I bet you didnt know that

Wibbs

sbsquarepants wrote: »

this evolutionary pressure drove a fairly sudden growth spurt leaving us with the giants we have today.

Another interesting aspect and possible pressure was the extinction of the whale eating giant shark Megladon. When it was arounds whales were more diverse in number of species but smaller, often much smaller, whales started getting bigger around they time megladon was going extinct.

sbsquarepants

Was only reading about him with my daughter last night (she's on a bit of a shark buzz at the moment!) I'd say he was some ferocious predator alright!



This is a magladon tooth, sitting beside two itsy bitsy teeny weeny great white teeth!

mzungu

Wibbs wrote: »

Another interesting aspect and possible pressure was the extinction of the whale eating giant shark Megladon. When it was arounds whales were more diverse in number of species but smaller, often much smaller, whales started getting bigger around they time megladon was going extinct.

Hmmm, where does Jason Statham fit into the above?


Dolphins sleep by shutting down half their brain, the other half stays active so they can surface for air and be alert to predators. This kind of sleep also allows them to keep up physiological processes such as muscle movement which helps them maintain their body heat.

Ineedaname

Wibbs wrote: »

Another interesting aspect and possible pressure was the extinction of the whale eating giant shark Megladon. When it was arounds whales were more diverse in number of species but smaller, often much smaller, whales started getting bigger around they time megladon was going extinct.

One of the reasons whales grew so large is simply because... they could. As mentioned the water allows them to support their own weight. On top of that underwater ecological niches tend to be more stable than those on land.

Blue Whales primary diet is Antarctic Krill. Krill represent a significant portion of the Earths biomass and Blue Whales have grown very efficient at eating them. They can swallow several tonnes in a single go.

Their size means they have little to fear from predators. It also means they can store more fat to stay warm in colder areas such as the Antarctic.

Simple fact is in evolutionary terms being big works.

blastman

Going back to tea, I noticed that the only country in Europe (at least, according to the map KevRossi posted) that doesn't derive its word for tea from te or cha is Poland. A friend of mine told me about the first time he went to Poland (across the border from Germany, so not a major town or city where you were likely to encounter at least a few people who would understand a little English). They had terrible trouble asking for tea as no variation of the word rang a bell for anyone, whereas coffee/kaffee was widely understood.

For anyone looking for tea in Poland, "herbata" is the Polish word for tea (and Polish people think we're strange because we put milk in ours)

Sleepy

Wibbs wrote: »

Another interesting aspect and possible pressure was the extinction of the whale eating giant shark Megladon. When it was arounds whales were more diverse in number of species but smaller, often much smaller, whales started getting bigger around they time megladon was going extinct.

Is there a possibility that the size we now (and in recent centureies) see Blue Whales get to the size they do simply because they live long enough to do so? Presumably the giants are amonth the eldest of their species and in an era when more predators existed that targeted them, they may not often have lived long enough to attain their maximum size?

cdeb

I'd say the worst predator blue whales have ever had is man.

By that logic, they should be smaller now than before - an observable fact in many other animals, especially fish.

sbsquarepants

blastman wrote: »

For anyone looking for tea in Poland, "herbata" is the Polish word for tea (and Polish people think we're strange because we put milk in ours)

And for anyone looking for Polish tea in Ireland - supervalu do a lovely green tea in their Polish section, it's called gunpowder tea for some reason (being the child I am that's why I bought it) and I can highly recommend it.:D

Apart form that, avoid the Polish section - their food is a little em.......what's the word now.......vile!

Ineedaname

Sleepy wrote: »

Is there a possibility that the size we now (and in recent centureies) see Blue Whales get to the size they do simply because they live long enough to do so? Presumably the giants are amonth the eldest of their species and in an era when more predators existed that targeted them, they may not often have lived long enough to attain their maximum size?

Pretty much. The larger whales got the more likely they were to survive. This trait was then passed on to their descendants. That's evolution in a nutshell.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

Ineedaname wrote: »

Pretty much. The larger whales got the more likely they were to survive. This trait was then passed on to their descendants. That's evolution in a nutshell.

