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Disgusting, Scary 'Walking' Fish Invades Maryland
texchanchan writes: "It's from China, it's a predator, and it can live for DAYS out of water. And it's in Maryland as reported at Yahoo. 'They can survive for two to three days out of water, breathing air with a primitive lung, pushing themselves around with their pectoral fins.' Read about it at the Maryland Fishing Report site or just look at its picture. Maryland Fishing Report says: 'This fish was most likely introduced by an individual with an aquarium. Never release aquarium fish into ponds and lakes!' Those exotic species will get us yet."
could this be living proof of the evolutionary path that aquatic creatures took to make it to land many millions (billions) of years ago? looks like it to me :-) I love hearing about this.
What an ugly fish.
I have been pwned because my
Now our seafood can walk to us!
Get in my belly, little fishy!
If you really want to be taken seriously, you better start capitalizing FORTRAN, COBOL, and BASIC.
From the article: But it is not quite true that they can walk on land, Schwaab said: "We would sort of characterize their mode of transport more along the lines of wallowing." .The national geographic has more info about similar alien species besides a better report on the same fish.Also, Check out the alien picture gallery, for photos of similar species.
I really love the idea of the Parrots in NYC, there is apparently only one colony of them living on top of Statium lights on the northern end of the city. Only a little over a hundred, no one is quite sure where they came from, but they've been there since the 60's or 70's. There has been some talk of killing them off but I think few think they could spread very far.
A fish walks into a bar...
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Re, could this be living proof of the evolutionary path that aquatic creatures took to make it to land...?
...many millions (billions) of years ago...
It's live wiggling proof that intermediate forms exist. An argument sometimes used against Darwinian evolution is that something in between species A and B couldn't compete with the fully functional A creatures now in their prime, nor would it yet have the equipment needed to be a successful B. But this guy looks like he's succeeding quite well as A fish that's Becoming amphibious (given a few tens of millions of years). If that's possible now, why not in the past as well?
Re,
Geologic time on a short page
Geologic time on a long page
Links to a lot of geological time charts
This site Precambrian Earth is a red hot mix of geology (from a lot longer ago than our amphibious ancestors) and what might be religion.
...possessing a live snakehead is illegal in 13 states. Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia are not among them... (from the article linked above by pamri)
The big question is, with the level of ugly on that guy, who would WANT to keep one? Live or otherwise. It don't look like good eatin' either.
Yeah, I'll say it's scary. According to the pictures, that fish is carrying cold hard cash -- as well as a recent issue of The Sunday Capital. Could this be the world's first upwardly mobile aquatic lifeform?
We've had those ever since Washington DC was created... though we typically refer to them as Politicians.
*rimshot*
Shouldn't this one be listed in "The Almighty Buck"??
IT has been asked by the opponents of such views as I hold, how, for instance, could a land carnivorous animal have been converted into one with aquatic habits; for how could the animal in its transitional state have subsisted? It would be easy to show that there now exist carnivorous animals presenting close intermediate grades from strictly terrestrial to aquatic habits; and as each exists by a struggle for life, it is clear that each must be well adapted to its place in nature. Look at the Mustela vision of North America, which has webbed feet, and which resembles an otter in its fur, short legs, and form of tail. During the summer this animal dives for and preys on fish, but during the long winter it leaves the frozen waters, and preys, like other pole-cats, on mice and land animals. If a different case had been taken, and it had been asked how an insectivorous quadruped could possibly have been converted into a flying bat, the question would have been far more difficult to answer. Yet I think such difficulties have little weight.
Here, as on other occasions, I lie under a heavy disadvantage, for, out of the many striking cases which I have collected, I can only give one or two instances of transitional habits and structures in allied species; and of diversified habits, either constant or occasional, in the same species. And it seems to me that nothing less than a long list of such cases is sufficient to lessen the difficulty in any particular case like that of the bat.
- The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, Ch. VI: Difficulties of the Theory
- Tal Cohen
Sorry to be a wet blanket, but how many bars do sell nails? Just because the bar does not sell nails does not mean the bar does not have nails (and other tools).
cpeterso
*this* fish might need a bicycle
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
On this mere quote, alone, I now find myself, finally, moved to read Darwin's works.
