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From Carnivore to Herbivore
smooth wombat wrote in to mention an a recent discovery in the field of evolutionary biology. From the article: "A surprising discovery in Utah has paleontologists scratching their heads and asking: Why would a carnivore evolve a herbivorous diet? The species, christened Falcarius utahensis, belongs to a dinosaur group called the therizinosauroids. These are mostly thought to have been plant eaters. But the recently discovered fossil, the most primitive therizinosauroid found so far, seems to have survived on a mixed diet of meat and vegtables...The switch to vegetarianism is surprising, says Paul Barrett, who studies dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum in London. The therizinosauroids belong to a larger group of dinosaurs known as theropods, and many of these are known to have been excellent at catching a meaty meal. "
Maybe the designer wasn't so intelligent after all, seeing as how he kept changing his mind.
After all, I am strangely colored.
The next time somebody waxes on about the virtues of the Atkin's Diet I can tell them that even the dinosaurs got sick of it.
Making the moon less necessary since 1998.
Not just vegetarian, but omnivorous.
"Although the team cannot know whether Falcarius was a committed vegetarian - it may have eaten a bit of meat, too - its emergence did coincide neatly with the evolution of flowering plants."
Why evolve to eat plants and animals? I dunno, but it works for me too!
"At the same time Falcarius appeared, the world was changing greatly because flowering plants were appearing," Dr Sampson said. "They would have provided a new food source. It could be that Falcarius was exploiting an open ecological niche."
In biology class, one of the things you learn is that plants have the most energy-to-size ratio (i forget the actual term). Then you have the primary group of animals (cows, rabbits, anything that eats plants), then the first tier of carnivores (animals that eat the plant eaters), then you have another tier that eats the first tier of carnivores (us, generally).
As you go up the food chain, you get less energy from the meat.
So perhaps this animal simply decided that munching on grass was more efficient than killing a T-rex?
Josh
hookers and grits.
Omnivores survive on a mixed diet of meats and vegetables, not carnivores.
I didn't know PETA has been around that long...
goD put that omnivore fossil out there to confuse scientists and test the faith of evangelists. hE had so much free time after creation that he wanted to play some tricks and enjoy looking at the morons that hE created for hiS amusement.
Furthermore, the chain for a carnivore is simply longer by one (plants->herbivores->carnivore)
The Raven
Am I the only one that saw the headline and thought of a new FBI internet tap with a friendly plant-like image?
maybe after after the protest of a bunch of dinosours calling themselves "greenpeace" got them to change their minds and they turned all environmental?
(seeing how the lower you go in the food chain, the more energy efficient it is..)
I don't remember hearing about one of these since I was younger - I suppose my focus has shifted since then :) It still excites me nonetheless.
Anyway, another dinosaur discovery related National Science Foundation article can be found here and contains a little more info and some better pictures.
...I believe humans fit into this category, too.
Potatoes don't run fast or put up much of a fight.
A given amount of land can support more grazers than carnivores.
Switching to an omnivorous diet means that there will be more of them.
I haven't eaten meat (or fish) for 20 years now. I feel great, and look a lot younger than i am. Perhaps the critters found themselves in an abundance of readily available, high-energy greens and decided it was much less work than trying to catch & kill their next meal.
The creature's thigh bones were longer than its shin bones, suggesting that it could run at an impressive pace. "The legs are still adapted for running after prey,"
Well, the sorts of things a cheetah chases can run pretty bloody fast themselves, and most of them are grass eaters. Maybe these things still needed to avoid being eaten by those in the neighbourhood that remained carnivorous.
"Our interests are to see if we can't scale it up to something more exciting," he said.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but pandas eat mostly bamboo, but they evolved from carnivores and are still enticed by the smell of meat.
So how is this anything new?