I could take up reams on this, as Evolutionary Biology is my field, but it's not a true statement that the above is evolution in a nutshell. There are whale species of hugely varying sizes for a start and evolution is much more complex.

Ineedaname

Anders Shy Aircraft wrote: »

I could take up reams on this, as Evolutionary Biology is my field, but it's not a true statement that the above is evolution in a nutshell. There are whale species of hugely varying sizes for a start and evolution is much more complex.

Sorry you're right. I worded that a bit poorly. There's obviously a lot more complex factors involved in a whale's evolution.

seagull

On an evolutionary theme, most people use the phrase "Survival of the fittest" in entirely the wrong context. It has absolutely nothing to do with how strong or physically fit an individual is. It's all about how well they are suited to their environment. They are the fittest, i.e. the best match, for their environment.

I should probably be putting this somewhere in ranting and raving. It's something of a pet peeve.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

seagull wrote: »

On an evolutionary theme, most people use the phrase "Survival of the fittest" in entirely the wrong context. It has absolutely nothing to do with how strong or physically fit an individual is. It's all about how well they are suited to their environment. They are the fittest, i.e. the best match, for their environment.

I should probably be putting this somewhere in ranting and raving. It's something of a pet peeve.

Mine too. It does my head in when it's used, all too often, incorrectly.

Realt Dearg Sec

seagull wrote: »

On an evolutionary theme, most people use the phrase "Survival of the fittest" in entirely the wrong context. It has absolutely nothing to do with how strong or physically fit an individual is. It's all about how well they are suited to their environment. They are the fittest, i.e. the best match, for their environment.

I should probably be putting this somewhere in ranting and raving. It's something of a pet peeve.

Totally agree. There's all sorts of misconceptions about evolution built into the way lay people (like myself) talk about the subject. Like the way people talk about evolution "perfecting" an animal over time, or more generally framing evolution as a process that's working towards a particular goal as it gradually irons out "flaws". This leads to all kinds of nonsense being spouted regarding how we have evolved intelligence because we are a kind of highest "achievement" of evolution ("so far", some would add).

It's probably because we are inclined to ascribe agency to such things, so that even without God, evolution itself can be spoken about in terms almost indistinguishable from Him, as a thing that is working towards goals, rather than just stuff that happens in response to environmental conditions. Hence you get people who seem to think that we'll gradually get more physically beautiful, because those are the people most likely to procreate, or stronger because those are the people most likely to "survive". People start to ascribe evolutionary "logic" to things better explained by demographics and sociology (as you say, the misunderstanding of "survival of the fittest").

Another pet peeve of mine, and one that I think is a bit more dangerous, is the rise of amateur evolutionary psychology. It's a complex field in itself, but it lends itself to all kinds of pseudo-scientific garbage. In popular usage, I find it's often a way people have of justifying awful behaviour like racism and misogyny, or selling fad diets or half baked self-help philosophies. The basic premise is usually that "this was something we evolved to survive on the savannah". So someone will say, for instance, "women are better suited to staying home and taking care of children while men should be out working to keep the family alive because that split of labour was evolved so we could survive on the savannah", or "people eat meat because we evolved to survive on meat on the savannah". Of course, this is a post-hoc rationalisation of a current behaviour, rather than anything observed or evidence based.

More importantly, I find that such people are more than willing to adopt behaviours that were not particularly evolved on the f#%king savannah, like driving cars and getting in airplanes and watching three hours of television at night or ranting on the internet, when it suits them. It just seems like the old "evolved on the savannah" excuse is rolled out for when someone doesn't feel like adjusting their behaviour in some way to the needs of a modern society. So it gets mentioned for things like ragging on vegetarians, or women, or justifying racism as though we simply couldn't ever be better than we were on the savannah (assuming anything they are saying was even true when we were there), but is never mentioned when it comes time to get dinner and they're turning on an oven instead of sharpening a spear and getting ready to go hunt.

/rant

Ineedaname

seagull wrote: »

On an evolutionary theme, most people use the phrase "Survival of the fittest" in entirely the wrong context. It has absolutely nothing to do with how strong or physically fit an individual is. It's all about how well they are suited to their environment. They are the fittest, i.e. the best match, for their environment.