Not only a fine scientist, apparently, the man was a fine and amusing author, as well!
Off to my library I fly!
Whoosh!
(not a joke. I fully intend to read his stuff. It was best seller material when it came out THEN, so it should prove readable to us, now, fairly easily)
Brak: What's THAT?
Thundercleese: A light switch.. of TOTAL DEVASTATION!
Climates like Florida have been afflicted with a similar species of fish. The just wiggled out of their pond and down the road to the river, where they wreaked havoc on the ecosystem. Likewise for water hyacinths, toads and giant snails. There's a long list: Rabbits and starlings in Australia, Cats and rats in New Zealand, Variola in the Americas.
As space travel becomes more of a reality, this becomes more of a serious issue. If we wipe out some species on another planet, that is not good and some here may actually care, but none are forced to care. If we bring something home, then we are forced to care.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Sorry if this is a duplicate post. Caffeine hasn't it made it to my fingers yet. Anyway, I remember reading about something similar happening in East Texas years ago. I dunno if I buy the report I read or not tho. The story talked about the fish stalking small dogs. Oh well, I suppose this means you go fising in your lawn now.
> An argument sometimes used against Darwinian evolution is that something in between species A and B couldn't compete with the fully functional A creatures now in their prime, nor would it yet have the equipment needed to be a successful B.
And its one of the more egregiously bad arguments offered by a group already well known for offering bad arguments, since even preschoolers know about whales, seals, walruses, otters, beavers, and a bunch of other "acquatic mammals" living various shades of intermediate lifestyles. (And of course everyone's favorite intermediate form, penguins.)
This indicates that the primary fault of creationists isn't mere ignorance, but rather an underlying unwillingness to think.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I have noticed a trend in the news this week on vicious fresh water creatures invading the waterways of foreign countries. Germany has been the victim of two of these recent 'invasions': a two foot long piranha, and a nearly one metre long North American snapping turtle. (Ironically, I think a 32" snapping turtle would be the ideal 'solution' to the snakehead, since if it can bite off a human arm it sould easily bite one of these in two. Also, the ability to go on land wouldn't keep it safe from the snapping turtle, though I am curious as to which can travel faster on land.
Please people, the next time your pet outgrows its aquarium, think before you release it into the wild.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
Whether or not you agree with Darwin on the subject of evolution, he's entertaining and educational.
No need to go so far as the library. You can find his books here.
The bartender is not so cruel, but he does get impatient.
On the fourth day, the fish goes up to the bar, asking for fish food again. Bartender says, "look, this is a bar. We sell liquor. What ever gave you the idea you could get fish food here?"
The fish replies, "I thought my best bet would be to go to the same place that Mr. Higgenbotham over there goes. Someone told me his eating habits were the same as mine."
The bartender says, "Mr. Higgenbotham? He's just an old lush. He comes in here every night and gets sloshed."
The fish looks at the bartender, looks at Mr. Higgenbotham, then looks back at the bartender. Then he slaps his fin against his forehead. "Oh, THAT'S what that meant!"
one hundred twenty
is just enough characters
to write a haiku
My one question is, do they taste good? In my experience, the slimiest, nastiest looking fish are always the most delicious. For example catfish, and eel. Mmmm. These critters definitely fall into the slimy and nasty looking category. If they really taste good that might solve the problem, as we are very talented at harvesting to extinction anything that gives us happy tummy.
Light cup, beer drink, thin so chain, neck turtle fat, man I won't say it again
The chances of all the basic building blocks of the simplest living creature magically coming together in one place might be low, but if you allow for self-replicating proteins as a stepping stone to "life" then that condition is not necessary.
It may be possible to get to something resembling a living creature through successive iterations and mutations of a "not-life" protein. These can happen very, very fast and are completely directed (in the sense that they are non-random, as you proposed).
As my father lik@(munch munch)...
All of your points are excellent. It is obvious that I do not have the background in biochemistry necessary to carry this on in the fashion you would prefer.
You state that a nonliving protein is "completely directed". By what?
There were only two, small points I wanted to make. You proposed that the odds of life spontaneously generating are one chance in 2^410 or more than 10^123 . All I was saying is that that's only if you are calculating with totally independent events.
As soon as you throw in the possibility of a self-replicating protein of significantly smaller size then the chances get down to 10^50 according to you. This is already significantly more possible.
