The Darwin Awards 4: Intelligent Design (13 page)

National Express runs bus services throughout the U.K. The service between Aberdeen and London takes approximately twelve hours. There’s no smoking on the coach, making it a long trip for addicts. Sandra, forty-three, was riding south from Glasgow to visit her family, and she was getting more and more desperate for a cigarette.

The coach stopped at Carlisle. Finally she could satisfy her craving! But no, she was not allowed to get off the coach. Sandra sat in the bus, becoming more agitated by the mile. She was craving a cigarette. She needed it—now.

Fellow passengers said she became increasingly anxious as the journey continued, and started shouting that she wanted to get off. However, the coach was on a motorway at the time and was not allowed to stop except for an emergency. They saw Sandra push her hands against the passenger door in the middle of the lower deck. Surely she couldn’t be trying to get off the coach to have that cigarette she’d been dreaming of, could she?

Oh, yes she could!

Police concluded that she fell out of the coach, which was traveling at approximately sixty miles per hour, and was crushed under its wheels. At that point, the coach made that hoped-for emergency stop, but it was too late for Sandra. She never did get to enjoy that cigarette.

Reference: BBC News

Massive thunderstorms had turned the Braamfontein Spruit into a raging river. It was a little past midnight when police warned Barbara, thirty-three, that a flash flood was inundating the bridge ahead. They urged her not to cross. But Barbara was driving a BMW X3, an off-road vehicle with xDrive all-wheel-drive.

Brochures assured her that the luxury SUV with Sensatec upholstery and an eight-speaker stereo system had “virtually unlimited agility.” So Barbara laughed off the police advice and continued toward the bridge. The xDrive all-wheel-drive lost its grip as the floodwaters swept her BMW X3 off the bridge. Her body was found later inside the vehicle more than a mile down the river.

Reference:
Mail & Guardian

Two North Fort Myers residents, twenty-three-year-old Molly and her husband, had rented a room in a local motel for some unspecified activity, perhaps involving perpetuation of the species. As Molly entered the second-floor room, she went straight for the lanai, which overlooked a concrete patio. Most guests would have seen the railing on the edge of the lanai as a safety feature, but for Molly it brought to mind fond memories of her youthful gymnastic abilities.

Molly called out, “Watch to see what I can still do.” These would be her last words. She did a flip onto the railing for a handstand, just the way she used to do, but then toppled over the other side, slamming into the patio fifteen feet below. She was pronounced dead at the hospital.

Reference:
Fort Myers News-Press,
AP

Security guards caught a nineteen-year-old woman who had been sneaking into offices, stealing wallets out of coat pockets. The guards locked her in a room on the tenth floor and waited for police to arrive.

The woman was desperate to escape. There was no way she could get past the guards outside the door. But she was in luck—the window opened! She climbed onto the ledge, and she was free!

Far below, traffic whizzed by on 42nd Street. Was she startled by the security guards coming back into the room? Or caught off-balance by a wayward pigeon? Or hoping to win a Darwin Award? She’s not telling, but she fell or jumped from the ledge, landing on scaffolding eight stories below.

She lost her bid for a full Darwin, surviving the fall with several broken bones. But her escape was only temporary. She was arrested and charged with burglary before being taken to a hospital in critical condition.

I will be the first to admit that this only qualifies as an Honorable Mention—but how many people get the
prosecution
to request a mental competency hearing?

In Pittsburgh, my roommate’s coworker was gassing up her car. The automatic shutoff didn’t engage, so when the tank was full, a little gas overflowed. When she realized this, she declared that she wasn’t paying for gas on the ground—she would only pay for what was in her car. The attendant stated that she had to pay for all the gas she had pumped. She reiterated that not all of it went into her car.

She then said, “Watch, I’ll prove it.”

Prove it she did. She threw her
lit
cigarette on the ground where the gas spilled. The puddle ignited! Fortunately, they were able to put out the fire before anything worse happened.

She was arrested for inciting a catastrophe. While listening to the testimony at her preliminary hearing, the prosecutor stated, “That’s crazy. That’s insane!” The defense attorney—either spotting a good line of defense, or agreeing with the prosecutor—asked, “Are you going to request a psychiatric evaluation?” To which the prosecutor replied, “You damn betcha.”

