Question for Too Cute

[Dewey]

Too Cute, maybe you can help with this. I have been wondering: if giraffes evolved into long-necked creatures to reach the highest, most tender leaves, as we were all taught in school, where are the fossils of the short and medium-necked giraffes?



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[sweet pea]

I once saw fossils of mini horses at the Smithsonian. Maybe there were giraffe ones there too.

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Thanks Al Dukes Fan!

Common sense is not so common.

[luc]

Hey, they got 'em. There were 5 various stages of development, and the length of neck increased due to competition with other animals.
From: Kinda cute, but still masculine

[Reephdweller]

This is going off-topic, but I'd really like to see a Ask Too Cute section. It'd be a riot!

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[Dewey]

I agree completely. For example, if guys develop a fetish for sticking their deeks in women's ears, will women's ears evolve into vaginas?

I'd still like a definitive answer to my first question, though. No offense, kinda cute.

<IMG SRC="http://www.agw-werbeartikel.de/images/easy-rider.jpg"><br>"Still searching for America."

[Garrison]

shes smart, sexy and cooks turkeys she rawks she needs a show!

[DarkHippie]

I don't think there have been many digs for the ancestor of the giraffe. It would be a shame to dig up untouched grasslands for that.

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[TooCute]

First, just to clarify:
nothing evolves for a PURPOSE.
Giraffes didn't evolve long
necks to reach high leaves -
evolution is a purely
statistical process. They just
happened to end up that way.

If you had a population of
'proto-giraffes' back in the
Miocene, and some who had
slightly longer necks could
happen to reach high leaves
better, there is the
possibility that they might
survive and have offspring
more than shorter necked
proto-giraffes. In the next
generation, you'd have maybe a
slightly greater numebr of
longer necked giraffes... and
so on... eventually the
numbers of longer necked
giraffes - who do well because
there is less competition from
other animals, like natelope,
for vegetaiton higher off the
ground - would grow to the
point that a longer necked
proto-giraffe wold be more
likely to mate with a longer
necked proto-giraffe than a
shorter necked one. And
eventually, it'd get to th
point where it would be
considered a different
species. If you throw
assortative mating into the
mix - the idea that even at
low numbers, longer necked
giraffes would mate with
longer necked giraffes say by
chance (what if the longer
necked proto-giraffes enjoy
hanging out in a certain area
where there is a lot of high
vegetation? Then when they go
to mate they'd be more likely
to encounter a longer necked
proto-giraffe), then you ca
even have the original,
ancestral proto-giraffe
becoming two separate species.
Indeed there is fossil
evidence of 'intermediate'
giraffes, although today
giraffes don't really have
many super close 'giraffe'
relatives. The closest would
be an okapi (you can see them
in the congo exhibit t the
bronx zoo), a forest dwelling
animal that looks somewhat
like a short-necked giraffe.

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[phixion]

if giraffes evolved into long-necked creatures to reach the highest, most tender leaves, as we were all taught in school, where are the fossils of the short and medium-necked giraffes?


what we were taught in school was bullshit. giraffes evolved that way because it was prefered in a mate. if u look at giraffes in the wild today they bend their necks down and eat the brush, not extend their necks to reach the tips of trees. female giraffes found the elongated neck as an indication of good health. so their offspring also had the elongated neck.

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drinking beers, beers, beersrolling fatties, smoking bluntswho smokes the blunts?we smoke the blunts." -Jay

[Vee]

if guys develop a fetish for sticking their deeks in women's ears, will women's ears evolve into vaginas?
Speaking as someone with this particular fetish, what happens is we'll start looking for girls with bigger ear holes so that we can flux them all we want. Since these girls are now more attractive to men, more of them will reproduce and eventually take over the world. Or something like that.

Scary note on evolution:
Stupid people generally have more kids than smart people and at a younger age. Since they cannot provide well for their offspring, most of them will be stupid as well. Eventually, stupid people will phase out smart people and we will begin to deevolve.

~v~

[luc]

Dew-go to http://www.talkorigins.org/faq-transitional/part2c.html

This may help a little. If not I can go to my storage unit and find some of my study materials from college, was a wildlife major and learned this and more usless crap!

[luc]

What the hell are you talking about?! Evolution does happen for a purpose. Skin color serves a purpose, length of necks serve a purpose, having a shell serves a purpose. Does niche hyperspace not solve a purpose as well? The first animal to develop lungs, are you saying this was not to serve a purpose. Granted most evolution occor from genetic mixing, but after a while this becomes a trait sought after for reproduction, hence it serves a purpose.

[FMJeff]

i wish mac would evolve a browser that wouldn't format your posts the way it does...

