens?

the "cat man"

[cashman73]

I'm sure Dennis Avner, also known as the cat man, would be very happy about this! This guy has already undergone several surgeries to literally turn himself into a cat.

Regeneration vs. scarring

[Valdrax]

Actually scarring is what mammals have instead of regeneration. Due to our higher energy metabolisms, we can't afford the weeks of downtime without eating to regenerate like reptiles can.

Instead, we evolved scarring, which cuts off resources to an area in the hopes that we can still feed ourselves without it. As another benefit, we close off wounds from infection faster than animals with regeneration.

Studies in mice have shown that shutting off the ability to scar leads to regeneration. The ability lies with in us, but it closed off by the benefits of scarring. Now, under modern societial pressure, we may be better off learning how to suppress scarring since it no longer means an inability to feed ourselves. Some have argued that organ regeneration will be the antibiotics of the 21st century in that it will revolutionize medicine.

sex organs in mouth=unnecessary consolidation

[mshurpik]

If you did that, you wouldn't be able to kiss and screw at the same time. Not that everyone does, but it's certainly a nice option to have.

Hair, grow-it, flow-it ...

[pbhj]

>>> Why do you think you have hair on your head?

In my experience, as a weirdy-beardy type, hair is useful for insulation and cooling. I think it works this way because the trapping of escaping sweat enables it to be further heated; also the (exponentially) larger surface area offered by a decent beard should allow greater heat transfer to the air.

Yes there also appears to be a limit. That's why I get my hair cut in summer. Though with a nice white scalp the effect of poorer absorption makes a definitive answer more difficult.

Does that help?

Seprate airway and food ingestion

[Girckin]

I'm surprised no one has suggested this yet, but it's astonishing how many people die from choking on food or inhaling their own vomit after a traumatic injury or serious illness.

If I had to make a major modification to the human body plan, I would separate the mouth for breathing and talking from the mouth for eating.

Re:Seprate airway and food ingestion

[Hartree]

Indeed. That's the first thing I thought of.

I'm taking an EMT class at the moment and the most important items are maintaining an open airway, getting out a blockage if they're choking and avoiding aspiration of vomit and such. In artificial respiration, it can be hard not to have the stomach inflate with excess air. And that's largely due to the pipes for food and air being shared. The tongue has a bad design that it can fall back in an unconscious patient and block the airway as well. Those are common and fast killers.

One of the mantras of emergency care is, "No airway. No patient."

Oh isn't that just great,

[Stumbles]

another race of humans we can go to war over, enslave in one fashion or another and generally just not get along with. What a stupid idea.

RE:

[marleyboy]

So, headshot becomes gutshot? Just doesn't have the same ring.

Automobile-driving monkeys

[Latent Heat]

We think about people getting into car wrecks and how that is bad, but I think the amazing thing is that we are able to drive cars as fast as we do in as much dense traffic and 99.9999 percent of the time not get into a wreck.

Mammals by and large have bad eyesight -- it is supposed we evolved from tiny mole or shrew-like creatures that hid out of sight not to get snarfed up by dinosaurs; mammals only came out into the open and got large after the dinosaurs went away. Primates managed to evolve pretty OK eyesight -- not on an eagle or hawk level, but color vision (unusal for mammals), binocular vision for good depth perception and motion tracking.

Think of monkeys swinging from the trees. Think of humans driving cars. We may be frail and weak compared to other animals and even other primates, but we are darned good at driving cars.

So, I should then ...

[voxel]

strap a heat-sink to my head? Maybe hook a fan up to it, and carry a battery in a backpack to power it.

Of course, I'll have to shave my head, and apply some thermal grease before connecting the dome shaped heat-sink to it.

oh trip master monkey

[Anonymous Coward]

you karma-whore. You copy/paste more than my child.

worse case scenario break yer neck

[spineboy]

Break your neck and then you go deaf and blind.

No thanks.

Re:A nice soft and warm fur coat like my dog's one

[chris_sawtell]

No, they're some where down your throat, remember?

The superior form

[Tisha_AH]

So, let me get this straight... The Piersons Puppeteer is the ideal biological form.

Larry Niven had it right all along.

