Domestication in “Jurassic World”

The premier of the blockbuster film Jurassic World (2015) was met with anticipation from a global audience that was eager to take a first look at the latest installment of the Jurassic Park franchise. The movie follows two brothers as they visit the grand reopening of Jurassic World, a dinosaur theme park, and encounter protagonists […]

Hu Chocolate and the health food industry

When one scrolls down on the Hu chocolate website on the quest for a six dollar chocolate bar, their ethos is right on the landing page. They claim that “before industry, food was minimally processed and nourishing.” They ask consumers to “demand ingredients with that same pre-industrial standard” and claim that “humans evolved to eat […]

Agricultural Revolution

The Neolithic revolution is generally viewed as a defining moment for behavioral modernity in human history. The transition from a lifestyle dependent on hunting and gathering to one dependent on agriculture brought with it numerous changes in human dietary patterns, social structure, settlement patterns, rates of diseases, and overall human health. Agriculturalists subsist mainly on […]

Domesticating

We have learned in class that while it’s generally considered that humans domesticated plants and the Agricultural Revolution began, plants have also domesticated their humans (Scott, 2017). I believe there is a similar parallel between plant and dog domestication. Humans domesticated dogs thousands of years ago but dogs have also domesticated their humans. However, it […]

Research Shows Evidence of Algae-Farming Fish that Domesticate Tiny Shrimp

In a study of Longfin Damselfish off the coast of Belize, researchers William Feeney and Rohan Brooker found that these fish domesticated a type of shrimp called mysid shrimp. Feeney and Brooker believe it to be the first example of a non-human vertebrate domesticating another animal.  While observing the coral reefs off the coast of […]

Man’s Best Friend (Especially in a Pandemic)

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, animal shelters across the country have been seeing huge increases in adoptions and fosters, especially for dogs. Many shelters have been cleared out and filled back up multiple times in the past few months, with growing waitlists for people who would like to welcome […]