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[TooCute]

What the hell are you
talking about?! Evolution does
happen for a purpose. Skin
color serves a purpose, length
of necks serve a purpose,
having a shell serves a
purpose. Does niche hyperspace
not solve a purpose as well?
The first animal to develop
lungs, are you saying this was
not to serve a purpose.
Granted most evolution occor
from genetic mixing, but after
a while this becomes a trait
sought after for reproduction,
hence it serves a purpose.

I mean exactly what I said -
you are mixing up the concepts
of evolving for a purpose and
evolving something that
subsequently serves a purpose.
To take your example (although
realistically it isn't the
best, because I don't think
that dark skin evolved in
humans, per se... I believe it
is simply an ancestral
inherited trait, but I'm no
anthropologist), dark skin did
not evolve BECAUSE it is
beneficial to thos living in
sunny climates. It arose from
a mutation to the DNA in an
individual that cause that
individual to have darker
skin. That individual was MORE
LIKELY to survive and have
more offspring that lighter
skinned individuals (and mind,
you, more likely generally
means only very very very
slightly more likely - but
over tens of thousands of
years that slight percentage
is enough) and so as time
progressed, darker skinned
individuals made up more and
moreof the population. Again:
dark skin didn't 'evolve' for
the purpose of compensating
for the bright sun; it just
happened to evolve and then do
well in that environment. In
northern climes, and
individual who 'evolved' dark
skin would not do as well, and
that trait woul not spread.

Niche hyperspace indeed serves
no 'purpose'in and of itself.
It is a concept that is used
to help conceptualise what
selective forces may be acting
upon an individual... hence
leading to evolution of traits
that are adaptive.

Also, most evolution does not
occur by 'genetic mixing' - if
that were the case, and there
were no selective pressures
causing individuals to NOT
mix, everyone would eventually
have the same genotype and be
exactly the same!

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[luc]

to criticize is to let another know what they have said means something to you. To not make a comment shows lack of concern and/or intrest. Dr. Luc

[luc]

What about body size differences of, lets say, deer. This are controlled by climatic conditions, Larger animals in the north (cold), smaller in southern (hot)areas. This serves a purpose. Same could be said about coyotes and wolves, they tend to have large examples in northern regions as well.

[TooCute]

What about body size
differences of, lets say,
deer. This are controlled by
climatic conditions, Larger
animals in the north (cold),
smaller in southern
(hot)areas. This serves a
purpose. Same could be said
about coyotes and wolves, they
tend to have large examples in
northern regions as
well.

Indeed that serves a purpose.
Please reread my prevoius post
and let me know if I need to
clarify further the difference
between 'evolving' a trait for
a specific purpose, and
selection for traits that
serve a purpose.

Again, races of animals in
northen cliamtes are not
bigger because small animals
went where it was cold and
then said hmm, if we were
bigger we'd be happier - let's
evolve a gene to make us
bigger! They are bigger
because larger morphs simply
happened to have a higher
probability of surviving and
leaving reproducing offspring
in that climate, and vice
versa for warmer climates. As
an aside, this trend has been
noted in many species of
animals - not just coyotes and
wolves, or even just
terretrial verterates. It is
called countergradient
variation or latitudinal
compensaiton.




I hate netscape

This message was edited by TooCute on 1-24-03 @ 12:47 PM

[DarkHippie]

in other words:
a mutation happens. most of the time that mutation makes it harder for the animal to live, so it dies off. End of story.

Sometimes that mutation is an improvement. that mutant animal goes on to reproduce. Its offspring also have the improvement. And so do their offspring. Eventually, the new improved "mutant animal" is able to push out the old animal, which has become obsolete.

its not every single one evolves. Its more like one evolves and its offspring wins the survival game.

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[luc]

Too Cute,
Been nice talking with you. Heading upstate right now to go ice fishing. There is a book you may like ( I hated it as I was forced to read it) called The Selfish Gene by Wilson. Have a great weekend. C'ya

[ChickenHawk]

i wish mac would evolve a
browser that wouldn't format your
posts the way it does...
Funny of you to say that, since
Apple just recently released the
beta for their very own browser.
it's called "Safari", and I'll
download it as soon as someone
gives me OS 10.2.


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"Just back 'n jack." -Ron

[TooCute]

Too Cute,
Been nice talking with you.
Heading upstate right now
to go ice fishing. There is a
book you may like ( I hated it
as I was forced to read it)
called The Selfish Gene by
Wilson. Have a great
weekend. C'ya

Funny, the Selfish Gene that
I read was by Richard
Dawkins.

If you read the Dawkins
book and still think that
mutations to the genome
occur for a purpose, you
might want to read it again!

And uhm there is a mac
browser that doesn't format
my posts this way but it is
too slow on my computer
that only has 64 megs of
ram... so Jeff, feel free to
donate PC100 SDRAM to
me if you care that much! :)


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ADF makes great sigpics!

[SatCam]

TooCute, what was wrong with you last night. With all that coughing and stuff. I thought I heard you say you were loaded or hung over, but that's just not like you.