Reference: Personal Account

There was no media coverage on this one. I was a witness and rescuer. Around seven
A.M
., I looked up from the machine I was operating at work and saw an older Nissan at the stop sign across the street. Its emergency flashers were on. A heavyset young woman emerged, opened the hood, and leaned in to manipulate something inside. Suddenly the car lurched forward, knocking her down.

I immediately ran for the door. By the time I started across the parking lot, the bumper of the car was slowly shoving her out into the four-lane boulevard! The situation reminded me of the Stephen King story where the car starts trying to kill people. Unsuccessful at crushing her, the woman’s car was pushing her into the boulevard’s right lane, where other cars could finish the job.

After checking for traffic, I ran across the street to help. Very fortunately for her, the driver of the next vehicle to approach her (a school bus) was quick-witted enough to turn on the flashing red lights, stopping traffic.

As I sprinted to the driver’s door, I remember feeling a flash of irritation as the woman gasped to me, “Put it in reverse.” Did she think I was going to try to lift it off her? I hopped in and carefully reversed the car. She stood up, brushed herself off, and said, “Stupid car. The transmission linkage is always sticking.”

Dumbfounded, all I could think of to say was, “Maybe you should set the parking brake next time.” I consciously didn’t say, “The
car
is stupid?”

Reference: John A Hancock, Personal Account

Young Mick had settled in for a good night’s sleep when he was awakened by a loud explosion. His bedroom door had been blown open by air pressure, and his curtains had flown out the open window. He rushed downstairs to find his mother staggering from the kitchen with smoke rising from patches where there used to be hair. She seemed more dazed than injured, so he sat her down and went into the kitchen.

It looked like a small bomb had gone off. The net curtains were a pile of melted nylon, and the cotton curtains were still on fire. Mick put them out with a few glasses of water and returned to his mother to find out what had happened.

“Well,” she said, “I thought that the kitchen was a little smelly so I got out a spray can of air freshener. Nothing came out but I knew something was inside, because I could hear it when I shook the can. So I thought I’d open it with the can opener and sprinkle some of the contents around.”

Propellant spurted from the can as soon as the can opener cut into it, startling Mom and causing her to throw the can into the air. It landed on the gas stove, where the pilot light instantly turned the can into a fireball. Mom had narrowly avoided winning herself a Darwin Award.

In positive psychology terms, Mom was conditioning her son to react to danger and avoid his own untimely removal from the gene pool. Mom’s lesson worked. Mick is still alive and passing on her lessons to the rest of us.

Reference: Mick, Personal Account

 

In another lesson, Mick’s mother showed him a broken vacuum cleaner. She had tugged too hard on the power cord and pulled the wires loose. “I opened the plug and put the wires back,” she said, “but it still doesn’t work.” Mick opened the plug to find all three wires twisted together and inserted, luckily, into the neutral pin. If she had chosen the live pin, the vacuum cleaner would have become electrified, waiting for Mom to touch it and send two hundred forty volts charging through her on their way to ground.

 

 

James G. Petropoulos, Science Writer

O
ne may well ask that question of the next chimpanzee one meets. Recent research shows that humans (
Homo sapiens
) and chimpanzees (
Pan troglodytes
) are 99.4% genetically compatible, although (based on fossil and genetic evidence) the two species diverged five to seven million years ago. So close are the similarities that it has been suggested that chimpanzees be reclassified as genus Homo. Yet it is clear that chimpanzees and humans are physically and mentally quite different. Of the great apes, the chimpanzee is by far our closest relative. The gorilla is less closely related, and the orangutan (despite it’s almost human face) even less so. Genetic research on all four species is beginning to yield information on what exactly makes humans different, and in time, perhaps will shed light on what makes us human.

A look at the physical differences between chimps and humans helps illustrate these minor genetic differences. Chimpanzees are arboreal; though omnivorous, they live on a diet consisting chiefly of fruit; they are four to seven times as strong as humans; they are more agile but less dexterous than humans. Humans, of course, are bipedal, very much omnivo
rous, predatory by instinct, and have superior intellect and communication skills. It has been proposed that the genetic differences between chimpanzees and humans are largely due to the two species’ differing lifestyles, which can perhaps explain why, after five to seven million years, chimpanzees still live in trees and humans do not.