Finally, once you have a self-replicating molecule the chances of there being mutations in the replicating process leading to other, shall we say, interesting developments are much higher than any one thing happening as if by magic (ie as a one 10^123 chance).
The "completely directed" means directed towards replicating, creating more, becoming more life-like, as opposed to a bunch of building blocks randomly bumping into each other in a primordial alphabet soup.
And if gradual evolution is to be accepted, why are there no 2-5 cell creatures - why unicellular and many-cellular, no few-cellular? Surely it would be adaptive to have a bicellular organism with one able to work in acid, one in base, and the inactive one goes dormant during its non-advantageous state (myriad other examples are simple to imagine).
This is a strange argument. Why does evolution need to go through every possible state to get where we are? In any case, we are constantly finding new species. (Wasn't a new species of deer just discovered in China or something? A big, mammal walking around under our noses for 5000 recorded years and we've never catalogued it.) Just because we haven't uncovered an entire fauna of low-cellular creatures doesn't mean they are not out there.
I'm not saying your belief in creationism is wrong, I'm just saying that there might be some ramifications you may want to make in your arguments if you'd like to be more effective. All of your data about the possibility of a bunch of AA's coming together and making life in one fell swoop don't mean anything if that's not the expected path of it happening. You didn't give any mention of the possibility of catastrophes (asteroids, volcanoes, etc) injecting energy into the system, for example. A lot can happen over millions of years, and the whole idea is that something has to happen just once and stick in order for there to be life. Just handwaving and saying the "possibility for life being created in the particular fashion I've described is so low as to be preposterous that it's proof of God" is not sound.
I find your attempt to educate me about "science" amusing as you are taking the position of someone who is attempting to defend a theory based in mythology versus someone who is attempting to help your credibility. I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with creationism per se, it's interesting, it's just that it's very hard to recreate, and having theories about things that are very difficult to reproduce or that do not imply much tangible is more akin to philosophy than anything else. Evolution, on the other hand, makes specific predictions about the nature of life. These are testable. People have theorized that evolution can account for the generation of more complicated life from simple beginnings. This is testable, and is being tested right now. Creationism is a done deal. It's over. You either believe it or you don't and it's extremely difficult to collect "evidence" for it. This makes it a difficult theory for a scientist to stand behind.
As my father lik@(munch munch)...
> The odds are not just low, they are flat out impossible. 10^50 is considered a mathematical equivalent of impossible, and 10^123 is way beyond that.
No, p=0 is the mathematical equivalent of impossible, and there is no concept of "way beyond" impossible. You're just spouting creationist bunkum.
I know it's pointless trying to convince you, but if any lurkers are reading this and haven't thought it out before, consider what happens when you shuffle a deck of cards and then examine the resulting order. The probablility of getting that order is 1/52!, AKA 1/10^68. Clearly, 1/10^68 is not "impossible", because it happens every time someone shuffles a deck of cards.
Want "way beyond" impossible? Just add more cards. Two decks gives 1/10^167. Three gives 1/10^276. Tell me how impossible you want it, and I'll tell you how many decks of cards you need.
Unless you want p=0, which can't be done by cards - by definition.
Scientists do not posit that the first self-replicator came about via random chance, any more than a chemist reckons that it is random chance that delivers NaCl + HOH when you mix HCl + NaOH in a beaker. The universe is not a random assemblage of matter and energy; there are all manner of laws and forces that make some conformations enormously more likely than others.
Without knowing what the first self-replicator was and by what pathway it arose, your probability calculations are just numbers pulled out of your ass.
> And if there were a self-replicating protein, what would prevent it from continuing to exist today?
A planet full of life that eats proteins? An oxygen-based atmosphere? (What was I saying earlier about creationists and thinking?)
> And if gradual evolution is to be accepted, why are there no 2-5 cell creatures - why unicellular and many-cellular, no few-cellular?
Assuming this claim is even correct, what's the problem? Some cells stick together as colonies and others don't - why should we require some to stick together in colonies of an arbitrary size? Multi-cellular life is thought to have arisen via cell specialization in multicellular colonies. It's a silly parody of evolution of the theory of evolution to claim that a life form with n+1 cells arose from a lifeform with n cells, and that all the lifeforms of sizes {1, 2,
Also, large modern multicellular creatures don't have any difficulty bootstrapping themselves up from a single cell without leaving 2-5 cell intermediates lying about. Why should evolution have any difficulty doing the same thing?
