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Did Natural Selection Make the Dutch the Tallest People On the Planet?
sciencehabit writes The Dutch population has gained an impressive 20 centimeters in the past 150 years and is now officially the tallest on the planet. Scientists chalk up most of that increase to rising wealth, a rich diet, and good health care, but a new study suggests something else is going on as well: The Dutch growth spurt may be an example of human evolution in action. The study shows that tall Dutch men on average have more children than their shorter counterparts, and that more of their children survive. That suggests genes that help make people tall are becoming more frequent among the Dutch. "This study drives home the message that the human population is still subject to natural selection," says Stephen Stearns, an evolutionary biologist at Yale University who wasn't involved in the work. "It strikes at the core of our understanding of human nature, and how malleable it is."
All the short Dutch are below sea level
As a low lying country Holland is at risk due to rising sea levels. Clearly being tall enough to keep your head above water is an advantage. ;-)
Well, they DO have to keep their heads above the water in case a dike gives way.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
That's nothing, I get emails advertising that kind of growth all the time.
Look at the US. It took less time to bread out intelligence.
Brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
Evolution is still applicable, but modern technology, medicine, government and religion sure are interfering with natural selection.
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There are many things you can point to as proof that the human is not smart. But my personal favorite would have to be that we needed to invent the helmet. What was happening, apparently, was that we were involved in a lot of activities that were cracking our heads. We chose not to avoid doing those activities but, instead, to come up with some sort of device to help us enjoy our head-cracking lifestyles. And even that didn’t work because not enough people were wearing them so we had to come up with the helmet law. Which is even stupider, the idea behind the helmet law being to preserve a brain whose judgment is so poor, it does not even try to avoid the cracking of the head it’s in.
– Jerry Seinfeld
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Look at the US. It took less time to bread out intelligence
Well, we do have a lot of wheat here.
So they can account for us Dutch folks being taller than other cultures through evolutionary forces, but can that account for Dutch Butt too?
Look at the US. It took less time to bread out intelligence.
I come to slashdot for the rye remarks.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
If the evolution of the Dinos is anything to go by, in 100 million years, the Dutch will be 25 meters tall and Americans will be 25 meters wide...
Look at the US. It took less time to bread out intelligence.
Intelligence is the yeast of our problems.