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If my posts make you mad, :) <-he wont

[TooCute]

Being loaded and hungover
is not like me? ha.

No I'm very sick. I was all
loaded on ibuprofen
psedephedrine and
diphenhydramine and
feeling generally groggy.


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[Gvac]

i wish mac would evolve a browser that wouldn't format your posts the way it does...
It has. Netscape 7. It's an awesome browser for the Mac and posts the proper way. It even lets you put links in, whereas Internet Explorer won't.

I've been trying to tell all Mac users for quite some time that this site (and most others) works much better with Netscape rather than IE, but they refuse to listen.

TooCute has often told me Netscape takes too long to load a page. The following is directly from Apple's website and shows the average load time for a webpage using a 56k modem:

http://www.apple.com/safari/images/chart01052003.gif


I rest my case.

<img src=http://gvac.50megs.com/images/keepsig.jpg>

[ChickenHawk]

I rest my case.
No, not really. Screw Apple's
phony statistics. The bottom line
is, Netscape blows as a browser.
I have an 800 MHz Titanium
PowerBook with half-a-gig of
RAM, and it's still noticeably
slower. It's better to get stats like
that from independent sources
who don't have an agenda, like
MacAddict, who compared all
browsers about 3 months ago
(before Apple's Safari), and
Explorer came out on top, not
only in speed, but in other
categories as well.


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"Just back 'n jack." -Ron

[TooCute]

Gvac, you're welcome to
compare the two browsers
on my poor 64
megs-of-RAM-ed G3 OS
9.2.2. Netscape blows on
my computer.


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[Dewey]

Too Cute, thanks for the informative answers. The distinction between evolution occuring "for a purpose", and being a statistical process that ends up serving a purpose, is a helpful one.

As far as deeks and ears go, I'm just staying away from that altogether, and I suggest other guys do the same. I had a scary thought: what if, instead of women's ears becoming more like vaginas, our deeks became more like Q-tips? Horrors!





<IMG SRC="http://www.agw-werbeartikel.de/images/easy-rider.jpg"><br>"Still searching for America."

[TooCute]

As far as deeks and
ears go, I'm just staying
away from that altogether,
and I suggest other guys do
the same. I had a scary
thought: what if, instead of
women's ears becoming
more like vaginas, our
deeks became more like
Q-tips? Horrors!

Male damselflies DO have
penises like this - they have
bristles on the tips and they
use them to scrape the
sperm of the female's
previous mates out of her.


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[HordeKing1]

I don't recall who posted the comment about deer, but FYI whales and deer share a common ancestor.

Also, the overwhelming majority of mutations are harmful and are either spontaneously aborted, or die shortly after birth (before reproduction). In both cases, the probability of passing on the harmful mutation is zilch.

As to why our early ancestor's had dark skin, the climate in Africa is hot and sunny. Solar radiation is a major source of mutations. Individuals with darker skin have a greater protection from the harmful UV radiation of the sun. Thus, they had greater tendency to survive long enough to breed and pass on their gene for dark skin.

But, sunlight also provides vitaman D, necessary for making a chemical in the body, necessary for life. (I forgot the chemical's name). In climates, which were not sunny and hot, individuals with lighter skin had a greater chance of surviving and reproducing, b/c they were able to absorb greater amount of sunlight necessary to make this chemical.


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[Frank Black]

Do you keep books by your side when you call the show because it sound like you reading. I like turkeys too and how did you get you name you made it up?

[LampshadeOnHead]

my girafe theory: God is not
done yet with girafe
evolution. He wants them to
become inteligent and take
over the earth. He just
wants a creature that cant
ever use cell phones. Thats
why girafes cant speak and
why their necks are so
long-they cant hold a phone
up to their ears. Discuss.


Top of the world, Ma!

[TooCute]

I like turkeys
too

I'd prefer that turkeys took
over the world - I think
they're much easier to catch
and eat than a giraffe.


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[DarkHippie]

I'd prefer that turkeys took
over the world - I think
they're much easier to catch
and eat than a giraffe.
but giraffe neck meat is just so moist and tender

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[high fly]

Question for Too Cute: My cat's parents were both felines, as were their parents etc, etc on back into time. While there may have been in this family tree variety in the species represented, at what point is the genus line crossed? I have heard this cannot happen, that felines only have ever bred with felines, the same with equines, bovines,simians etc etc. I support an 'Ask Too Cute' page

"Boiled, baked or fried, aliens taste good!"

[HordeKing1]

The definition of "species" is organisms that can breed together.

Speciation, the process by which one species evolves into 2 (or more) distinct species, occurs over many, many thousands of years. (Geographic isolation is one cause). Members of the two populations could breed together at the start of their geographic isolation (for example) as they are the same species, but as environmental conditions are different in each locale, different traits achieve greater survival value, and thus survive to reproduce more. Eventually the formerly single species can no longer breed together. Remember though that this is not an overnight process. It takes a long time.

