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animals

dinosaurs
Dr. Grant lied to us all
09.28.09 | Permalink | 2 Comments

Add this to the recent news about dinosaur feathers, and my whole childhood is turning into one huge delusion. Palaeontologists looking at the biomechanics of Velociraptor claws have suggested they were used to climb trees, and not at all to slice you “across the belly, spilling your intestines”:

Phil Manning suggests Velociraptor used its climbing ability to perch in trees and pounce on prey from above, with its claws puncturing the skin so it could cling to its victim’s body while biting and subduing it. He points out that Microraptor, a tiny dinosaur in the same sickled-clawed dromeosaur family as Velociraptor but which lived some 50 million years before, had four feathered limbs to help it glide down from trees. “The leg and tail musculature show that these animals are adapted for climbing rather than running,” he says. Peter Makovicky, a palaeontologist at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, says smaller ancestral dromeosaurs such as Microraptor may have been climbers, but their descendants adapted the claw for other purposes, such as latching onto prey, much as big cats with their sharp, curved claws do today.

But don’t fear, it seems that larger dromeosaurs such as Utahraptor and Achillobator were probably too big and heavy to climb trees anyway, so their claws were likely used for more bad ass disembowel-y action.

Via Yglesias. For more, see Anatomical Record, DOI: 10.1002/ar.20986
animals, comedicness
Ain’t Life Grand?
09.24.09 | Permalink | Comment?
animals, comedicness, do it yourself, pets, pictures, television, videos, winning
HAHAHA
09.17.09 | Permalink | Comment?
dinosaurs, evolution, irony
Evolve or Die!!!
09.10.09 | Permalink | Comment?

You’ll die no matter what happens. And Sue is waiting…
animals, war
Animals Fight in Royal Rumble!
09.10.09 | Permalink | Comment?

Oh this is amazing. Look at 2 minutes in. Look at 3:30 in. Animals fighting animals and those animals fighting other animals! Amazing!

(Hat tip to Drew)
internettery, pets
Who’s the best cat in the United States? It’s you, Champer Camper, it’s you!
08.21.09 | Permalink | 1 Comment

everything is terrible.
animals, internettery, news, north korea, politics
i’ve been bad at the internet lately
08.10.09 | Permalink | 1 Comment

So I’ll try to play a little catch up – I’ll have a Russia-specific one later on:

-David Mech on misunderstandings about “alpha males” that resulted from his research on wolves in the 1960s [yglesias].

-Kissinger on Clinton and the North Korean hostages – conservative counterpoint by Douglas H Paal posted here [foreign policy].

-Matt Armstrong on the recent censoring the Voice of America in its coverage of Somali politics [foreign policy].

-Pepe Escobar on Iran-Chinese relations and the New Silk Road [juan cole].

-And holy shit, according to Mark Kleiman: “US expenditure budget for Afghanistan this year is to be $65 billion; I’m not sure how much NATO and other countries add to that. The US budget alone is more than 5 times the Afghan GDP of $12.5B ($400 per capita).” [stephen walt]

-New Gahan Wilson collection out this fall, feel free to be somewhat amused [laughing squid]:
animals, intelligence, science
Perfect Rationality Achieved in the Mindless
07.27.09 | Permalink | 1 Comment

People are pretty smart, but sometimes we do some really stupid things. When my brother was a much younger man, one of his most common phrases was “I thought it was a good idea”, usually after some hair-brained scheme had gone awry. “Well, son,” my parents would say, “It certainly wasn’t.” Luckily, humans are fairly tough, so we live and we learn.

Other animals aren’t so lucky. Ants are fragile little things who get stuck in glue traps. They can’t learn from experience, so that have to be ruthlessly efficient in order to achieve anything. And that’s why they evolved perfect rationality.

Dr. Stephen Pratt of Arizona State University has concluded that the collective mind of ant colonies are more capable of making rational decisions than the singular intelligences of hummingbirds (and humans, although he doesn’t mention that part).

