A Victorian extinction: Alfred Newton and the evolution of animal protection

2012 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 695-714 ◽  
Author(s):  
HENRY M. COWLES
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Comparative Anatomy ◽  
Comparative Morphology ◽  
Animal Cruelty ◽  
Modern Concept ◽  
Animal Protection ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThe modern concept of extinction emerged in the Victorian period, though its chief proponent is seldom remembered today. Alfred Newton, for four decades the professor of zoology and comparative anatomy at Cambridge, was an expert on rare and extinct birds as well as on what he called ‘the exterminating process'. Combining traditional comparative morphology with Darwinian natural selection, Newton developed a particular sense of extinction that helped to shape contemporary, and subsequent, animal protection. Because he understood extinction as a process to be studied scientifically, and because he made that, rather than animal cruelty, the focus of animal protection, Newton provides an important window onto the relationship between science and sentiment in this period. Newton's efforts to bring the two into line around the issue of human-caused extinction reveal an important moment in which the boundaries between science and sentiment, and between those who did and those who did not have the authority to speak for nature, were up for grabs.

CRUELTY TO ANIMALS OF MINOR AS A STAGE OF PERSONALITY FORMATION WITH A VIOLENT ORIENTATION

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maksim Osipov
Keyword(s):  
Preventive Measures ◽  
Animal Cruelty ◽  
Cruelty To Animals ◽  
The Relationship

The article devoted to the study formations the identity of the criminal like. Animal cruelty is considered one of the violent stages of formations, directions personalities. The author analyzes the relationship between the stages of formation of the criminal’s personality in order to for the development of preventive measures.

scholarly journals Artistic Freedom or Animal Cruelty? Contemporary Visual Art Practice That Involves Live and Deceased Animals

Animals ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 812
Author(s):  
Ellie Coleman ◽  
Rebecca Scollen ◽  
Beata Batorowicz ◽  
David Akenson
Keyword(s):  
Best Practice ◽  
Animal Cruelty ◽  
Art Practice ◽  
Animal Protection ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Unethical Practices ◽  
Artistic Freedom ◽  
Legal Guidelines ◽  
Selection Of

This paper examines a selection of 21st-century international examples of exhibited visual artworks involving live or deceased animals. It seeks to reveal the risks and benefits of unique encounters with animals through art and to consider the ethical implications of artwork deploying animals. Australian and international animal protection laws are not explicit when it comes to the sourcing of animals for art nor for the direct inclusion of animals in artworks. This lack leads to a variety of artistic practices, some considered ethical while others are viewed as controversial, bordering on animal cruelty. Artwork selection is determined by a focus on high-profile artists who intentionally use animals in their practice and whose reputation has been fostered by this intention. The study provides insight into how the intentional use of ethically sourced animals within art practice can be a method of addressing hierarchal human–animal imbalances. Further, this study identifies unethical practices that may be best avoided regardless of the pro-animal political statements the artists put forward. Recommendations of how to better determine what is an acceptable use of animals in art with a view to informing legal guidelines and artistic best practice are presented.

scholarly journals Evolution and evolvability: celebrating Darwin 200

2008 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
John F.Y Brookfield
Keyword(s):  
Genetic Variation ◽  
Natural Selection ◽  
Time Scales ◽  
Evolutionary Change ◽  
Adaptive Mutation ◽  
Genetic Covariances ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

The concept of ‘evolvability’ is increasingly coming to dominate considerations of evolutionary change. There are, however, a number of different interpretations that have been put on the idea of evolvability, differing in the time scales over which the concept is applied. For some, evolvability characterizes the potential for future adaptive mutation and evolution. Others use evolvability to capture the nature of genetic variation as it exists in populations, particularly in terms of the genetic covariances between traits. In the latter use of the term, the applicability of the idea of evolvability as a measure of population's capacity to respond to natural selection rests on one, but not the only, view of the way in which we should envisage the process of natural selection. Perhaps the most potentially confusing aspects of the concept of evolvability are seen in the relationship between evolvability and robustness.

