Collimatrix Posted September 22, 2015 Report Share Posted September 22, 2015 Huh. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toxn Posted September 22, 2015 Author Report Share Posted September 22, 2015 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Collimatrix Posted October 17, 2015 Report Share Posted October 17, 2015 Just kidding. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sturgeon Posted October 26, 2015 Report Share Posted October 26, 2015 http://imgur.com/gallery/A525nPd Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Collimatrix Posted December 5, 2015 Report Share Posted December 5, 2015 Cnidarians are bastards. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Collimatrix Posted February 13, 2016 Report Share Posted February 13, 2016 Toxoplasma is terrifying. If you're not terrified of it, stay away from me. You probably have it and it just rewired your anxiety response, and I don't want your goddamned brain-controlling parasites in my brain. There are all sorts of parasites that screw with their hosts behaviors. There are parasitic worms that infect crickets and make them drown themselves: There are parasitic fungi that make ants try to climb to the highest possible point so that when the fungal spores erupt from the infected ant to continue the beautiful circle of life they'll have the best possible distribution. Et plurima cetera. If this interests you, I recommend Carl Zimmer's Big Book of Bedtime Stories. Toxoplasma is interesting because it does this shit to mammals. At first it was thought to affect just rats, but then it was found to affect human behavior as well in subtle, pernicious ways. This was not thought to be adaptive; rats and humans just having similar enough neurochemistry that when toxoplasma tries to get up to its tricks in humans it incidentally re-wires a few things. But now we know that it makes chimps attracted to leopard urine. LoooSeR 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Priory_of_Sion Posted February 13, 2016 Report Share Posted February 13, 2016 (edited) There are some issues with that recent chimp-leopard piss paper. The main issue that I see is the methodology of using captive chimps and not having data on pre-infected chimp reactions to the urine. Edited February 13, 2016 by Priory_of_Sion Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Collimatrix Posted February 16, 2016 Report Share Posted February 16, 2016 There are some issues with that recent chimp-leopard piss paper. The main issue that I see is the methodology of using captive chimps and not having data on pre-infected chimp reactions to the urine. Interesting. Although why chimp responses to leopard piss would be drastically altered by captivity would deserve looking into as well, I should think. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sturgeon Posted February 23, 2016 Report Share Posted February 23, 2016 Glyptodonts are apparently related to Priodontes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sturgeon Posted March 16, 2016 Report Share Posted March 16, 2016 Pretty sure this qualified for this thread: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/03/160316-tully-monster-vertebrate-fossil-animal-paleontology-science/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Social&utm_content=link_fb20160316news-tullymonster&utm_campaign=Content&sf22678495=1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Priory_of_Sion Posted March 16, 2016 Report Share Posted March 16, 2016 Is there any other vertebrate that has eyestalks? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Collimatrix Posted March 21, 2016 Report Share Posted March 21, 2016 Is there any other vertebrate that has eyestalks? Sort of. However, I'm not sure why these people are calling it a vertebrate. As the cladeogram in this article makes clear, the term is debatable in this case and it lies outside of the crown vertebrata: Sturgeon 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sturgeon Posted March 23, 2016 Report Share Posted March 23, 2016 First Sumatran Rhino contact in 40 years: http://inhabitat.com/conservationists-spot-wild-sumatran-rhino-for-the-first-time-in-40-years/ Belesarius 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sturgeon Posted March 28, 2016 Report Share Posted March 28, 2016 Not phenotypically oddballs, but still oddballs: Animals that were considered extinct, then rediscovered. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toxn Posted April 4, 2016 Author Report Share Posted April 4, 2016 Ominous: Donward 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Donward Posted April 5, 2016 Report Share Posted April 5, 2016 Once you go G. blacki you never go... backi? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toxn Posted April 6, 2016 Author Report Share Posted April 6, 2016 I just got caught up on this: http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2016/03/28/the-smallest-viable-genome-is-very-weird http://science.sciencemag.org/content/351/6280/aad6253 I remember seeing the original synthetic work by Venter group and being critical - it was analogous to replacing the engine of a car with an exact copy made by hand. This is much more impressive - analogous to replacing the engine with one in which every non-essential part has been removed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Collimatrix Posted April 7, 2016 Report Share Posted April 7, 2016 Hell of a way to play Jenga: What’s rather alarming is the sequence of this current minimal cell: of those 473 genes, 149 of them are of unknown function. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toxn Posted April 7, 2016 Author Report Share Posted April 7, 2016 Hell of a way to play Jenga: Welcome to biology - this sort of thing is pretty routine here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oedipus Wreckx-n-Effect Posted April 8, 2016 Report Share Posted April 8, 2016 Hell of a way to play Jenga: That's not really a surprising fact. There's a ton of genomes out there in which most genes are a mystery. If they code for anything on a regular basis at all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toxn Posted April 12, 2016 Author Report Share Posted April 12, 2016 Sharks (and one placoderm): http://imgur.com/gallery/uHCCl Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toxn Posted April 12, 2016 Author Report Share Posted April 12, 2016 Sort of off-topic, but oddballs come from the other side of the microscope as well: http://nautil.us/issue/35/boundaries/why-do-taxonomists-write-the-meanest-obituaries Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sturgeon Posted May 3, 2016 Report Share Posted May 3, 2016 Solenodons confirmed for really fucking old: http://www.igb.illinois.edu/news/endangered-venomous-mammal-predates-dinosaurs%E2%80%99-extinction Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Priory_of_Sion Posted June 10, 2016 Report Share Posted June 10, 2016 Echidnas and why they don't have venom and spurs like their platypus cousins. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LoooSeR Posted June 13, 2016 Report Share Posted June 13, 2016 BARKOUR! Belesarius 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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