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Humans

People in Chile are currently evolving the ability to digest goat milk

By Michael Marshall

5 October 2018

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Evolution is making goat’s milk more palatable for people in Chile

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A group of people living in Chile are evolving the ability to digest milk as adults, as most Europeans did thousands of years ago. The finding shows evolution is still changing us even now. It also questions our ideas about why milk digestion evolved.

Nicolás Montalva of the Universidad Mayor in Santiago, Chile and his colleagues have studied the people living in Chile’s Coquimbo region, between the famously dry Atacama desert and country’s central valleys. It is dry so arable …

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