biology is a far-reaching field that includes the study of all living organisms
given the vast cache of information that this contains it's no surprise that
it also includes a lot of uncertainties today we're going to take a look at some
of the greatest mysteries from biology that keeps scientists awake at night possibly
number 10. darwin's abominable mystery we start off with a classic one which charles
darwin himself referred to as an abominable mystery in a letter to botanist joseph dalton
hooker the sudden explosion of flowering plants or angiosperms in the fossil record of the early
cretaceous period if we're being specific darwin was only referring to dicatal flowering plants in
his letter meaning the ones with two embryonic leaves but over the decades the question came
to include all angiosperms how did they diversify so fast in such a short period darwin himself was
particularly vexed about this problem not only because it seemed to contradict his theories but
also because some of his opponents were using the mystery to advocate for divine intervention
in his later years darwin floated the idea that there might have been an undiscovered island
or even a continent somewhere where angiosperms originated and evolved in isolation for millions
of years before making their way into the rest of the world and into the fossil record that
was known at the time the issue has been puzzling biologists for almost 150 years there are ideas in
early 2021 a new study from the university of bristol suggested that flowering plants
simply appeared millions of years earlier than previously thought thus giving them
more time to diversify but without solid proof darwin's mystery remains as abortable as ever
9. walking in circles next time you find yourself in an open field close your eyes and try to walk
in a straight line you'll find that it's harder to do than you might expect in fact multiple studies
performed over decades suggest that it might even be impossible time after time people who
have been blindfolded end up walking in circles even though they think they're walking straight
sometimes you don't even need the blindfold in one study done in 2010 the walkers were allowed to see
and were simply asked to walk in a straight line on a cloudy day and they still couldn't
do it it seems that humans need an external focal point like the sun or a mountain or a
tall building in order to keep in a straight line why exactly this is the case remains a mystery as
scientists have ideas but no definitive answers years ago they used to think that this could be
due to a limb imbalance one leg could be longer or shorter than the other one which would cause
an asymmetrical gait the 2010 study ruled that out instead the team behind it believes that the
cause might be the inherently faulty nature of our vestibular system which is responsible for
our balance normally the brain would correct these small errors by using external landmarks
for recalibration but when those disappear we end up walking in circles number eight the paradox of
the plankton in ecology there is an idea called the competitive explosion principle also known as
gauss's law which states that two species that are competing for the same limited resources cannot
stably coexist in the long run one of the species will always have an advantage no matter how minor
which will allow it to dominate the other species and to drive it to extinction scientists have
seen this happen again and again yet there is one group of organisms that seems to be
exempted from the rule and that's plankton the so-called paradox of the plankton has been around
since 1961 when it was first described by british ecologist g evelyn hutchinson who noted that most
environments that contain plankton always have a diversified variety he referred specifically
to phytoplankton which consists of microalgae observing that most lakes have anywhere between
10 and 100 types of phytoplankton at any given time of course since hutchinson's
time our understanding of ecology is advanced there are several hypotheses that could explain
the paradox the lack of long-term environmental equilibrium in lakes predators eating the dominant
phytoplankton the unpredictability created when species compete for multiple resources there are
several possibilities but we are still waiting on one answer which definitively solves the paradox
7. the sex life of the blue whale the blue whale is the largest animal that has ever lived on this
planet you would think that that would make it relatively easy to track but in fact it is a
very reclusive and solitary animal especially when compared to other whales there is much we
still don't know about the social hierarchy and interactions of blue whales but it is their mating
and birthing habits that remain a total mystery to us don't get us wrong scientists have studied the
anatomy of blue whales so they know the mechanics involved but they are in the dark when it comes to
the mating behavior of the blue whales or where they go to breed and to give birth we have yet
to capture footage of two blue whales mating so we have to infer some things from the behavior
of their close cousin the humpback whale which is far less shy when it comes to performing on camera
humpback whales engage in something called a heat run where one or more whales would chase
a female well over huge distances in the hopes of getting her to mate with him back in 2017
some researchers believed they filmed for the first time two blue whales doing the same thing
but other experts remain unconvinced number 6. the yawn the simple yawn is something that all of us
do most of us do it every day in fact and it has also been observed in other animals such as dogs
apes and even reptiles it's a motion where we inhale a lot of air we stretch our eardrums and
then we exhale a lot of times we also stretch our limbs and this combination is known as a
pandiculation but the question remains why do we do it ideas on why we owned it all the way back
to ancient times when hippocrates hypothesized that we did it in order to eliminate bad air then
during the 18th century scientists came up with a slightly more scientific notion that yawning
was a way for the body to increase oxygen levels in the bloodstream thus raising our
heart rate and making us more alert this idea has also been dismissed nowadays since modern
tests show no oxygen increase following yawns at the moment the favored hypothesis suggests
that yawning is used to cool down the brain but it still remains an uncertain topic that we need
more research on before we reach a completed answer 5. achoo syndrome do you ever sneeze
