Humans lost sixth sense? Some animals kept it?

_{Denyse O'Leary

October 11, 2011

Animal minds, News}

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We’ve all heard about it, but …

From “Most Vertebrates – Including Humans – Descended from Ancestor With Sixth Sense”
(ScienceDaily Oct. 11, 2011), we learn:

People experience the world through five senses but sharks, paddlefishes and certain other aquatic vertebrates have a sixth sense.

They can detect weak electrical fields in the water and use this information to detect prey, communicate and orient themselves.

A study in the Oct. 11 issue of Nature Communications that caps more than 25 years of work finds that the vast majority of vertebrates — some 30,000 species of land animals (including humans) and a roughly equal number of ray-finned fishes — descended from a common ancestor that had a well-developed electroreceptive system.

But we apparently lost it.

Comments

And why does dissimilar embryonic development not count against common ancestry? i.e. Completely contrary to evolutionary thought, this following article and video show that the same exact genes in different species have actually been shown to produce completely different body structures:
A Primer on the Tree of Life (Part 4) Excerpt: "In sharks, for example, the gut develops from cells in the roof of the embryonic cavity. In lampreys, the gut develops from cells on the floor of the cavity. And in frogs, the gut develops from cells from both the roof and the floor of the embryonic cavity. This discovery—that homologous structures can be produced by different developmental pathways—contradicts what we would expect to find if all vertebrates share a common ancestor. - Explore Evolution http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/05/a_primer_on_the_tree_of_life_p_3.html#more Neo-Darwinism's Gene Homology Problem - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6P6bXA50c0
further notes:
Revisiting Those Early Developmental Stages: A Response to PZ Myers - Jonathan M. June 22, 2011 Excerpt: Let's take an illustrative example. Anurans and urodeles are both modern amphibian groups which we would consider to be closely related. However, there is significant difference in the source of their primordial germ cells. For instance, in urodeles, they arise from unspecific ectodermal cells at the blastula stage; whereas, in anurans, they arise from specific cells of endodermal origin, the cells possessing cytoplasmic granules that originated in the unfertilized egg. Now, here's the conundrum. The difference relates to organs of extreme importance -- i.e. the germ cells. The difference is not only substantial, but it occurs extremely early in development. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/06/revisiting_those_early_develop047571.html The mouse is not enough - February 2011 Excerpt: Richard Behringer, who studies mammalian embryogenesis at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas said, “There is no ‘correct’ system. Each species is unique and uses its own tailored mechanisms to achieve development. By only studying one species (eg, the mouse), naive scientists believe that it represents all mammals.” http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/57986/ Modern Synthesis of Neo-Darwinism Is Dead - No Evidence For Body Plan Morphogenesis From Embryonic Mutations - Paul Nelson - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/5548184/ There is no highly conserved embryonic stage in the vertebrates: - Richardson MK - 1997 Excerpt: Contrary to recent claims that all vertebrate embryos pass through a stage when they are the same size, we find a greater than 10-fold variation in greatest length at the tailbud stage. Our survey seriously undermines the credibility of Haeckel's drawings, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9278154
etc.. etc..bornagain77_{October 12, 2011
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Using the Mexican axolotl as a model to represent the evolutionary lineage leading to land animals, and paddlefish as a model for the branch leading to ray-finned fishes, the researchers found that electrosensors develop in precisely the same pattern from the same embryonic tissue in the developing skin, confirming that this is an ancient sensory system. The researchers also found that the electrosensory organs develop immediately adjacent to the lateral line, providing compelling evidence "that these two sensory systems share a common evolutionary heritage," said Bemis.
Reading that reminded me of two quotes. One from Henry Gee (I hope no one will begrudge my reinterpreting the word "fossils" there to include living fossils):
To take a line of fossils and claim that they represent a lineage is not a scientific hypothesis that can be tested, but an assertion that carries the same validity as a bedtime story—amusing, perhaps even instructive, but not scientific.
And another from that font of all wisdom, Sir Humphrey Appleby:
It's the old logical fallacy. All cats have four legs. My dog has four legs... Therefore my dog is a cat.
:)englishmaninistanbul_{October 12, 2011
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This doesn't have any direct bearing on the matter, but I thought it was amusing/interesting (I don't want to offend anyone.)
Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard taught that people have 57 “perceptics.” They include an ability to discern relative sizes, blood circulation, balance, compass direction, temperature, gravity and an “awareness of importance, unimportance.”
The ability to precisely know one's own salinity is also in there. Here's the full list of all 57 extra senses.ScottAndrews_{October 12, 2011
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Moreover, it can be forcefully argued that humans have a 'supernatural' component to them since their 'brains' can easily accomplish, in one short paragraph, what the Entire universe can't even 'reasonably' accomplish over its entire history;
Book Review - Meyer, Stephen C. Signature in the Cell. New York: HarperCollins, 2009. Excerpt: As early as the 1960s, those who approached the problem of the origin of life from the standpoint of information theory and combinatorics observed that something was terribly amiss. Even if you grant the most generous assumptions: that every elementary particle in the observable universe is a chemical laboratory randomly splicing amino acids into proteins every Planck time for the entire history of the universe, there is a vanishingly small probability that even a single functionally folded protein of 150 amino acids would have been created. Now of course, elementary particles aren't chemical laboratories, nor does peptide synthesis take place where most of the baryonic mass of the universe resides: in stars or interstellar and intergalactic clouds. If you look at the chemistry, it gets even worse—almost indescribably so: the precursor molecules of many of these macromolecular structures cannot form under the same prebiotic conditions—they must be catalysed by enzymes created only by preexisting living cells, and the reactions required to assemble them into the molecules of biology will only go when mediated by other enzymes, assembled in the cell by precisely specified information in the genome. So, it comes down to this: Where did that information come from? The simplest known free living organism (although you may quibble about this, given that it's a parasite) has a genome of 582,970 base pairs, or about one megabit (assuming two bits of information for each nucleotide, of which there are four possibilities). Now, if you go back to the universe of elementary particle Planck time chemical labs and work the numbers, you find that in the finite time our universe has existed, you could have produced about 500 bits of structured, functional information by random search. Yet here we have a minimal information string which is (if you understand combinatorics) so indescribably improbable to have originated by chance that adjectives fail. http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/reading_list/indices/book_726.html