> Science is not about "might be". It's about facts.
Actually, science is about providing the best possible explanation for the evidence currently at hand. When there's insufficient evidence bearing on a topic they sometimes have to rely on conjectures, or even "we don't know".
> And a simple fact is that unless the "self-replicating protein" were near-perfect in replicative abilities, it would not be able to accurately reproduce itself.
Actually, an imperfect replicator is exactly what we are looking for. Evolution doesn't happen to perfect replicators.
Also, speaking of "the" replicator may lend to misconceptions, since "the" replicator may have been a cycle of reactions involving multiple "agents". I.e., at the earliest stages of proto-life we may be looking at mixtures of reagents rather than individuals.
> And simple entropic principles would lead to its degradation into simpler parts.
Care to show the math on your entropy calculations?
Lurkers take note: creationists are tres fond of invoking entropy, so long as they don't have to define anything, measure anything, or show any mathematics. (If you ever find a creationist willing to do all that, please bring it to my attention.)
But skipping the standard creationist handwaving fare and getting back to the original post... What you are arguing here is abiogenesis, not evolution. The theory of evolution doesn't care where the original replicators came from; it merely explains the pattern of changes you see once you do have a system of imperfect replicators. (Remember what science is? We see massive evidence that life has changed over time; we try to explain it.)
And FWIW, both scientists and creationists agree that abiogenesis happened at some point in the earth's history. The only disagreements are over when it happened and what the mechanism was. If you want me to accept your made-up probabilities for chemical abiogenesis, are you willing to accept my made-up probabilities for divine abiogenesis?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
could this be living proof of the evolutionary path that aquatic creatures took to make it to land many millions (billions) of years ago? looks like it to me
The fish is a delicacy in Asian cooking; I've had them.
I get *hell* from customs for sneaking Mighty Taco across the border, and yet these nasty things are available in any large Asian community?
Something's not right there. How is it that these were allowed to be imported in the first place?
It's a sign of either an intellectual failure or starvation (I'll leave the intellectual failure with customs and starvation with my Chinese friends) that those things would be considered a delicacy, anyway.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
What's truly amazing is that the fish had money and a local newspaper when caught. A disturbingly intelligent creature.
> You are making a classic probstat error...
d00d! You forgot the most important part of your post, which should have gone something like this: And though it's optional, I heartily recommend adding the following disclaimer as well: But having made your bed, let's see how well you lie in it.
First, let me call to the attention of any innocents reading this post that your probability argument - like all creationist probability arguments I've ever seen - relies critically on a hidden assumption that life is a completely random assemblage of atomic components. Lurkers my want to speculate, publicly or privately, why creationists always make this (hidden) assumption; my own speculation is that it's a combinaton fo these three factors:
- the typical creationist knows exactly diddley-jack about the natural sciences, and thus couldn't assume a more realistic mechanism even if he wanted to; and
- admitting that the arrangements of the molecules in biological organisms is the result of laws and forces that bias the outcome runs a great risk of unwittingly admitting that the mechanisms proposed by the theory of evolution really work; and
- any assumption other than completely random configurations with uniform probabilities will not produce the astonomical numbers needed to impress the rubes with an otherwise silly argument.
At any rate, giving AC his desired probability model, and given that the universe exists and the matter in his protein actually exists, we find that there is a truly astronomical number of possible configurations for that matter - probably a higher number even than he calculates - with the resulting possiblility of any single one of those configurations existing - given his assumptions - being <<1/10^50, and thus "impossible". However, given that the universe and the matter in the protein does exist, we conclude that the probability that it is in one of those configurations is 1.0 - just as for the outcome of shuffling a deck of cards.So much for creationist probability arguments; they don't even rise to their own standards, let alone to the standards of science.
> You further speculate that there was a non-oxygen atmosphere in the past which the proteins arose in.
No, that's based on evidence, not speculation. For instance, the iron in all your worldly goods was accessible to human miners because it precipitated out of the oceans en masse when the atmosphere "turned over" to an oxygen-based atmosphere and oxidized it. Otherwise it would be (more or less) randomly distributed throughout the crust.
