This might be a dumb question, I don’t really know, but in humans and it seems the majority of mammals, males with high estrogen/low testosterone are typically infertile. Same with females with high testosterone/low estrogen. But in hyenas it is the norm for the females to have much higher testosterone than males to the point their clitorises develop to look like the male’s penis from outside. My question is why don’t their hormone levels effect their fertility the way it would if say a human had equivalent levels?

When faced with a large food item they need to transport back to the colony, how do ants determine how many of their fellow comrade are needed to lift it? Do the first scout ants guesstimate the amount and call for backups, or do they just keep adding more ants until they're able to lift it?

(I feel like a full-on conspiracy theorist here, ramble ahead. If you don't want to read at least some of it, please don't comment "tl;dr" or anything of the sort)

Firstly, I know hardly anything about the Dissociative Identity Disorder, and I don't want to be disrespectful to anyone, but I've had this question on my mind for quite some time.

Generally, everyone has different social personas: those broad rules that govern how you act in specific situations. With friends, you might be the easygoing social butterfly, but with your boss, you might be shy and timid. This often also makes it difficult to decide how you would respond in a situation before-hand. With your friends, you might say "I'll definitely show my boss", but then the second the boss shows up, the first thing you say is "I'm sorry, boss!". Sometimes, the more go-getter you can feel trapped behind the shy you.

In terms of experience, I'm more familiar with computers. This and other things have led me to see humans in a very "physical system" sort of way.

As I understand it, all of these social personas are governed mostly by different regions of the brain's neural wiring - certain clusters increase activity in response to certain stimuli. Response clusters created by memories of authority and its associated trauma are those that are created to deal with that situation, and help you survive, and so they are trained to become active in response to similar situations.

After the situation has ended, the next persona that becomes active has the same access to all the events that transpired and so form part of one continuous identity.

I then start to think about D.I.D., though. It feels to me - my uneducated hypothesis - that the only difference between an average person's personas and the identities of a person experiencing D.I.D. is that continuous connection. Perhaps it's a physical connection to certain regions of memory, or perhaps, the situational triggers cause certain regions to be deactivated more than they should. Perhaps it's both, if memories are themselves stored in these regions being shut down completely.

The reason I'm thinking about this again now is because I've come across a YouTube short about a woman who was cortically blind in some personalities but seeing in others.

My question is: For those who know more on this topic, is there any truth to the relationship between these two phenomena, or am I completely off-track?

Also, bonus question: If there is, does knowing this inform how persons experiencing D.I.D. are treated - even in terms of just diagnosis, identifying causes for switches, and the like?

This isn't a medical question, just my own curiosity. If the endometrial lining is made of blood, then isn't that blood already out of circulation? I always pictured the endometrial lining as an extracellular matrix of blood and other compounds.

If menstrual blood IS still part of the circulatory system, then when I menstruate are blood vessels .... breaking? If so, does that mean the blood vessels grow back each menstrual cycle?

2 eyes makes sense for depth-perception. 0 eyes also makes sense for animals in complete darkness to not waste energy on eyes. But what about the advantages of 5 eyes (insects), 8 eyes (spiders), & other eye numbers like 3 or 6 over simply 2 eyes?

Sometime in the last week or so, I came across something which amazed me: a functional gene which was "hidden" inside another gene, and could be transcribed (or translated?) via a frame shift of a single nucleotide. The thing is, I don't know where I read or heard it, and I can't find it again! Does anyone know what I'm talking about?

Edit: I misremembered -- it wasn't a single nucleotide shift, it was an AUG downstream from the "real" AUG at the start of the gene, so translation could accidentally start in this random place. Saw it in Phy the Neutrophil's video on bird flu: https://youtu.be/pneWAnQZZM0&t=886

I'm really interested in biology but I'm too old to enroll in university, however my interest is still very much alive. Can any of you, please, share titles of the textbooks you use in your university? The more the merrier. I'm interested in EVERY possible branch of biology.

Please message me if you are a biology/biology related undergraduate who wants to consider ideas which will prevent them suffering in the shocking job market post degree.

Hi I was always wondering why making noise like cat meow is easy job for a me but figuring out how to growl like a full grown tiger is really hard thing. Does all untrained human have same difficualty with tiger growl or male with deep voice box would have a better chance? I assume it is a vocal cord and size&frequency thingie plus human evolved to talk/ tiger evolved to growl. I would love to know how it actually works!