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[luc]

Right author, wrong book. The Diversity of Life. Its been about ten years since I study this topic, so I beg your forgiveness. If I remember correctly, I recall someone stating that an unscrupulous defense lawyer could use Dawkins' theory to assist in explaining why his client is a serial rapist to such an extent that the client would appear to be the victim.

[TooCute]

Ah, it seems silly to be posting in this trhead when this entire forum is now R&F speculation, but I guess unless we keep posting re: non R&F speculation, this board will go the way of oa.com...

While there may have been in this family tree variety in the species represented, at what point is the genus line crossed? I have heard this cannot happen, that felines only have ever bred with felines, the same with equines, bovines,simians etc etc.

This is indeed true, but simply for the reason that Kingdom - Phylum - Class - Order - Family - Genus - Species concepts were defined for this purpose. Members of the family Felidae are members of this family precisely because they share common ancestry.

As evolutionary trees are sorted out (and this is a constant, on-going process), species are moved around from family to family, order to order, sometimes even between phyla(!) as their supposed relationship to other species are worked out.

As an aside, the concept of a 'species' is not as cut and dry as you might believe; the one that is most widely accepted is Ernst Mayr's 'biological species concept' which defines species as 'a groups of actually or potentially interbreeding natural populations that are reproductively isolated from other such groups'. So indeed as HK said this essentially means a population of animals that breed with each other, and each other only. This also require viable offspring; a horse and a donkey can certainly reproduce, but their offspring, a mule, can not. 'Reproductively isolated' refers to biological factors; a brown trout (Salmo trutta ) that can't reproduce with anotehr brown trout because they live in separate streams are still the same species because they could potentially interbreed if they were together. On the other hand, the treecreeper ( Certhia familiaris)and the short-toed treecreeper(Certhia brachydactyla) look almost exactly alike (the short toed has one nail - not even a toe! - that is shorter!) and live in the same regions, and produce viable offspring if crossed, but in nature, they have very different calls (so a male calling to a female only attratcs femals of his species), and live in slightly different regions of their ranges, so they're considered different species. And before you ask, in college I was doing work trying to determine if a bunch of 'subspecies' of frogs in israel were really separate species, and the treecreepers were one of the examples I found of a similar scenario. I don't really know anything about treecreepers!

Anyways, there are at least half a dozen other definitions of 'species' that are out there, but they don't really have much relevance to giraffes, so I'll shut up now!

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[high fly]

What I'm getting at, is I have often seen an illustration of the evolution of life that resembles the roots of a tree; I've forgotten all the categories like species, phylum and order. Reaching back in my memory, I recall that genus is in the middle. Anyway, if there is indeed a 'missing link' between all of the genuses [genii?] then wouldn't this illustration have to look more like a row of columns? I take you back to my observation that generation after generation of my cat's ancestors were all felines; of course I recognize that there may be some species in the feline genus that wouldn't be in there. What I had been told years ago is that at the genus level, there is a sort of dividing line that can't be crossed.

"Boiled, baked or fried, aliens taste good!"

[bwanna]

Off topic, but kind of on topic for this old thread... TooCute, did you ever get more RAM from your computer? I've got some spare memory in my office if you want it. Let me know.

bwanna6274@msn.com

[Bill From Yorktown]

difference
between 'evolving' a trait for
a specific purpose, and
selection for traits that
serve a purpose


the part that they're missing (I think) is that the the former implies something driven by a guiding body with intelligence, and the latter by random chance.

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[GaryWyze]

Been nice talking with you. Heading upstate right now to go ice fishing.


<font color=purple>Why don't fish who inhabit lakes that routinely freeze over grow fur?

[TooCute]

Why don't fish who inhabit lakes that routinely freeze over grow fur?

Because fur doesn't keep you warm in a frozen lake.

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[GaryWyze]

<font color=purple>That's good to know... in case I ever seriously wonder why that is.

[blakjeezis]

Question for Too Cute
More importantly than any of this evolution nonsense, is the Chairman here, and if so where might I find him?

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[TooCute]

More importantly than any of this evolution nonsense, is the Chairman here, and if so where might I find him?

Yeah yeah hi to you, too. He's over there.

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[Kaiser-Soze]

giraffes evolved that way because it was prefered in a mate.

Does that mean that every girl thousands of years from now is going to have a nice booty and a huge rack? ...Dammit I was born in the wrong time period

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[Johnathan H Christ]

this just feeds into my theory about cultures with a long history of arrainged marriages have a brutaly ugly population. because the union of the two people has much more to do with money and assets and nothing to do with how the two people look and wheather they are attractive to the other. but in places like LA where hot people meat as strangers and fuck, then you get a really good looking population.

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