This makes Larry Niven's Pak Protectors more plausible. In his universe, when an adult human eats a certain food (not available on Earth), it triggers their transformation into a larger, stronger, more intelligent being, evolved to protect us "breeders", along the lines of the transformation of a worker ant into a queen.
But one would think that an occasional rare mutation would trigger at least a partial transformation, so I'll guess this one will remain scifi.
In the stories, being old _was_ the partial transformation (Protectors become sterile - older people become less reproductively able, Protectors get an extra heart where the genitals were - older people have heart problems because they only have one, Protectors are monomaniacally fixated on family, and so on).
The original stories were written in an era when there was an absence of direct proof that humanity was related to other life on earth (that would be the default assumption, and there was tons of evidence, but it was theoretically semi-plausible that we weren't); molecular biology more or less killed that off, ruining the stories :)
That was the first thing on my mind too. We need to find that protein in a human and switch it. See what happens. He'll turn into Donald Trump or something.
> While the results certainly suggest there are two main social hormones controlling caste behavior in Jerdon's jumping ants and that this is done via a single protein factor, we will need further research to actually prove this is so.
Off topic, but i hope it's not only me who gets confused by random use of capital letters. Whats up with capitalizing (almost) all first letters in words? Is this some regional thing?
Why "Can" is capitalized but "from" is not for example?
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 44.2 ms ] threadBut one would think that an occasional rare mutation would trigger at least a partial transformation, so I'll guess this one will remain scifi.
The original stories were written in an era when there was an absence of direct proof that humanity was related to other life on earth (that would be the default assumption, and there was tons of evidence, but it was theoretically semi-plausible that we weren't); molecular biology more or less killed that off, ruining the stories :)
> While the results certainly suggest there are two main social hormones controlling caste behavior in Jerdon's jumping ants and that this is done via a single protein factor, we will need further research to actually prove this is so.
Why "Can" is capitalized but "from" is not for example?
https://www.grammar-monster.com/glossary/title_case.htm