Katie Canty
Bio Current Events
4/11/15
Natural Selection May Help Account for Dutch Height Advantage
Dr. Gert Stulp is a Dutch scientist who stands at 6’7” and studies why his fellow Dutch are so tall. The average Dutch stood at 5’5” in 1860, present day the Dutch are the tallest people in the world with the average man over 6’. Dr. Stulp is studying to find out why humans are taller than in the past and why the Dutch have grown so quickly. He thinks he may have found an answer in evolution. Dr. Stulp and his colleagues conducted a study to learn more about height and genes. What him and his colleagues found was that on average been above the average height had more children and women around the average height had more children then below or above average height women. Scientists don't feel like they have enough information to say evolution is the cause for this but they believe that evolution can explain this.
This article is relevant to biology today because it deals with evolution and DNA. In this article the author, Carl Zimmer, talks about how because of the speed the Dutch have grown in the past years, evolution can be proved. He also mentioned that being taller may be a dominant gene. This is important because it explains why the human race is getting taller. This study is very impressive because it could be a current example of evolution.
I think that this article gave a lot of interesting information and told the reader everything that they would want to know about the study. The article also connected this research to other areas, such as Massachusetts. I think the only thing I would want to know more about is if the group of scientists planned on doing another study to learn more about this topic but besides that I thought that the article was very thorough.
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