• Phineaz@feddit.org
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    14
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    4 days ago

    Tough luck, this might affect his grandkid, not the kid. Epigenetic imprinting (the semi-permanent kind) is done during oogenesis, which if I am right occurs during pregnancy.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      23
      ·
      edit-2
      4 days ago

      It’s also not necessarily a net-gain. There are a bunch of trade-offs to being better able to deal with a lack of food. Specifically, by sacrificing body mass and brain development to conserve energy.

      Surviving adverse conditions can mean developing novel evolutionary strategies. But it can also just amount to evolutionary downsizing. Living as a smaller, weaker, stunted version of your predecessors because the runt of the litter needs fewer calories to get by.

      • groet@feddit.org
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        3 days ago

        Yeah I was about to say. Aren’t children from families that suffered famines much more likely to have (and have children that have) digestive problems and food related deficensies?

  • thefluffiest@feddit.nl
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    4 days ago

    What’s the plan with the raptor? Increase the kid’s running speed? Anxiety? Fear of birds? Love for Spielberg movies?

  • flyos@jlai.lu
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    edit-2
    3 days ago

    “Epigenetics shows…” cries in evolutionary biology having demonstrated inter-generational plasticity for more than 30 years, totally ignored by molecular geneticists who discovered after everybody else that everything is not about DNA