Humans, incidentally, have been natural herbivores for hundreds of thousands of years -- one can live longer and healthier as a vegetarian than as a carnivore strictly speaking. But we are considered omnivores because our bodies can tolerate meat as well as plant matter. It is not surprising to see a similar evolution taking place in other species as well; what is surprising is our relative level of resistance to this fact.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
A carnivore requires a much larger hunting area to sustain itself, compared to a herbivore. In a given area, there is only so much prey, and down the food chain biomass is lost. And that's not counting the energy cost of hunting. If you can get whatever you need from plants, then surely it makes good evolutionary sense to cut out the middleman.
That would make it an omnivore, not an herbivore.
An herbivore relies ONLY on vegitation for sustinance, as an omnivore has a mixed diet.
My job superior can sleep 20 hours per day, while I can only sleep 6.
"Under what circumstances would dinosaurs engage in cannibalism?"
Depends on the species. Kinda like today. Some snakes eat their own. Some frogs will eat their own. Some snakes eat frogs, some frogs eat snakes. Some snakes eat different snakes... ETC.
Especially since it didn't happen as this dinosaur eats meat.
I hate it when vegetarians try shove their religion down the throats of meat eaters. No wonder these dinosaurs were so confused... I got claws to rip flesh but my stomach wants cabbage instead.
That's the question we really should be answering...
Any ideas?
But the recently discovered fossil, the most primitive therizinosauroid found so far, seems to have survived on a mixed diet of meat and vegtables...
If they were originally eating a diet of meat and vegetation I believe the proper terminology is "omnivore".
shop.envescent.com - Computer hardware and more.
"...the Chinese relished the taste of human flesh."
I think the actual wording was "the Chinese ate human flesh with relish". People don't taste too good, kind of like pork* left in the sun for a day or two, so anything that covers the flavour is an improvement...
*Hence the New Guinea expression "long pig".
Blank until
Article states mass grave of hundreds to thousands. This suggests a highly successful animal, which likely would have eaten itself out of prey. This would pressure to find other food.
Additionally, few animals are truly carnivorous only. In guides for reptile care, I often come across the suggestion to "gut-load" prey animals like crickets before feeding. So carnivorous snakes and lizards are getting vegetable matter in their diet secondhand. I would think this suggests the potential for an omnivorous or vegetarian diet exists in the species.
I have eaten meat (and fish) for 36 years now. I feel great, and look a lot younger than i am
etc.
Not dinging you on your choice to not eat meat, but I am quite fit, healthy and even happy. I eat critters.
On a side note, my dog killed her first squirrel today. (kinda sad really) Then I let her eat it.
That's not quite how it works. Plants have to photosynthesize enough to grow and maintain "operations," herbivores have to eat enough plants to grow and maintain "operations," etc. Eventually a top predator is ultimately eating a lot of plants more because there are a lot of middlemen.
As you go up the food chain, you get less energy from the meat.
There's generally more energy in meat, and it's denser so you spend a lot less time eating meat calories. Of course, finding and killing that meat is a different story. I expect the answer to our question is one of relative scarcity or competitive ability - perhaps a different predator took away the market?
But it's not one of energy density, most definitely.
Does that mean she's from Utah?
Many many "herbivores" eat meat and carnivores eat vegetables. Rabbits will eat meat. Squirrels will eat meat. Wolves will eat grass. There are carnivorous mice. Rats are omnivorous rodents. There are fruit eating cats and bats. There are many, many crossovers in mammals. Why not in dinosaurs?
Plants often use predation by another species to facilitate their reproduction, e.g. bird excrement spreads seeds. So perhaps focussing on the dinos has it backwards ... the plants have a positive incentive to encourage the saurians to try a little salad with their mammalburger.
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
that a vegan diet was the end of the dinodaurs.
No mammal or reptile is strictly a "vegetarian". None of these animals can convert cellulose into glucose, they ALL require bacteria to do this for them. It is obvious why some animals evolved to eat plants: there simply wasn't enough meat available for them to consume. Over time, their bodies evolved adaptions such as larger and multiple stomachs to regulate the gas biproducts of bacterial decomposition of cellulose. This is why humans have to cook their food, we simply cannot survive on a truly natural vegetarian diet. Our stomachs are too small.