There is other evidence for our pre-oxygen atmosphere; you might want to read up on it if this sort of thing interests you and your faith doesn't rely too much on isolating yourself from facts about the world you live in.
> That's because if you don't have very accurate reproduction, you'll get random mutations which, by the laws of probstat, will degenerate most of the organisms via a mechanism known as "return to the mean".
There is no such mechanism; do not misinterpret the "law of large numbers" as a programmed directional shift. You seem to be one who knows just enough about statistics to be dangerous.
Also very importantly, do not critique the theory of evolution on the basis of a straw-model that omits an enormously important part of the theory, natural selection. (And sexual selection and all that other good stuff you'll hear about if you ever get past them metaphorical Page One in your knowledge of the theory of evolution.)
Hint: Sundayschool ain't the place to learn about it.
> You're claiming that evolution does not involve abiogenesis.
Indeed I am, and that's because it doesn't. The theory of evolution says nothing about where life came from. Terraform a planet and pack off your favorite species for a permanent visit, and you'll find that they will evolve there - just as they will if they get there instead by local abiogenesis, by human creation, or by divine creation. Ultimate origins is irrelevant to the theory of evolution; it merely needs some biological organisms to work with.
> If true (and I dispute that), then evolution needs at least as big a leap of faith as creationism does.
Not at all. It's evidence, not faith, that tells us that the universe is of finite age, and evidence, not faith, that tells us that life now exists in the universe. It follows immediately from those that abiogenesis must have happened somewhere along the way; faith does not play any role in either the premises or the conclusion.
> And again you're fudging things when you say I should accept your probabilities for divine abiogenesis.
Not at all. If you want me to accept numbers that you pulled out of your ass, then it's perfectly reasonable for me to expect you to accept numbers that I pulled out of my ass.
> Since there definitely is a God, there is no need to calculate the probability of Him existing.
That sort of argument is known as "assuming the consequent", "begging the question", or, in layman's terms, "cheating".
> Want proof? Where did all the matter, physical laws, order, information, and initial energy come from?
Not from any god. Want proof? Where did your god come from?
See, it's easy if I get to use the same low standards of evidence that creationists insist on for their own arguments.
[Lurkers please note that I don't offer that as a serious argument. Rather, I offer it as an example of how creationists will reject an argument with a logical form identical to their own arguments, if it does not lead to the "right" conclusion.]
> If evolution does not include abiogenesis, you'd better go tell your local school board - it's in the textbooks with lots of other lies about evolution.
Oddly enough, solar dynamics, kinematics, cloud formation, Turing machines, electic circuits, and a pile of other things that the theory of evolution doesn't say anything about are also to be found in textbooks. You single out abiogenesis only because of your ignorance (and presumably also because it, even more than evolution, is directly contrary to your religious beliefs).
Curiouser yet, none of those textbooks invoke invisible magicians to explain any of those other phenomena, and yet for some reason no one is writing their school boards and legislatures to protest that omission.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I don't get why artificially introduced species are often able to kick the butts of the local ones. The local ones should be better adapted to the local environment.
Unless, perhaps, that some introduced species have survival tricks that local ones were not able to evolve on their own. (What do they call that in AI and game thoery, local miximum rut?)
I wonder if anybody has documented how this happened in specific cases.
Table-ized A.I.
> I get *hell* from customs for sneaking Mighty Taco [mightytaco.com] across the border
Leave the baggie of pot out and they'll wave you right through.
I wish.
Young guy, dressed either in a shirt and tie or in jeans, white T-shirt and leather jacket, driving a 1976 Dodge Ram, often with big chunks of a cut-up Toyota in the back, going through customs:
Grrrr.... Nothing makes you feel better about living in one of the highest taxed countries in the world than being searched by customs and treated like a criminal every time you come home, while you're gladly welcomed by geniunely friendly customs people on the American side.
Only time I've ever had trouble with US customs was the week after that guy tried to take the ferry to Seattle with the trunkload of explosives. The guy passed a cursory mirror under the truck, then stopped with a surprised look on his face, staring into the mirror: "Shit, boy, is that a nine and quarter axle?" He waved me through.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.