I should probably be putting this somewhere in ranting and raving. It's something of a pet peeve.

"Survival of the fittest" is a very misleading term. A more accurate term would be "survival of the fit enough". Evolution does not care if you're the strongest, fastest, biggest or most efficient. It only cares that you are fit enough to produce offspring and pass on your genes.

New Home

How about "survival of the most suitable", then?

Realt Dearg Sec

New Home wrote: »

How about "survival of the most suitable", then?

Survival of the random mutation that responded well to environmental conditions at a given time and place and was thus able to procreate through the general population. It's not as snappy though.

In a way the problem is with how evolutionary biologists talk about evolution. They use terms as shorthand that lead to misconceptions, like saying "lemurs evolved longer tails in order to take advantage of the protection from predators and access to food supplies available high up in the trees" or "wildebeest evolved a keen sense of movement and a herd mentality that responds quickly to any perceived threat in order to better evade attacks by lions and other predators". It ascribes a kind of intentional process, like someone could say "gee we should evolve an extra arm, would make driving easier", to something that is the result of random mutations. But you can see why scientists would use this shorthand because going through the rigmarole of phrasing it in terms of random mutation and development all the time is pointless when everyone listening understands that's what you really mean.

But the rest of us are not in on the fact a lot of the time.

ChippingSodbury

Ineedaname wrote: »

"Survival of the fittest" is a very misleading term. A more accurate term would be "survival of the fit enough". Evolution does not care if you're the strongest, fastest, biggest or most efficient. It only cares that you are fit enough to produce offspring and pass on your genes.

And on that theme, the other one that really bugs me is two planes reported as having a "near miss". It should be a "near hit" as in they nearly hit each other, not they nearly missed each other implying that they did, in fact, hit each other.
There was a doc. on tv last night about a mid-air collision near New Delhi airport in 1996 where two planes crossed paths in the sky and hit each other and it stated that the minimum separation for planes is 1,000ft (a bit small I thought but there you go)

New Home

Realt Dearg Sec wrote: »

Survival of the random mutation that responded well to environmental conditions at a given time and place and was thus able to procreate through the general population. It's not as snappy though.

In a way the problem is with how evolutionary biologists talk about evolution. They use terms as shorthand that lead to misconceptions, like saying "lemurs evolved longer tails in order to take advantage of the protection from predators and access to food supplies available high up in the trees" or "wildebeest evolved a keen sense of movement and a herd mentality that responds quickly to any perceived threat in order to better evade attacks by lions and other predators". It ascribes a kind of intentional process, like someone could say "gee we should evolve an extra arm, would make driving easier", to something that is the result of random mutations. But you can see why scientists would use this shorthand because going through the rigmarole of phrasing it in terms of random mutation and development all the time is pointless when everyone listening understands that's what you really mean.

But the rest of us are not in on the fact a lot of the time.

Still, though, even though it wasn't a voluntary decision, that doesn't change the fact that the mutations happened and that the "only" ones that lasted were the useful ones. So, in a way, that "because" makes sense, even though "due to the fact that" would probably make more sense. I don't know, I think it's looking at the same thing from two different angles.

New Home

ChippingSodbury wrote: »

"near miss".

I think that "near" refers to the distance of the miss, not that it was "almost" missed. Like "a close shave".

Sleepy

Ineedaname wrote: »

Pretty much. The larger whales got the more likely they were to survive. This trait was then passed on to their descendants. That's evolution in a nutshell.

Sorry, I must have worded my post badly: I'm wondering if the change in size is more to do with environment than genetics.

In an era where predators of a species existed, fewer of them would have attained their full natural lifespan (by virtue of having been predated upon).
As the blue whale has an estimated lifespan of around a century, I'm wondering if the fossil records of them we have that show them as smaller are simply fossils of younger whales?

Bandana boy

Near miss is far better than near hit

I believe the term originates in the military , shots are binary either a hit or miss
to describe a miss by converting it to a hit is wrong.

The Pheasant2

Anders Shy Aircraft wrote: »

And their fur hairs are actually transparent but appear white due to a trick of light called luminescence.

Their fur hairs are also hollow and trap water which is then warmed by their body like a wetsuit!

