Mammals Made By Viruses

blogs.discovermagazine.com

81 points·tokenadult··8 comments

Utterly fascinating. But the last paragraph in the article puts the lie to the title -- pigs and horses don't have this feature. Last I checked, both mammals.

But the last paragraph in the article puts the lie to the title -- pigs and horses don't have this feature. Last I checked, both mammals.

There is no indefinite plural article in English. The title is perfectly consistent with the content of the article, if potentially a bit misleading.

i think he means to say the last paragraph contradicts the first:

"If not for a virus, none of us would ever be born."

if horses and pigs are a-ok without it, then the assertion that in its absence we would have no chance of existence seems a bit odd

"Some" generally functions as an indefinite plural article: think "I hope to see a hippopotamus" vs. "I hope to see some hippopotami".

If it was phrases "the presence or absence of certain viruses made mammals what they are now" would you be happier with it. That's more accurate (in terms of what the article says), but less poetic.

There's a reason our immune system doesn't simply keep all viruses out of the body. Any organism that did so would have offspring without as much random variation. That would greatly decrease the chances of surviving random threats including new viruses.

So when going back in time, don't change anything. And should science ever make it possible to design offspring, don't make it impervious to viruses.

Or viruses are made by mammals?

No. (But you can strech definitions a bit if you want to. Biology is weird)

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