after looking at the sun or some of the bright light well chances are that a third of you
answered yes while everyone else has absolutely no idea what we're talking about this is due to
the photic sneeze reflex also called the autosomal dominant compulsive helio ophthalmic outburst or
a chew syndrome for short it is a reflex where a sudden exposure to bright lights makes you
sneeze it affects up to 30 percent of people and we have no idea why it might be a genetic
quirk that can be inherited from your parent or it could be brought on by a physical problem
such as a deviated naval septum some of history's greatest minds have suffered from a chew syndrome
aristotle believed that it was the heat of the sun that was responsible during the 17th
century english philosopher francis bacon proved him wrong with a single experiment by
walking out into the bright sun with his eyes closed the heat was still there but no sneeze then
when he opened his eyes he sneezed he thought that maybe the sunlight caused the eyes to tear up and
the extra moisture irritated the nose nowadays we know that he was wrong too because the effect
takes place too fast for this to happen but what exactly causes a chew remains a puzzle
number four no oxygen needed even the most basic concepts of biology can still be proven wrong or
at least be proven incomplete scientists from tel aviv university showed that back in 2020 when they
accidentally discovered the first known animal that does not need oxygen to live the organism
in question is an eight millimeter white parasite called henagaya salman khola it attaches itself
to a wide variety of salmon species and causes a condition known as milky flesh or tapioca disease
we've known about this parasite for over a hundred years but it wasn't until scientists sequenced the
genome of the henagoya genus that they discovered that h salmonecola did not have mitochondria which
enables aerobic respiration in fact the parasite didn't have any mitochondrial genes which suggest
that the creature somehow evolved to obtain energy without oxygen although how exactly
it does this remains a mystery at the moment other organisms such as amoebas and fungi can
do this but h salmonella is the first case of something which can be classified as an animal
lacking aerobic respiration 3. the g-spot dispute back in the 1950s a german gynecologist named
ernst graffenberg claimed to have discovered an erotic zone located on the anterior wall
of the vagina along the course of the urethra that would swell during sexual stimulation his work was
largely ignored by the general public until the early 1980s when a new team of scientists led by
professor beverly whipple published a book on the subject which became an international bestseller
they too touted the existence of this erogenous but elusive zone on the female body they even had
a name for it the graffenberg spot or the g-spot for short there's just one problem the g-spot
doesn't exist or maybe it does but probably not if that sounds a bit confusing to you that's because
the scientific community is still divided over the existence of the g-spot even though they've been
looking for it for almost 70 years it seems that every few years someone new comes along and claims
that they've found the fabled g-spot only to be refuted by other experts maybe one day someone
will finally locate it but until then the mythical g-spot remains the stuff of legend number two the
origin of viruses by this point you don't need us to tell you that despite being sub-microscopic
viruses can have a giant impact on the world technically viruses are not alive because
they cannot reproduce instead replicating inside the cells of host organisms that can range from
giant mammals to single cell bacteria this often has an adverse effect on the hosts and
it can even kill them so it's no surprise that scientists have studied viruses in depth to try
and learn as much about them as possible this brings us to a big question where did viruses
come from their origin is incredibly difficult to study because they didn't leave behind a physical
fossil record so we don't even know where to place them on the evolutionary timeline one idea
known as the virus first hypothesis puts them at the very beginning before the appearance of
cellular life another notion called the regressive hypothesis suggests that viruses appeared when
single cell organisms began forming mutualistic relationships over time the relationship became
parasitic as the smaller of the two organisms slowly became dependent on the other organism
and lost the ability to build proteins but still retained its ability to replicate and turned into
a virus then there is the progressive or the escape hypothesis which suggests that viruses
evolved from broken pieces of genetic material that managed to escape their original organisms
and attach themselves to different ones these are the three classic hypotheses on the origin
of viruses but they are hardly the only ones and none of them have enough evidence to be considered
definitive unless a major breakthrough comes along it's highly likely that this is one topic
that will forever remain a mystery number 1. the cambrian explosion for billions of years life on
earth was very basic consisting mainly of single cell organisms alongside very basic multicellular
organisms then around 540 million years ago an event called the cambrian explosion happened
which saw an incredible divergence of species in a period of around 20 million years which is very
short on an evolutionary scale almost all major animal groups appeared in the fossil record but
what exactly caused the cambrian explosion that is a question that does not have a categorical
answer even though many scientists have studied it one popular hypothesis says that the event was
triggered by a dramatic and sudden increase in the oxygen levels in the atmosphere reaching levels
similar to modern times but then a different study argues for the exact opposite that it was
a lack of oxygen that led to the cambrian explosion not in abundance believers of the
snowball earth hypothesis claimed that primordial earth could have suffered a massive ice age that
froze most of the planet's surface and that it was the end of this ice age that triggered the rapid
divergence of species and then there are some who argue that the explosion wasn't a singular event
but rather a series of pulses of evolutionary innovation that occurred one after another without
a doubt the cambrian explosion was a crucial event in the history of life on earth but one that
scientists is struggling to explain so i really hope you found this video interesting if you did
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