Spanning The Globe December 2025

It’s time to go spanning the globe for anatomy news and notes!

“Work in Progress”

Please don’t take it personally, but the “work in progress” is us.  That is, humans.

According to this article on the BGR website, evolution continues to roll right along.

Side question: why would we think it might stop?

After all, evolution is fact of nature, not something that gets turned off when a species starts making fire or flying in airplanes.

Evolution exists, the article asserts, but it has adjusted. The evidence is in the genes.

“Although modern medicine allows fewer people to die before reproducing, natural selection still acts on our genes.,” says the article. “In fact, some scientists believe modern living has accelerated our evolution. A faster lifestyle leads to faster changes and even faster adaptations. Homo sapiens is far from being a finished stage of human development. What once shaped us in the wild now comes through sanitation, diet, and social structures. But the story is far from over. All we have to do is take a glance at our genomes and see the footprints of an ongoing evolution.”

Evidence? Check this nifty video that looks at changes in the forearm and mandible.

“Modern life,” states the BGR article, “is not simply a backdrop on which evolution unfolds. It's an active agent that shapes us in subtle but real ways.”

Hairy Situation

Push … or pull?

Scientists have found that human hairs are pulled upward by a force associated with a hidden network of moving cells. According to this article in Phys.Org, scientists observed individual cells within living human hair follicles to make this determination. (Don’t worry, the owners of that hair did not have to sit still for days on end; the hair had transported to culture.)

That conclusion goes against the long-held theory that hair was “pushed” up to create the growth.

Photo by "Jessie Dee" Dabrowski www.jessiedee.net on Unsplash

The study was conducted by L'Oreal Research & Innovation and Queen Mary University of London and published in Nature Communications  with this catchy title: "Mapping cell dynamics in human ex vivo hair follicles suggest pulling mechanism of hair growth."

Said researcher Dr. Inês Sequeira, Reader in Oral and Skin Biology at Queen Mary and one of the lead authors, “For decades, it was assumed that hair was pushed out by the dividing cells in the hair bulb. We found that instead that it's actively being pulled upwards by surrounding tissue acting almost like a tiny motor."

As the Phys.Org article notes, the finding could have major implications for those working on the issue of hair regeneration.

Fun but sad* fact: According to Talker Research, two in five Americans say hair loss is the physical change they fear most when it comes to aging.

(*Sad because we have no idea why it matters.)

Give The Gift … That Keeps On Giving

We’ve touched on human body donations here on the blog before and wanted to highlight this thoughtful, brief video produced by the BBC about the University of Dundee Centre for Human Anatomy and Identification. The centre (or “center”) recently received its 3,000^th donation. (The first was in 1888.)

It’s all about science: “One week we can have a company that wants to test a new robotic catheter,” says one of the center’s staff members in the video, “and another week we can have people trying to train AI that interprets radiographs using the cadavers another week we might have yoga teachers who wish to revise their anatomy.”

The video stresses the care extended to donors and the consent involved throughout the whole process. If you’ve considered donating your body, this excellent video might offer the final bit of persuasiveness.

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