The relationship between facial whorl direction and sidedness in ridden horses

2006 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 247-250
Author(s):  
H. Randle ◽  
E. Elworthy
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Artificial Selection ◽  
Competitive Ability ◽  
Close Association ◽  
Human Behaviour ◽  
Physical Ability ◽  
Facial Hair ◽  
Selection For ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Brain

The influence of Natural Selection on the evolution of the horse (Equus callabus) is minimal due to its close association with humans. Instead Artificial Selection is commonly imposed through selection for features such as a ‘breed standard’ or competitive ability. It has long been considered to be useful if indicators of characteristics such as physical ability could be identified. Kidd (1902) suggested that the hair coverings of animals were closely related to their lifestyle, whether they were active or passive. In 1973 Smith and Gong concluded that hair whorl (trichloglyph) pattern and human behaviour is linked since hair patterning is determined at the same time as the brain develops in the foetus. More recently Grandin et al. (1995), Randle (1998) and Lanier et al. (2001) linked features of facial hair whorls to behaviour and production in cattle. Hair whorl features have also been related to temperament in equines (Randle et al., 2003).

scholarly journals On the comparative anatomy and affinities of the araucarinæ

1913 ◽  
Vol 86 (585) ◽  
pp. 71-72 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Anatomy ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

From a study of the anatomy of the different regions of the plant, evidence is found of the relationship of the Araucarineæ to the Cordaitales. In the first place, the presence of a leaf gap opposite the outgoing foliar trace, in all forms whether the leaf be large or small, is taken as indicating the Pteropsid ancestry of these forms and is considered of sufficient importance to preclude the possibility of the Lycopsid connection of the Araucarineæ, of which view Seward has been the recent exponent. The presence of a gap in the cone and in the seedling seems to put the question beyond doubt, since this indicates the ancestral presence of a leaf gap.

Historical Mindedness and the World at Large: E. A. Freeman as Public Intellectual

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. S. Jones
Keyword(s):  
Public Life ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Important Thing ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
The World ◽  
Political Controversy ◽  
The Relationship

E. A. Freeman is best remembered as an historian, but he was also an extensive contributor to the ‘higher journalism’ of the mid-Victorian period. Yet his prolific journalistic output has never attracted sustained attention from historians. This essay analyses the relationship between Freeman’s historical work and his journalism in order to explore his place in Victorian intellectual life. It asks how far his journalism was reliant upon an authority derived from his distinction as an historian. While Freeman drew rather promiscuously on a number of analytically distinct ways of understanding the relationship between history and politics, he responded to accusations of ‘antiquarianism’ and ‘historical-mindedness’ by clarifying what he saw as the role of the historian in public life. Since history, he thought, would inevitably be deployed in political controversy, the important thing was that historical error should be expunged in order to clarify political issues.

Natural selection and adaptation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Lewens
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Functional Traits ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Skin Pigmentation ◽  
Essential Element ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Modern Biology ◽  
Biology Textbook ◽  
Selection For ◽  
The Relationship

Students of the natural world have long remarked on the fact that animals and plants are well suited to the demands of their environments. ‘Adaptation’, as it is used in modern biology, can name both the process by which organisms acquire this functional match, and the products of that process. Eyes, wings, beaks, camouflaging skin pigmentation and so forth, are all ‘adaptations’ in this second sense. Modern biological orthodoxy follows Darwin in giving a central role to natural selection in explaining the production of adaptations such as these. This much is uncontroversial. But a number of more contentious conceptual questions are raised when we look in more detail at the relationship between natural selection and adaptation. One of these questions concerns how we should define adaptation. It is tempting to characterize adaptations as functional traits – eyes are for seeing, large beaks are for cracking tough seed-casings. This in turn has led many commentators in biology and philosophy to define adaptations as those traits which have been shaped by natural selection for their respective tasks. Others – especially biologists – have complained that such a definition trivializes Darwin’s claim that natural selection explains adaptation. This claim was meant to be an important discovery, not a definitional consequence of the meaning of ‘adaptation’. These worries naturally lead on to the issues of how natural selection itself is to be understood, how it is meant to explain adaptation, and how it should be distinguished from other important evolutionary processes. These topics have a historical dimension: is Darwin’s understanding of natural selection, and its relationship to adaptation, the same as that of today’s evolutionary biology? Textbook presentations often say yes, and this is surely legitimate if we make the comparison in broad terms. But differences emerge when we look in more detail. Darwin, for example, seems to make the ‘struggle for existence’ an essential element of natural selection. It is not clear whether this is the case in modern presentations. And Darwin’s presentation is largely neutral on the inheritance mechanism that accounts for parent/offspring resemblance, while modern presentations sometimes insist that natural selection always implies a genetic underpinning to inheritance.

