Alleged echolocation in human being
Offline I only say alleged because it seems too hard to believe. Watch this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpBm4KoWsrY about a blind kid who can do some amazing things. How about that adaptation! Do you all think this is significant in terms of the human animal? Or is there a less landmark explanation to this kind of adaptation? Maybe I'm behind the times and humans have actually guided themselves this way before...
The implication that we should put Darwinism on trial overlooks the fact that Darwinism has always been on trial within the scientific community. -- From Finding Darwin's God by Kenneth R. Miller
Chaos and chance don't mean the absence of law and order, but rather the presence of order so complex that it lies beyond our abilities to grasp and describe it. -- From From Certainty to Uncertainty by F. David Peat
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Wow, that was pretty cool. I haven't seen anything like that before. I don't think that is of any significance to the human animal, other than if that is real, echolocation in some form, can be learned by human beings. This is an adaptation based on losing one of his senses, sight, and using his other senses to compensate for his lost vision. While echolocation and vision are different senses, they are fairly similar in that they are the primary informants of how you move through the world without bumping into things and recognizing different objects. Unless he has a specific genetic profile that uniquely allows him to do this and it is proven advantageous, then it is not significant because it is a learned behavior. It could be akin to cultural evolution like Bonobo Chimpanzees and the use of tools, but most likely if this guy has kids, he will have kids with normal eyesight that have no need to use echolocation to move around the world. Although one could probably find a military use for this say when it is pitch black and no night vision is available.
“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” Yoda
Indeed. I like what you said.
It seems like this has been big news lately but is apparently there's not alleged anything. This particular case has been verified and confirmed several times. He literally has no eyes and he can indeed use echolocation. Not only that but echolocation in humans is not as novel as most people thought (myself included.)
Check out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_echolocation
I read that wiki entry and saw that the kid in the video, Ben Underwood, has his own evangelical Christian ministry project as a result of his condition.
http://www.benunderwood.com/myministry.html
“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” Yoda