The ants were put to the test: choosing a new home. Higher order (whatever that means) animals have a well-known tendency to become very confused when faced with decisions of three or more:

For instance, when honeybees and hummingbirds have two equally tempting choices of nectar, a third alternative inferior to both can sway them to prefer one of the initial two options over the other. The animals apparently compare the inferior choice against the originals and conclude that one of the originals is better, even though nothing about them has changed.

Pratt wanted to know if ants could handle these tough decisions. Did they have the mustard?

The researchers made two artificial nests as potential homes. Nest A had a larger, less defensible entrance but a dark interior that suggested strong, thick walls, whereas nest B had a smaller entrance (more defensible) but a bright interior (weaker walls). As expected, when the researchers ran 26 ant colonies past these nests, the insects split roughly equally on the nests. Then they provided inferior “decoy” nests to spur irrational choices. For instance, if they presented a decoy that was similar to nest B yet had an even brighter interior, the ants might irrationally prefer nest B over nest A, if past results with humans and animals are any guide.

Surprisingly, the decoys had no effect on the colonies—they always made rational decisions.

“All minds, both collective and individual, have limited capacity—they have to use shortcuts and rules of thumb to solve difficult decision problems, and those shortcuts are expected to sometimes cause mistakes,” Pratt says. “The ant colonies, however, were unfazed by a challenge that often elicits such mistakes in other animals.”

What makes ants so smart? Surprisingly, it’s their limited intelligence. Individuals within the colony usually only know one option and can’t trick themselves into false comparisons. Pratt notes these findings “underscore a nonintuitive point—getting lots of information about a problem may not help decision making if you have only limited computational capacity to process it. You might do better with a strategically limited set of information.”

Lesson learned. Next time you have a tough decision, ask an ant, or best yet, ask the whole colony. They will not lead you astray.

Full story at SciAm
animals, evolution, science
All the Mammals in the World Will Heed Our Call to Arms
07.19.09 | Permalink | Comment?

We’ve just recently got this genome thing up and running, and scientists all over the country are turning their critical eyes on all the agouti-flavored animals climbing over our evolutionary family tree. Below is a huge gallery of the 29 living mammals for which we have full DNA sequences.

The National Human Genome Research Institute gives the following explanation: “These sequencing targets were chosen to enhance the ability to identify conserved elements in mammalian genomes, especially the human genome. The list of organisms for this initiative was chosen to optimize the total evolutionary branch length in order to best identify functional sequences in the human genome.”

They’re trying to find out what genes are generic Mammal, and what genes are designer Human.

A lot of Rodentia, a lot of Primates, and a smattering of other orders.

A few more years and they may truly call Man the Beastmaster. What animals do you want to know inside out?
comedicness, pets
here are some funny onion articles about cats
06.25.09 | Permalink | 2 Comments

Computer-Generated Talking Cat On TV Delights Iowa Woman “Yeah, I saw that one during Judging Amy! It really looks like the cat’s talking!” sister Deborah Sayner said. “How do they make it do that?” “Don’t go there!” added Sayner, repeating the part of the commercial in which the sharp-tongued tabby warns its owner not to reach for a bargain-brand litter.

Vacationing Woman Thinks Cats Miss Her (I’m totally guilty of this one). As a supplement to the answering-machine messages, Davrian left the clock radio playing in the bathroom “to keep the little ones company.” Though the cats could not care less about the radio, the same cannot be said of neighbor Bob Franz, 49, whose bathroom shares a heating vent with Davrian’s.

If Itzhak Perlman Is Performing On TV Right Now, Who Is Feeding My Cat?

Touring Company Of Cats Prepares For Yet Another Day In The Goddamn Catsuits. Stephanie Watrous, who has played Jennyanydots for eight agonizing years, said, “Each day, I pray for sweet release from the hideous quasi-feline mockery that my life has become. Where are we today? Spokane?”

Hypothetical Cat Simultaneously Dead And Alive, Physicists Say

Papal Apartments Found Filled With Old Newspapers, Empty Pill Bottles, Mangy Cats

Are Your Cats Old Enough To Learn About Jesus? Kittens’ hearts, at birth, are filled with what theologians call “original mischief.” Mischief, if left to grow on its own, can sprout into evil. That’s why you must fill their hearts with Jesus instead.