Blog Archives
Symphony of Science – The Greatest Show on Earth! A music video about Evolution
Uploaded by melodysheep on Jan 17, 2012
mp3: http://bit.ly/xqVD4J – A musical celebration of the wonders of biology, including evolution, natural selection, DNA, and more. Featuring David Attenborough, Richard Dawkins and Bill Nye. “The Greatest Show on Earth” is the 13th video in the Symphony of Science music videos series. Materials used in this video are from:
Richard Dawkins’ “There is grandeur in this view of life” speech
BBC Life
BBC Planet Earth
David Attenborough’s First Life
Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life
Bill Nye Evolution episode
Visit http://symphonyofscience.com for more videos!
If you enjoyed the video, consider checking out Dawkins’ book of the same name, The Greatest Show On Earth, as well as the other mentioned source materials. Special thanks to everybody who’s donated to keep the project alive and to those who helped track down the materials used in this video.
Lyrics:
[David Attenborough]
How could one species turn into another?
[Richard Dawkins]
How is it that we find ourselves surrounded by such complexity, such elegance?
[Bill Nye]
The genes of you and me
They’re all made of DNA
We’re all made of the same chemicals
DNA – we’re all made of DNA
[Attenborough]
Only the fittest survive
And that is the key
Natural Selection
That is the key
[Dawkins]
We are surrounded by endless forms
Most beautiful, most wonderful
Evolution – the greatest show on Earth
There is grandeur in this view of life
Evolution – the greatest show on Earth
[Attenborough]
The history of life can be thought of
As a many branched tree
The five kingdoms of life
were established early on
Bacteria
Protists- amoeba like creatures
Fungi
Plants
And animals
[Dawkins]
We find ourselves perched on one tiny twig
In the midst of a blossoming tree of life
[refrain]
We are surrounded by millions of other species
Walking, flying, burrowing, stalking, chasing, fleeing,
Outpacing
[Attenborough]
Animals strive to reach this one ultimate goal
To ensure the survival of the next generation
This one ultimate goal
To pass on their genes
That is what life is all about
[refrain]
[Dawkins]
As we look back on the history of life
We see a picture of never ending,
ever rejuvinating novelty
[Attenborough]
Those animals may seem to us to be very remote,
strange, even fantastic
But all of us alive today
Owe our very existence to them
Robots evolve altruism in a test of Hamilton’s law of kin selection
This is something that’s been contested even recently, the subject of some rather…lively…debate; the idea that altruism is an adaptive trait that can evolve to genetically perpetuate itself by the self-sacrifice of individuals for others on a kinship group level, a seemingly counterintuitive notion when considering the more competitive aspects of evolution, but then most scientific findings since the early 20th century have been as we explore regimes of nature contrary to everyday experience, where our intuition applies.
There are a lot of species whose members will assist others of their kind at their own expense, ants are one, and primate species especially, but this is the first time I’ve seen where this idea has actually been tested empirically.
This study involved 500 generations of mini-robots, each of which has a 33-bit computer serving as a genetic code, the arrangement of bits which mutates over time in each new generation, with defective configurations being eliminated and successful ones kept and passed on along the chain of descent.
Over time, the ‘bots brains developed a tendency not only in the drive to look for ‘food’ but those which looked out for and assisted each other tended to consistently succeed.
Evolution; Only red in tooth and claw? Not necessarily, as this shows.
This is very similar to Isaac Asimov’s fictional First Law of Robotics, and will prove very useful for the ongoing trend in the U.S. armed forces toward increased drone warfare deployment, developing better-coordinated, more accurate automated combat units.
