So much of our daily reality is weird, creepy, or mind-bending, but we rarely slow down enough to notice. Take our own bodies, for instance. A chunk of our DNA actually comes from ancient viruses.

In 1758, Swedish biologist Carl Linnaeus gave humans a scientific name: Homo sapiens, which means "wise human" in Latin. Although Linnaeus grouped humans with other apes, it was English biologist ...

So much of our daily reality is weird, creepy, or mind-bending, but we rarely slow down enough to notice. Take our own bodies, for instance. A chunk of our DNA actually comes from ancient viruses.

Human and chimpanzee genomes are more than 98% identical, and the genes themselves barely differ. The changes that make us human are thought to hide instead in the DNA that controls when and where ...

Some scientists say humans may be entering a new phase of evolution, one in which culture is becoming more powerful than genes in shaping our survival and future. At the heart of that idea is a ...

This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more. This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more. Human aging is not what natural selection failed to prevent. It is what happens when ...

A paper in Molecular Biology and Evolution finds that the relatively high rate of autism-spectrum disorders in humans is likely due to how humans evolved in the past. The paper is titled "A general ...

For thousands of years, humans have selectively bred dogs to fulfill specific roles, ranging from guarding and hunting to herding and companionship. This deliberate shaping of traits has resulted in ...

Long before humans spread across the globe, a deadly disease may have quietly shaped where our ancestors lived—and even how we evolved. New research reveals that malaria didn’t just threaten early ...

Think of evolution, and you might think of Darwin’s finches and natural selection. But according to researchers writing in the journal BioScience, it is not our genes that are determining our current ...