However, while admiring these beautiful spots and stripes, have you ever thought that these seemingly complicated stripes and stripes actually have certain rules to follow? After years of research by scientists, although cheetahs, zebras, sika deer and other animals have different patterns or spots, they are likely to have the same mathematical model.
As early as 1952, alan turing, a British scientist, proposed a system of reaction-diffusion equations as the basic chemical reaction model of biological forms. Turing found that the marks on animals have an unexpected consistency: all marks can be generated by the same type of equations. This kind of equation is called reaction-diffusion equation, which describes the reaction and diffusion of different chemicals to the surface when they are put together.
It is generally believed that biological growth is a complex chemical reaction process, in which dozens or even more chemicals may participate in the reaction. But in a certain part of the organism (such as organs, tissues and even cells), a few chemical components may play a decisive role.
Assuming that only two chemicals participate in the reaction, they diffuse and then react with each other, then this equation describes how this chemical substance diffuses and reacts. Because it is nonlinear, mathematicians can't solve it. Only by doing it step by step with a giant computer can we work out the concentration distribution of these two chemicals at each moment. Finally, when it reaches stability, draw its concentration distribution and present the final pattern.
In, Liao Sishan, a professor of physics at Zhongxing University in Taiwan Province, Philip Mayne, a professor of mathematics at Oxford University, and Liu, a doctoral student at Zhongxing University, used Turing equation to simulate the change of leopard fur patterns from small to large in the computer, further confirming Turing's mathematical thought put forward half a century ago.
The discovery that the evolution of organisms can be explained by equations shocked the scientific community. In other words, this study also shows to some extent that many creatures in nature, including human beings, can be passed down from generation to generation because of mathematical laws, rather than simple genetic inheritance.