Skeptics Stack Exchange
Skeptics Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [biology]

Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Use this tag for general biology questions, but also use more specific life science tags to accompany this one if applicable.

Biology

Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines. Among the most important topics are five unifying principles that can be said to be the fundamental axioms of modern biology:

  1. Cells are the basic unit of life
  2. New species and inherited traits are the product of evolution
  3. Genes are the basic unit of heredity
  4. An organism regulates its internal environment to maintain a stable and constant condition
  5. Living organisms consume and transform energy.

Disciplines

Subdisciplines of biology are recognized on the basis of the scale at which organisms are studied and the methods used to study them: biochemistry examines the rudimentary chemistry of life; molecular biology studies the complex interactions of systems of biological molecules; cellular biology examines the basic building block of all life, the cell; physiology examines the physical and chemical functions of the tissues, organs, and organ systems of an organism; and ecology examines how various organisms interact and associate with their environment.

A more comprehensive list is the following:

  • Anatomy
  • Arachnology
  • Astrobiology
  • Botany
  • Biochemistry
  • Biogeography
  • Bioinformatics
  • Biophysics
  • Cell biology
  • Cytology
  • Dendrology
  • Developmental biology
  • Ecology
  • Entomology
  • Ethology
  • Evolutionary biology
  • Embryology
  • Genetics / Genomics
  • Herpetology
  • Histology
  • Human biology / Anthropology / Primatology
  • Ichthyology
  • Limnology
  • Malacology
  • Mammalogy
  • Marine biology
  • Microbiology / Bacteriology
  • Molecular biology
  • Mycology / Lichenology
  • Nematology
  • Neurobiology / Neuroscience
  • Ornithology
  • Parasitology
  • Palaeontology
  • Phycology
  • Phylogenetics
  • Physiology
  • Plant pathology
  • Taxonomy
  • Virology
  • Zoology
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Does oxygen get you high enough to keep you calm during a plane crash?

Does oxygen get you high? If so, is the effect strong enough to keep the average person placid during a plane crash? From the movie Fight Club: Tyler Durden: [pointing at an emergency instruction manual on a plane] You know why they put oxygen …
going
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Is Genetically Modified food safe to consume?

What's the truth surrounding the popular idea that genetically modified food is dangerous to consume? There's entire websites and institutions dedicated to popularizing the alleged dangers of eating genetically modified food, such as GMO Awareness,…
Django Reinhardt
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Does the DNA of one sperm contain 37.5 MB of information?

[Source] In an episode of the BBC show QI - Quite Interesting (Series J, Episode 1) Stephen Fry said: How much information do you think is in the DNA of one little sperm...? It's 37.5 MB... ...a normal male ejaculation, if there is such a thing,…
Oliver_C
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Is the Amazon rain forest man-made?

An article in the Atlantic quotes several experts who claim that the Amazon rainforest is the remnants of planted and cultivated orchards and farms, and that the land is not naturally conducive to this type of growth. Planting their orchards, the…
Chad
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Does a human on a bicycle travel more efficiently than any other species?

Steve Jobs claimed on video that a bicycling human is more efficient at locomotion than any other species can manage. He repeated it separately on video, and in writing. The quote is still oft repeated. A poster print run raised 5k USD on…
Anko - inactive in protest
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Is this what "happiness looks like"?

This gif has been widely distributed on imgur/reddit/twitter/media and it is meant to represent Molecules of the protein myosin drag a ball of endorphins along an active filament into the inner part of the brain's parietal cortex, which produces…
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Do we lose most of our body heat through our heads?

If you didn't grow up in a tropical climate, you probably heard something like this as a child... Put on a hat before you go out because you lose the most heat through your head. Some say that the reason you lose more heat through your head…
Monkey Tuesday
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Do mosquitoes urinate on you when they bite you?

This is a claim that I have seen on several "Did You Know?" lists so far. They all state that when a mosquito bites you, they also urinate on you at the same time and that is what causes the area around the bite to swell, rather than the actual bite…
geoff
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Can social isolation kill babies?

According to the Wikipedia page for Language Deprivation Experiments, An experiment allegedly carried out by Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the 13th century saw young infants raised without human interaction in an attempt to determine if there…
Frou-Frou Fox
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Did David Blaine hold his breath for 17 minutes?

David Blaine (born David Blaine White; April 4, 1973) is an American magician, illusionist and endurance artist. He is best known for his high-profile feats of endurance, and has made his name as a performer of street and close-up magic. He has…
George Chalhoub
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Is watching television in the dark harmful to your eyes?

This is obviously related to a few answered questions already here, namely: Does watching television damage the eyes? Is it harmful to your eyes to read in dim light? But the following question is more specific, and doesn't seem to be answered:…
Brian M. Hunt
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Is spontaneous human combustion possible?

An article from Ireland dated January, 2011 shows that spontaneous human combustion (SHC) remains a hot topic among paranormalists. Spontaneous human combustion has been defined as: Spontaneous human combustion (SHC) is the alleged burning of a…
Monkey Tuesday
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Can you punch someone's nose into their brain?

A persistent tale in martial arts is that one can strike an unfortunate other on the nose in such a way that you drive the cartilege up into their brain. Is this possible? I think some points to consider are: Is there a path from the inside of the…
Grimm The Opiner
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Does your stomach shrink if you eat less?

I've heard people say this before; that eating less shrinks your stomach, making you desire less food in the future. When I looked it up online just now, the first few results conflict: Eating less shrinks the stomach: Among the dieters, gastric…
endolith
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Does a lobster feel little/no pain when boiled alive?

Image Source I have just read Cracked.com's "9 Ridiculous Cooking Myths You Probably Believe", that claims: [...] because [the lobster's] nervous system isn't very complex, so it's feeling little to no pain. Emphasis added It references an ABC…
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