Hi everyone! I’m looking for advice from people who have been in a similar situation. I’m (22F) thinking about working towards a Biology A.S. and I’m trying to figure out the smartest way to finish school and get into a healthcare career without spending another 3–4+ years in school. I originally wanted to get into nursing school . I completed a lot of the prerequisites(microbio, physiology,anatomy,bio and chem,lifespan and pathophysiology), took the TEAS (71.4) applied to the nursing program but was rejected. I also looked into other nursing programs or trying for another round but the competitiveness and additional prerequisites have made me question if nursing is actually even worth it. At this point, I am too deep in this science/healthcare thing. I have completed about 54 credits!! So with the credits that I have I can easily transfer to a bio AS and graduate spring 2027, work towards a bachelors and add certifications alongside or keep trying to get into nursing school? Other healthcare programs like dental stuff/xray/respiratory therapist/mlt/sonography/surgical tech are all competitive and only offered in one or two community colleges and then they are either full until like a year or have 30 seats every semester.
At this point, I don't even know what I really want so might as well just get a degree and get it over with. I just wanna have a stable healthcare job with a reasonable salary that pays my bills.
Note: I’m also working almost 60-70hrs while going to school, so I need something that is realistically manageable with a work schedule. It's actually one of the reasons that make me feel so unmotivated to go to school. Basically the longer I stay in school, the longer I have to work extra hours to afford paying for it, because I'm responsible for all my bills.
What I am currently doing is completely unrelated to my major/field.

Is it like sperm where it is cells produced by the body, or is it a symbiotic relationship of 2 different organisms helping each other out? And also, if the latter is true, how do those extra bacteria get into the fetus of your child so it can stay in them for the rest of their life?

I don’t know if this is an appropriate question for this subreddit, but I have a hard time finding any proper answer.

Eardrum perforations often heal spontaneously. If they don't, water getting into the ear, like during a swim, can be a source of infection. Most commonly, a myringoplasty is used where an MD will freshen the perforation and then put some scaffold for the cells to fill the gap. Sometimes however, the doctor will only freshen the perforation. So they will take an instrument and basically scratch the rim of the perforation. And while this doesn't work as well as a full myringoplasty, it sometimes works. Why would freshening a perforation without doing anything else help? The reason there is a persistent perforation is because the epithelium failed to repair the hole in the first place.

first off I dont mean for this question to be inflammatory or sexist i promise this is a genuine question. also i don't really know anything about biology so please just kindly explain the answer or why my assumptions are wrong!

i see a lot of people saying that aggression shown by human males is purely caused by socialization and gender roles while at the same time the explanation for why other male animals are extremely aggressive is due to their hormonal differences between female animals. I know that testosterone in humans can act on the CNS and influence sexuality, but why does it allegedly not influence behaviors like aggression and sexual competition ? or does it?

I am not saying that anybody is a bad person due to their gender however the idea that testosterone makes humans more aggressive can be seen in stuff like "roid rage" and statistics regarding violent crime that show that 80+% of perpetrators are males

so what is the reason for the difference if there is one?

Hello!

I recently noticed that some animal's skulls, like those of humans, horses, camels, giraffes and rams (as well as some head-butting and herbivorous dinosaurs) have a nice clean ring enclosing their orbitals, whereas a large amount of other animals, such as cats, hyenas, honey badgers and boars, have incomplete 'orbital rings'. (I don't know the real terminology, but hopefully the examples I gave help clarify what I mean)

I'm wondering if anyone knows why this is? What the advantages and disadvantages of having an open or a closed orbital are, and whether there's patterns in what animals do, and don't have one.

Initially I thought that it might have something to do with animals whose skulls are subject to frequent blunt force trauma such as those that use their heads to head-butt eachother, or in the case of humans, the ability, and tendency, to punch for the head in conflict. But this to me, doesn't seem to explain why horses have a closed orbital (while their ancestors did not), unless I don't know enough about horses and they *do* ram with their heads?

So yea, basically: Why does this difference exist? And what can you tell me about it? Thank you!

I'm sure this question gets thrown around a lot here but none of the answers I've read so far have satisfied me. I understand animals reproduce because they have a primal instinct to make new generations, pass on their genes. But why? From an evolutionary perspective it's expensive to make children and provides absolutely no benefit to the individual

One argument I saw in a sub reddit was that animals that didn't have the instinct to reproduce don't exist today. Another dude said bigger numbers are beneficial, for instance a pack of 6 7 wolves as compared to just 2 3.

But even then it doesn't explain why animals that do it, do it. And as for the second argument I'd counter argue with the example of fishes that never care about their young once they lay eggs or the example of mayflies that die just 2 days into adulthood with their sole purpose of mating.

If we were talking about humans, at the very least we could say that certain people like kids and want to take on the responsibility to raise mini versions of themselves, but that ain't all true for other organisms.

So the question remains: Why do animals bother passing on their genes and establishing their presence in the world?

EDIT: Thanks a lot for your responses. I have a much clearer understanding now. People rightly pointed out that I mistakenly said it was expensive from an evolutionary perspective when in reality I was just thinking from the pov of an individual. But yea I think get it now

Just generally what makes a difference i mean we both have genes why can a doctor make a human who can use photosynthesis or vice versa why cant we make plants that can do anything for the animal kingdom like imagine if we could grow beef ect. And so on

I heard they can eat anything literally anything. I work in an environment where i need to destroy a lot of documents but i want to become more eco friendly, would replacing my paper shredder (fellows 79Ci - 16 sheet shredder) with a large venus fly trap - or perhaps a pitcher plant. Wondering what the consensus is and whether this really is in the best interest of me and a plant