Lucy

What makes a species different from other species? In a two part Radiolab pod cast, this idea is pondered and explored as the story of a chimp named, Lucy is told. Lucy was a chimp raised in a normal human household for around the first eleven years of her life. The human 'parents' of Lucy intended to see just how human they could raise Lucy to be. Over time, Lucy began to do some remarkably human things such as, making tea, eating with silverware, and even using sign language to communicate with her parents. Eventually the time came where Lucy was just too big and strong to keep in a house, so the owners decided to let her go. A human friend of Lucy's decided to stay with her. After around a year or so, Lucy's friend left her to live life as a normal chimp in the wild. Lucy's friend would visit her every so often until one time, she came to visit but was only able to find the skeleton of Lucy. It was concluded that she had been killed by poachers as there was no sign of any skin or hair. Lucy was able to teach us that chimpanzees are magnificent creatures. They are very smart and are fast learners. Most of all, Lucy taught us that humans are not the only species that are capable of feelings strong enough to dictate actions and even lying. Being human can mean many things, it can mean being one of the smartest animals on the planet, it could mean being able to do what is necessary for enjoyment or survival, and it could even mean being able to quickly adapt to what is around you. Lucy showed us that there is even more about being human. She showed us that being human doesn't always mean being in a human body. Some would argue that Lucy was more human than she was chimp. After hearing the story of Lucy told, i realized that humans may not be as far ahead as previously thought. Chimps are fascinating, to say the least. The experiment of Lucy was very worthwhile because it was able to bring to light the fact that not everything is as straight forward as most think it to be. This experiment showed that feelings and actions are never determined by what species you are, it's all universal. Hearing how Lucy died was obviously not a happy moment seeing as how she must have been terrified when it happened. Hearing this kind of stuff makes me more angry than sad because Lucy was brilliant! Humans are incredibly smart but often times too stupid to realize what they do to anything around them.

TED Talk Response

Have you ever wondered what makes up out body, how it works and operates? For hundreds and maybe even thousands of years, people have been wondering the same thing, but only recently has a scientist named, Drew Berry has uncovered just a little bit more of how we work, at the molecular scale. In his TED talk, Drew Berry shows a series of animations of DNA moving about and replicating it' self and the construction of chromosomes. He gives his input about the animations and describes them flawlessly. In an animation that shows the replication process of DNA, he tells us that our bodies, at the molecular level, are no more than organic machines on an assembly line. To me, this is all fascinating, i had no idea that there was an assembly process for DNA, I thought that it just appeared out of no where. With the further advancement of this research, we will be able to uncover more and more of our molecular composition. To me, i think that this research is incredibly important because it can lead to advancements in medicines and medical treatment, it could even lead us to discover more diseases that we had no idea even existed! To discover more about our personal bodies, we must keep advancing in this field of biology.

Chris's Bio-Blog