The Genographic Project: DNA Testing Hits Home

Why paleoanthropology is cooler than you think and how to find the missing link with a Q-tip.

GENEALOGY ON STEROIDS

We’re all African.

No, seriously — this isn’t some charity slogan, it’s an evolutionary fact. And our DNA — yours, ours, Chuck Norris’s — contains a historical record of it. The big question, really, is how we ended up so scattered across the globe and so incredibly diverse as a species — 6.5 billion of us, speaking 6,000 languages, sporting all sorts of shapes, sizes and colors.

Now, genographer Spencer Wells is closer than ever to building a family tree for all of humanity. For the past couple of years, he’s toured dozens of countries tackling that great big question of origins in order to explain our amazing diversity.

And it all comes down to mitochonodrial DNA — the maternal ancestry component you get from your mother and your grandmother and so forth. Turns out, a single African woman, “Mitochondrial Eve,” gave rise to all of today’s mitochondrial diversity about 200,000 years ago. And just to prove your mother right when she told you boys were “late bloomers,” turns out “Y-Chromosome Adam” — the source of the Y-chromosome, the male side of the ancestry story — only lived about 60,000 years ago, a mere 2,000 human generations ago. Which, of course, is measely in evolutionary terms.

Watch Wells’ fascinating yet easily digestible TED Talk on it all.

In 2005, Spencer Wells partnered with National Geographic on a film version of his book, The Journey of Man. The NG folks became so interested in the concept that they offered Wells a 5-year partnership, dubbed The Genographic Project, with the goal of studying millions of people’s DNA in order to trace humanity’s migration patterns over history.

Here comes the cool part: You can order a kit and test your own DNA. At home. Then submit the results to the National Geographic database for analysis, not only finding out your own geneticgenetic journey but also becoming a little flag on the great big map of human geneaology.

So far, they’ve received results from nearly 300,000 people and raised over $8 million.

The whole thing is, of course, a non-profit and any money they raise, after covering the cost of the kit and the data processing, gets funnelled back into the project, mostly into The Legacy Fund — a grant-giving charity that gives money to indigenous groups around the world for various sustainability, educational, philanthropic and otherwise awesome projects they’ve applied for.

So go ahead, order the kit — it costs less than our college Biology textbook back in the day, and it goes towards greater things than the Barnes & Noble bottom line.

Animal Farm

Fido for prez, Mother’s Day for the rest of us, the world’s hairiest artist, and how grapes can be bigger than grapefruits.

We love animals. Still, it’s been said before that all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. So today, we take an admiring look at some particularly equal ones out there.

OBEY THE PURE BREED

If you know, or are, a dedicated pet owner — you know, the types who refer to themselves and their pet in the first person plural and address said pet in babyspeak — then you understand the near-worship situation we’re talking about here.

ObeyThePureBreed is meant for just that type of pet owner. The pet-elitist site is a tongue-in-cheek hub of “propaganda for dog & cat world rule,” underwritten by one Chairman Meow, chock-full of hilarious pet-centric political rallying, and complete with its very own “In Dog We Trust” constitutional slogan.

The whole movement is, of course, just a clever front for a good ol’ merch e-store for pet-inclined hipsters who can buy poster art, t-shirts and gifts in the likeness of their favorite breed. And, curiously, Obama shirts as well, complete with a matching “Bark for Obama ’08” doggie shirts.

Big brother is raising an eyebrow.

TAKE YOUR DOG TO WORK DAY

Here, we’ll say it: some people love their dog more than their mother. Which they must find quite unsettling given the huge national greeting card and flowers bonanza that is Mother’s Day without even a remote dog equivalent.

Ha — fools! For 9 years now, June 20 has been Take Your Dog To Work Day. The organization, backed by Pet Sitters International, is on a mission to get businesses everywhere to open their doors to canines this Friday and thus help “promote pet adoptions in a positive and proactive way.”

You can get involved by vowing to participate, entering the photo contest, or just spreading the word. (While you’re at it, you may actually win some cool schwag.) And if you’re a Type A overachiever, you can go the extra mile with 10 pro-doggie, proactive initiatives.

They’ve even got your back with a handy list of boss-convincing stats and some… less rational… arguments in case the geek talk doesn’t do the trick.

Word up.

KOKO

And while we’re in the spirit of spreading the pro-animal message, why not turn our attention to our closest non-human kindred? The Gorilla Foundation has dedicated a special site to a special gorilla: Koko. Not only does she know the signs for an impressive vocabulary of words, but she also possesses a more uncommon talent: artistic expression.

At KokoMart, you’ll find Koko’s original artwork. And before you go ahead and dismiss it as paint thoughtlessly splattered on canvas, you may wanna consider all her paintings are based on Koko’s cognitive interpretation of certain words and signs. Like the unattributable-to-mere-chance pink, heart-shaped drawing of “love.”

Then there’s Koko’s (arguably even more talented) co-creator, Michael. Sadly, Michael transitioned from the contemporary to the classic section of the art world, after suffering unexpected heart failure in 2000.

The art prints may be on the pricey side, but it’s all for a good cause: all proceeds go towards conservation efforts fighting Africa’s “bushmeat” trade, which kills thousands of gorillas every year. And we, after seeing the rich cognitive and emotional world of Koko’s kind, have a hard time considering this that much different from human homicide.

CROW INTELLIGENCE

Having been hit in the face by a pigeon, we can tell you these are some dumb birds. In fact, after the incident, we proceeded to deduce birds in general were pretty dimwitted beings. Boy, were we wrong — a TED talk, always the mind-opener, set us straight thanks to speaker Joshua Klein’s mind-blowing revelation of crows’ intelligence.

Klein, a hacker and writer, reveals a real-life experiment resulting in crow-operated vending machines. We kid you not — the birds use nothing but their (grape-sized) brains to figure out how to insert a coin into a peanut-dispensing machine in the middle of a cornfield. Without training.

And if that doesn’t blow your own (grapefruit-sized) mind, wait until you see a crow teach itself to bend a wire and proceed to use it to take a padlock out of a glass beaker. We know humans who can’t do that. Then there’s the one that navigates traffic lights better than most pedestrians we know.

Watch it, you’ll be amazed. And maybe get a craving for peanuts.