Re:The problem of nerve impulse and HEAT

[Anonymous Coward]

Your brain IS a friggin' processor! The reason many scientists postulate that we have sinuses, is to keep the brain cool. The reason you have hair on your head is most likely protection. I don't have any hair on top and have had quite a few somewhat bloody cuts from banging my head over the years. And I don't even have any animals trying to eat me or other men trying to club me ;)

Well...

[codehead]

...someone said that the human mouth is a sexual organ that some perverts use to talk with.

Who cares

[TiggertheMad]

Humans have not been around for anywhere near 100 million years.

Moot point, you are debating scemantics. The specise that would be come the species that would be come the species (etc.) has been evolving for a VERY long time. All that time, genetic information is being 'stored up' and passed on.

Re:Who cares

[TheLink]

But where's your proof that humans aren't just one of those evolutionary dead-ends?

Roaches have been around for millions of years, and given their design they'll probably be around longer than we will.

There are tons of "going extinct" species which have been evolving for a long time as per your remark.

For example: the cheetah. Cheetahs run fast and all that, but they are very "fragile" in terms of species survival.

Missed the point

[plunge]

I think a lot of the poo-pooers here have missed the point. They are defending the present situation of the human body as the "best" by simply ignoring the possibility that other adaptations could and would take place to make the best of the position of things like the brain. They are simply envisioning moving the brain we have NOW into the chest, with no other real changes. Of COURSE that wouldn't be good. But that's not what Myers is talking about. He's talking about a branching point way way way back in evolutionary history. From there, all sorts of other adaptations would evolve to take advantage of the changes (for instance, maybe the brain would not evolve to NEED any extra cooling. Maybe a bony shell around the brain would form in the chest. Maybe the visual senses wouldn't be so head-centered in the first place.

So applying the problems of imagining the modern brain, moved, to a hypothetical different direction hundreds of millions of years ago just makes no sense. That's just not what was being discussed! RTFA!

A brave new world

[unity100]

"Reproductive organs in mouth' seems that it might lead to a brand new world of wonders and much ease and convenience for us.

Another Scientific Arrogance...

[Anonymous Coward]

First and foremost, I must declare that I am not anti-science or anything - being an undergraduate Bioengineer-in-training and all. I, for one, also see the potential in stem cell research - the promise of a second life for patients. But, generating a synthetic lifeform that is based of the homosapiens, a kind of metahuman, is really stepping over the line. I know that its bound to happen sometime and to the scientist who manages to succeed, a Nobel prize no less - but in the face of it all, a successful being would also be sentient so are you going to lock it in a cage and label it a freak? Some users also agree that we have enough trouble getting along so introducing another species to threaten our "rights", especially one so different, may be enough to spark another genocide. Furthermore, the possibility of escape and crossbreeding is not without grounds. In addition, ever wanted a shot at possibly experiencing those creation vs creators things you see all the time in the movies? Think, "The Matrix" or "Terminator" with mutant humans instead. Unless, the "thing" is devoid of any intellectual thought processes, I dare you to see that there's zilch chance of this occuring. I can go on and on but I digress - organizations, such as those opposing stem cell research and GM food, will probably take up arms. In the meantime, lets just hope that it won't turn out into another scientific catastrophe.

I'd prefer to start with the bear

[gd23ka]

Why don't we take the brown bear (Ursos arctos) instead? They're a tried and tested design and happen to occupy much of the same ecological niche that primates do.

In comparison to mere dogs, ...

Bears are ommnivorous

Bears have full color vision

Bears have same acute smell and hearing like dogs

Bears can run up to 30 MPH (never run from a bear)

Bears have a powersaving hibernation mode

Bears have a voice similar in ability to primates. Btw bears don't growl like wolves or dogs the way Hollycrap shows them but make all sorts of cool sounds instead

Bears are already built to temporarily rear themselves up on two feet

Relative to the comutations of felines and canines, bears are even more intelligent to start with

Bears are fighting machines (when you leave them no other choice)

Bears have great fur

Bears can draw balls into their abdomen to protect them

Bears have larger dicks

The only thing the bear doesn't have is brains and hands and that's where we can borrow some from Homo Sapiens Sapiens.