scholarly journals Parsing the synonymous mutations in the maize genome: isoaccepting mutations are more advantageous in regions with codon co-occurrence bias

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Duan Chu ◽  
Lai Wei
Keyword(s):  
Amino Acids ◽  
Natural Selection ◽  
Codon Bias ◽  
Synonymous Codon ◽  
Translation Efficiency ◽  
Maize Genome ◽  
Rna Seq ◽  
Synonymous Mutations ◽  
Coding Regions ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract Background Synonymous mutations do not change amino acids but do sometimes change the tRNAs (anticodons) that decode a particular codon. An isoaccepting codon is a synonymous codon that shares the same tRNA. If a mutated codon could base pair with the same anticodon as the original, the mutation is termed an isoaccepting mutation. An interesting but less-studied type of codon bias is codon co-occurrence bias. There is a trend to cluster the isoaccepting codons in the genome. The proposed advantage of codon co-occurrence bias is that the tRNA released from the ribosome E site could be quickly recharged and subsequently decode the following isoaccepting codons. This advantage would enhance translation efficiency. In plant species, whether there are signals of positive selection on isoaccepting mutations in the codon co-occurred regions has not been studied. Results We termed polymorphic mutations in coding regions using publicly available RNA-seq data in maize (Zea mays). Next, we classified all synonymous mutations into three categories according to the context, i.e., the relationship between the focal codon and the previous codon, as follows: isoaccepting, nonisoaccepting and nonsynonymous. We observed higher fractions of isoaccepting mutations in the isoaccepting context. If we looked at the minor allele frequency (MAF) spectrum, the isoaccepting mutations have a higher MAF in the isoaccepting context than that in other regions, and accordingly, the nonisoaccepting mutations have a higher MAF in the nonisoaccepting context. Conclusion Our results indicate that in regions with codon co-occurrence bias, natural selection maintains this pattern by suppressing the nonisoaccepting mutations. However, if the consecutive codons are nonisoaccepting, mutations tend to switch these codons to become isoaccepting. Our study demonstrates that the codon co-occurrence bias in the maize genome is selectively maintained by natural selection and that the advantage of this trend could potentially be the rapid recharging and reuse of tRNAs to increase translation efficiency.

Snail-borne zoonotic trematodes in edible viviparid snails obtained from wet markets in Northern Thailand

2020 ◽  
Vol 94 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Chantima ◽  
C. Rika
Keyword(s):  
Adult Stage ◽  
Comparative Morphology ◽  
Human Consumption ◽  
Snail Species ◽  
Species Identity ◽  
Northern Thailand ◽  
Total Prevalence ◽  
Second Intermediate Host ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract Edible viviparid snails are suspected to be the source of human echinostomiasis in Thailand, but little is known about the prevalence of viviparid snail parasitization by echinostomes in snails sold for human consumption in wet markets. Here, the prevalence of echinostome metacercariae and the association between parasitic intensity and host size, as well as the relationship to host species, were investigated. In total, 1100 viviparid snails belonging to four species (Cipangopaludina annandalei, Filopaludina martensi martensi, F. sumatrensis polygramma and F. doliaris) were obtained from wet markets in Chiang Rai Province, Northern Thailand. All snail species were found to be infected with echinostome metacercariae with total prevalence and mean intensity values of 16.5% and 16.4, respectively. The metacercariae of the avian trematode, Thapariella anastomusa were found in Filopaludina spp. snails. Interestingly, C. annandalei identified in this study had not previously been considered a food source and this is the first report of echinostome metacercaria in this snail species. Results confirmed the role of C. annandalei as the second intermediate host of the trematode; however, the species identity of these echinostomes remains unclear. Comparative morphology of these metacercariae and their adult stage require further study, and molecular markers are necessary to confirm their identification. Prevalence and intensity of echinostomes metacercariae was significantly associated with snail species.

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