The most easily recognizable genetic difference between humans and chimpanzees is the number of chromosome pairs. Humans have twenty-three pairs, chimpanzees have twenty-four. However, this difference is deceptive. Findings suggest that somewhere along the course of human evolution, two pairs of “chimp” chromosomes fused and rearranged themselves into our familiar twenty-three. The genetic information contained in those “fused” chromosomes has both human and ape counterparts.

The genetic differences scientists are concentrating on may surprise many readers.

Andrew G. Clark of Cornell University recently completed the most comprehensive comparison study to date of the genetic differences between humans and chimpanzees. Using a supercomputer, a partial chimpanzee DNA map of eighteen million sequences was lined up with the genomes of a human and a mouse, to determine which human genes were evolving most quickly. It was hypothesized that if natural selection favored certain genes, perhaps these genes were part of what made us “human.” Starting with 23,000 genes, the final field was whittled down to 7,645 human genes that most differed from chimpanzees and mice. Clark and his team isolated genes that determine sense of smell, digestion of protein, development of long bones, hairiness, and hearing. Clark’s
conclusions were that at some point, human olfactory senses and amino-acid metabolism genetically diverged from those of the chimpanzee, presumably enabling early humans to better smell the types of food they sought, and to better process the proteins found therein. These findings coincide with archaeological evidence that humans began eating meat about two million years ago. These genetic mutations may have been brought about by a new ecological niche created by climate changes.

The genes that determine amino-acid metabolism explain why we are able to digest more dietary proteins, and also lend a clue as to what may have resulted when this newfound digestive ability triggered changes in other proteins. Findings published by the RIKEN Genomic Sciences Centre in Japan support the hypothesis that certain proteins (for example, those affecting brain tissue) may have been genetically altered over time by our change to a more carnivorous diet. As man began chemically altering his food by cooking it and adding other proteins to his diet, such as dairy and legumes, further changes in human proteins may have been triggered, resulting in modern humans.

Another discovery was made by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. A gene known as ASPM was isolated. Mutations in ASPM affect the size of the cerebral cortex, the part of the brain most closely associated with our “humanity.” This protein is much more complex in human form than in apes, and might be a key factor in the evolution of the large human brain.

Clark speculated that genes connected with the sense of hearing might also have contributed to the divergence between humans and chimpanzees, and that these genes may be
at the root of human language and communicative ability. He concluded, “Perhaps some of the genes that enable humans to understand speech [involve] not only the brain, but also hearing.”

One such gene, alpha-tectorin, determines the makeup of the tectorial membrane of the inner ear. It is known that mutations in this gene cause congenital deafness in humans; perhaps the fine-tuning of alpha-tectorin millions of years ago enabled early humans to understand more complex speech. The difficulty in training chimpanzees to understand human language suggests that perhaps their hearing isn’t quite as acute as our own. Our advanced ability to communicate—very much a part of our humanity—may all be due to a gene acting upon an obscure ear protein!

Clark warns, however, that the biological differences between humans and chimpanzees are not necessarily the result of one or even many particular genes, but the hypotheses raised by his experiment certainly merit further study.

Seemingly minor differences in our genetic makeup have resulted in two very different critters, and science is only now beginning to sort it all out. There are yet other differences. Chimpanzees are more genetically diverse than humans; among humans, those living in Africa are more genetically diverse than non-Africans. One theory is that all humans living today sprang from a single female ancestor living in Africa some two hundred thousand years ago. This theory is based not on nuclear DNA, but on mitochondrial DNA. This is another story for another day, but we can be sure that the 1 percent difference between humans and chimpanzees is more astonishing than the 99 percent similarity.

So go ahead and ask a brother chimp if he can spare a banana…chances are he’ll have no idea what you’re talking about!

References:

Cornell News,
December 18, 2003

University of Chicago Hospitals article, “Human Brain Still Evolving,” September 8, 2005

Wikipedia.com, article on “Mitochondrial Eve”

Wildman et al. “Genomics in Humans and Chimpanzees”

Now that we’ve developed a fellow feel for the apes, enjoy these stories about other members of the animal kingdom that have the misfortune to share the planet with
Homo sapiens clueless
.