Evolution as a natural institution may have lost some credit since it played its foul game with virus variants and thwarted pandemic management with ever new devilries.
However, this in no way prevents the evolutionary researchers from continuing to search for the good, because there must be some reason that humans have come out of the evolutionary hustle and bustle so gratifyingly well.
British twin researchers have now found what they are looking for.
The "TwinsUK register" has been listing 1153 monozygotic and dizygotic twins with their respective preferences, peculiarities, ailments and their complete genetic material sequences for some time.
By comparing different gene variants, differences in characteristics can be deciphered, that's the hope, and in the case of identical twins - the comparison group, so to speak - evolution just didn't have much leeway.
Their genes are identical.
In the twin study published in "PLOS Biology", the aim was to relate the proportion of genes and thus the evolutionary inheritance to the socio-cultural factors that establish the relationship between humans and nature.
The result is impressive: in addition to upbringing, genes play a very important role.
34 percent of those who like to visit a botanical garden can attribute this to their special gene expression, and a general "attachment to nature" is estimated to have a heritability of at least 46 percent.
So evolution is also a driving force in green preferences.
If you add the results of another study from "PLOS Genetics", this time by researchers from the Chinese Academy in Beijing, you can't help but be amazed at the power of evolution that still prevails.
Comparing the genes of a thousand Han Chinese showed that humans have two very special but also variable olfactory receptors: one with which the musk scents in perfumes are perceived, and a second sensory receptor for a volatile compound from underarm sweat.
Whoever has the respective genetic primal variant of the receptor and thus the receptor genes of other primates - i.e. monkeys - perceives the respective smells particularly intensively.
In other words: someone who smells underarm sweat and musk worse is evolutionarily modern.
So evolution is not at all such an innovative dud as feared.
It's not just going down with us.