As a result of this you might sometimes see Green Polar bears in zoos that aren't the most fastidious about keeping their water features free from algae.

BaZmO*

One of the best examples of "survival of the fittest" in terms of evolution is the Peppered Moth.

Before the Industrial Revolution, the black peppered moth was rare. The first black specimen (of unknown origin) was kept in the University of Oxford in 1811. The first live specimen was caught by R.S. Edleston in Manchester, England in 1848, but he reported this only 16 years later in 1864 in the journal Entomologist. Edleston notes that by 1864 it was the more common type of moth in his garden in Manchester. The light-bodied moths were able to blend in with the light-coloured lichens and tree bark, and the less common black moth was more likely to be eaten by birds. As a result of the common light-coloured lichens and English trees, therefore, the light-coloured moths were much more effective at hiding from predators, and the frequency of the dark allele was about 0.01%.

During the early decades of the Industrial Revolution in England, the countryside between London and Manchester became blanketed with soot from the new coal-burning factories. Many of the light-bodied lichens died from sulphur dioxide emissions, and the trees became darkened. This led to an increase in bird predation for light-coloured moths, as they no longer blended in as well in their polluted ecosystem: indeed, their bodies now dramatically contrasted with the colour of the bark. Dark-coloured moths, on the other hand, were camouflaged very well by the blackened trees. The population of dark-coloured moth rapidly increased. By the mid-19th century, the number of dark-coloured moths had risen noticeably, and by 1895, the percentage of dark-coloured moths in Manchester was reported at 98%, a dramatic change (of almost 100%) from the original frequency. This effect of industrialization in body colour led to the coining of the term "industrial melanism".

The implication that industrial melanism could be evidence supporting Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection was noticed during his lifetime.

Franz Von Peppercorn

Ineedaname wrote: »

"Survival of the fittest" is a very misleading term. A more accurate term would be "survival of the fit enough". Evolution does not care if you're the strongest, fastest, biggest or most efficient. It only cares that you are fit enough to produce offspring and pass on your genes.

It’s really survival of the most fecund.

BaZmO*

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

It’s really survival of the most fecund.

That's not really true though. It's a lot of factors. Adaptability to environment, lack of predation, etc.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

Realt Dearg Sec wrote: »

Survival of the random mutation that responded well to environmental conditions at a given time and place and was thus able to procreate through the general population. It's not as snappy though.

In a way the problem is with how evolutionary biologists talk about evolution. They use terms as shorthand that lead to misconceptions, like saying "lemurs evolved longer tails in order to take advantage of the protection from predators and access to food supplies available high up in the trees" or "wildebeest evolved a keen sense of movement and a herd mentality that responds quickly to any perceived threat in order to better evade attacks by lions and other predators". It ascribes a kind of intentional process, like someone could say "gee we should evolve an extra arm, would make driving easier", to something that is the result of random mutations. But you can see why scientists would use this shorthand because going through the rigmarole of phrasing it in terms of random mutation and development all the time is pointless when everyone listening understands that's what you really mean.

But the rest of us are not in on the fact a lot of the time.

I know of no Evolutionary Biologist who will state that Evolution is even capable of an intention let alone a consciousness of process. It is always portrayed as random process and one that is not necessarily a step towards perfection.

It is also patently clear that everyone is not aware nor fully understands what evolutionary processes mean or involve.

New Home

Guilty as charged.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

It’s really survival of the most fecund.

Not even close.

Realt Dearg Sec

Anders Shy Aircraft wrote: »

I know of no Evolutionary Biologist who will state that Evolution is even capable of an intention let alone a consciousness of process. It is always portrayed as random process and one that is not necessarily a step towards perfection.

It is also patently clear that everyone is not aware nor fully understands what evolutionary processes mean or involve.

Darwin wrote: "…Natural selection acts only by taking advantage of slight successive variations; she can never take a great and sudden leap, but must advance by short and sure, though slow steps."

I guess more generally I misspoke (as politicians say when they're just wrong but don't want to admit it outright!): I'm not talking about evolutionary biologists necessarily, more like if you watch a nature documentary, that's the kind of shorthand terminology being used.

To the latter point, I'm not sure how that is not the exact same as what I said?