Verse and Music:
Genesis 2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. Shawn Colvin - When You Know http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4209342
bornagain77_{October 12, 2011
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as to:
They can detect weak electrical fields in the water and use this information to detect prey, communicate and orient themselves.
Cool, kind of like a in-built radio receiver! Reminds me of this;
Cellular Communication through Light Excerpt: As there were significant differences when separating the populations with glass or quartz, it is suggested that the cell populations use two (or more) frequencies for cellular information transfer, which influences at least energy uptake, cell division rate and growth correlation. Altogether the study strongly supports a cellular communication system, which is different from a molecule-receptor-based system and hints that photon-triggering is a fine tuning principle in cell chemistry. http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0005086 Paramecium caudatum can communicate with neighbors using a non-molecular method, probably photons. The cell populations were separated either with glass allowing photon transmission from 340 nm to longer waves, or quartz being transmittable from 150 nm, i.e. from UVlight to longer waves. Energy uptake, cell division rate and growth correlation were influenced. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramecium_caudatum
This is also of interest:
Cellular Communication through Light Excerpt: Information transfer is a life principle. On a cellular level we generally assume that molecules are carriers of information, yet there is evidence for non-molecular information transfer due to endogenous coherent light. This light is ultra-weak, is emitted by many organisms, including humans and is conventionally described as biophoton emission. http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0005086
But the critical thing to realize in a 'sixth sense', is that people, when talking of a 'sixth sense, usually mean having a premonition before something happens, knowing another person's thoughts, or something along that line. Something that defies time and space. Yet detecting electric fields alone will not allow premonition, and such, since, as Einstein clearly showed, energy is confined to space-time constraints, i.e. No premonition allowed by relativity!!! And yet, despite this constraint placed on the 'material' realm for ever having a true 'sixth sense', we do in fact have evidence of such in humans:
Study suggests precognition may be possible - November 2010 Excerpt: A Cornell University scientist has demonstrated that psi anomalies, more commonly known as precognition, premonitions or extra-sensory perception (ESP), really do exist at a statistically significant level. http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-11-precognition.html Quantum Consciousness - Time Flies Backwards? - Stuart Hameroff MD Excerpt: Dean Radin and Dick Bierman have performed a number of experiments of emotional response in human subjects. The subjects view a computer screen on which appear (at randomly varying intervals) a series of images, some of which are emotionally neutral, and some of which are highly emotional (violent, sexual....). In Radin and Bierman's early studies, skin conductance of a finger was used to measure physiological response They found that subjects responded strongly to emotional images compared to neutral images, and that the emotional response occurred between a fraction of a second to several seconds BEFORE the image appeared! Recently Professor Bierman (University of Amsterdam) repeated these experiments with subjects in an fMRI brain imager and found emotional responses in brain activity up to 4 seconds before the stimuli. Moreover he looked at raw data from other laboratories and found similar emotional responses before stimuli appeared. http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/views/TimeFlies.html
And this defiance of space-time material constraints is only possible if humans do indeed have a something 'supernatural' in them that can defy these material constraints of space-time. Which is exactly what recent breakthroughs in science have found:
Does Quantum Biology Support A Quantum Soul? – Stuart Hameroff - video (notes in description) http://vimeo.com/29895068 Quantum Information/Entanglement In DNA & Protein Folding - short video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/5936605/
A few other things that indication of a 'supernatural' component to man: This following experiment is really interesting:
Scientific Evidence That Mind Effects Matter - Random Number Generators - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4198007
I once asked a evolutionist, after showing him the preceding experiment, "Since you ultimately believe that the 'god of random chance' produced everything we see around us, what in the world is my mind doing pushing your god around?" Here is another article that is far more nuanced in the discerning of 'transcendent mind' from material brain:
The Mind and Materialist Superstition - Six "conditions of mind" that are irreconcilable with materialism: http://www.evolutionnews.org/2008/11/the_mind_and_materialist_super.html
bornagain77_{October 12, 2011
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What they count on is that people won't even intelligently think and reason for themselves anymore. Create and fabricate a great story that delves into the occult-like world of mysticism and people will eat it up like candy. Seriously, look at the number one subject matter for Movies and Television these days. Most of this Sixth Sense occult subject matter is usually magnified and embellished on by Hollywood and again I'm not sure if it's these science-fiction journalist story writers who contribute material to Hollywood or rather is it the other way around with Hollywood writers providing great material for mankind beginnings myth propagation. No matter, when many of mankind are finding life anymore as having less and less purpose, science-fiction is a great entertainment outlet to trip off to and forget how much of a failure this world's leadership is at providing satifactory answers when many are desparately needed.Eocene_{October 11, 2011
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