Talking about species can be dull, but not when you add alcohol.
23 drinks into the evening, science writer Charles Choi attempted to explain speciation — the process by which new species develop — during a Science Online conference held last year. Speciation in the process by which species arise, and how scientists define when evolving organisms become separate species.
The four-minute video (NSFW for language) is a parody of the hit webseries-turned-tv-series Drunk History. It starts the same, listing Choi's drinks for the night: five Irish Car Bombs, five doubles of Jameson, two beers and a swig from a flask. Then the fun begins.
Before taking a stab at it himself, Choi starts by bashing on Darwin's definition of speciation— that organisms slowly evolve into new species through sexual reproduction — saying it comes from a "binary" perspective.
His own definition is basically incomprehensible, but that doesn't matter because he immediately starts in on "Tions" and "Ligers." Which really do exist, as a subspecies.
You should care about speciation. Understanding how new forms of life arise can not only help us discover them, but also potentially drive the creation of new organisms that serve specific and useful roles.
Things get complicated when we leave the reality of our Earth and start debate the mate-ability of Orcs and humans. Orcs are a race of mythical humanoid creatures, generally described as brutish, aggressive and repulsive, stemming from the writings of J. R. R. Tolkien.
Obviously Choi knows a lot more about their backstory than we do, and he says that because they are pretty similar, they probably could get it on in a Tolkien universe.
Watch Choi struggle below:
Update: We initially reported Choi's drink count as 12, but he tweeted at us saying it was nearly double that number. Even more impressive!
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