Want to hear something depressing? Type this into google: “humans apes 46 48 chromosomes”. If you’re knowledgeable about biology, you know that humans have 46 chromosomes, while gorillas, chimps and orangutans have 48. Further, human chromosome #2 looks very much like two chromosomes have fused together into one — neatly explaining where the “missing” chromosome went – and revealing that at one time humans had a chromosome layout just like our ape ancestors. It’s pretty darn good evidence for common descent. (Here’s a video by Ken Miller explaining it.)
But, what happens when you type those terms into google? You get these results:
1. (Young Earth Creationist) Answers in Genesis: A Tale of Two Chromosomes (Oddly, the page is blank, but the internet archive has a copy.)
2. (Creationist) Does anyone remember when humans had 48 chromosomes ? – Yahoo! Answers
3. (Neutral) Chromosome – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
4. (Pro-Evolution) Apes vs Human Chromosome Relationship
5. (Intelligent Design) And the Miller Told His Tale: Ken Miller’s Cold (Chromosomal …
6. (Intelligent Design) Evolution News & Views: And the Miller Told His Tale: Ken Miller’s …
7. (Blocked Access; You have to pay to read the article) Orthologous numbering of great ape and human chromosomes is …
8. (Pro-Evolution) Do all Primates (except humans) have 48 Chromosomes? – Evolution …
9. (Pro-Evolution powerpoint) Fusion Event
10. (Pro-Evolution powerpoint) Evolution: Part 2
Creationist spin controls the highest ranked articles, and the pro-evolution articles in the top eight do a poor job of explaining this as evidence for evolution to the common reader. It’s dismal, especially when evolutionists definitely have this nailed as evidence for evolution. I’d much rather see articles like this at the top. My guess is that google is favoring the most recent articles over earlier ones.
Here’s another video explaining the same evidence.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUu5hBp1AU8
Also, Ken Miller explains this evidence at the Dover trial, but unfortunately this website is not working now. It’s going to be fixed soon.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dover/day1am2.html
I’m not surprised the Christian creationist organization called the Discovery Institute has their (as usual dishonest) explanation for human chromosome #2. They know they’re lying about everything (unless they really are just plain stupid), but that’s how they make a living, lying for Jeebus.
I typed “humans apes 46 48 chromosomes” into Google and got this page as the top hit! Good going! You should do some internet consulting!
Google’s new buttons allowing you to delete or ascend search results are supposedly just for your own personal searches, but I have to assume that since Google aggregates all data some way and somehow, popular polling and click-thrus of search results will affect other people’s future searches. I guess we need to nix those creationist/ID ones and ascend the others.
Uh, wow. I wasn’t expecting to see that. Although, I guess I now have the most recent article, plus I have that exact sequence of words.
I still find it bizarre when I search for a topic on google, and occasionally find one of my posts within the first page or two of results. Part of me still thinks that someone’s playing a prank on me.
Unfortunately, a depressing number of people have only seen the Creationist version of these topics. I like to think popular science today as existing in two entirely different states: the ‘real’ version and Creationist one. Ideas move strictly from the former to the latter, after they’ve moved through a filter of ignorance.
tinyfrog-
I might be missing something, but- if 2 chromosomes fused into 1, that would reduce the chromosome count from 48 to 47?
> I might be missing something, but- if 2 chromosomes fused into 1, that would reduce the chromosome count from 48 to 47?
Well, no. You have 46 chromosomes, or 23 pairs of chromosomes. The way that the chromosomes work is this: you get half your chromosomes from your mother and half your chromosomes from your father.
So, your mother’s contribution to your chromosomes is: Chromosome 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 + one X Chromosome
If you’re a male (like me), then your father contributed the following to your chromosomes: Chromosome 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 + one Y Chromosome.
Add them all up and you have 46 chromosomes. Apes, on the other hand, have two chromosomes in place of our Chromosome 2. (We refer to them as Chromosome 2a and Chromosome 2b.) And since we have two copies of chromosome 2, they have two copies of 2a and two copies of 2b – for a total of 4.
Got you. Thanks for taking the time to explain-
And so, chromosomes just seem to like to ‘fuse’? And just how common is this ‘naturally fusing’ phenomena in other species? Kindly relate to us all the other species in which ‘fusing’ of chromosomes has occurred. Just trotting out a pseudo-feasible explanation is about one-click away from junk-science.
Basics: How can chromosome numbers change?
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/04/basics_how_can_chromosome_numb.php
Here’s a case of a woman with a bizarre chromosome fusion/fission that she passed on to her daughter:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/02/life_will_find_a_way.php
And comparisons of human and putterfish genomes suggests that since our common ancestor, we’ve had lots of chromosome fusions and fissions:
http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/pufferfish_and_ancestral_genomes/