Without exception, all animals can eat meat. Even the cow retains the ability to produce bile acids to break down fat, the primary source of energy for most predator mammals.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
This was hard to track down. Listening to the original description on discovery.ca (TV) I couldn't help but think about Stampy from the Simpsons (1F15).
i know a girl who swore off meat after i broke up with her...
Obviously.
those meaty meals sure are tasty, but those plants dont run nearly as fast.
I find it funny that the appendix is now not a functional part of the digestive tract... yet somehow some herbivore with a stick up his ass thinks he's better than his meat eating brothers.
Maybe it's just me but living until I'm 100 popping pills doesn't sound like a great way to live. I'll eat my free radical ridden meat and enjoy it and damn well die off at an age I won't be an annoyance to the rest. This hippie bullshit about being healthy on a strictly vegetarian diet is funny - it's not that I'm unhappy that they feel good about themselves (all the power to them) but I would rather be left to make up my own mind about eating meat.
Humans 'ARE' naturally designed to eat just about anything. But saying vegetarian is healthier is like saying it's great to barely run, be unable to lift you own bodyweight in the gym... basically that it's great to just breath - sorry but there's more to it than that.
Easy answer:
They became Hindu and give overwhelming evidence of the Vedas existing.
The evidence: Ronald McDonald Turns Vegetarian, and it's not a scam!
If more energy were available in its environment in plant form than in animal, especially in a sustainable diet, a more fit sauroid would eat plants rather than meat. Evolution doesn't develop towards any goal - it merely is the survival of species more fit to survive in their environment, who get to reproduce and perpetuate their genes. The environment changes, including the evolution and extinction of species depended upon by others, who must then fit a changed environment. Fitness is a game that never ends.
--
make install -not war
Which is the ultimate joke seeing as how we were made in his image, yet considering all our views on the subject obviously not his sense of humour.
Holy mental seg. fault batman.
-Matt
--- Need web hosting?
Lions lounge around 20 hours a day, while the proletarian antelopes have to forage all day on little sleep, and then get eaten by the lion. That's why lions are king. There's a political commentary there, I think.
...also formed PETA...the Prehistorical-Society for the Ethical Treatment of Appetizers.
Obviously, Falcarius utahensis got a girlfriend.
Tomato and spinach pizza, wtf.
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
belongs to a dinosaur group called the therizinosauroids.
There isn't? Well, I guess it's a moot point then.
A surprising discovery in Utah has paleontologists scratching their heads and asking: Why would a carnivore evolve a herbivorous diet?
Perhaps they had to? Lacking a traditional food source, organisms will usually attempt to improvise. Given a choice between vegetables and dying, plants probably began looking appetizing.
Now I am not an authority on this, but vitamin B12 is only found in amounts sufficient for our dietary needs in animal products like meat, fish, eggs, and dairy and is essential for proper nervous system function. If you're one of the "strict" vegetarians out there you must supplement your all vegetable diet with B12 or run the risk of developing nerve damage or neurological disease (among other complications). You cannot meet all of your dietary requirements from an all-vegetable diet unless you take supplements.
While I would agree that a vegetarian diet is certainly healthier than what most people eat, the fact is a balanced diet from all the food groups including animal products is not only wise but absolutely necessary for a healthy human body. If my memory of biology class is correct just about every herbivore has to eat an enormous amount of plant material to sustain themselves, with specialized digestive sytems. Why do you think a cow has four stomachs?
I watched my sister fade away on a stict vegan diet and even with supplements it wasn't enough. She re-introduced a weekly serving of meat and noticed a huge improvement in her mood and energy level. Her experience taught me that a balanced diet is more important than focusing on any one particular food group and my diet is the better for it.
So mark me troll. So mark me flamebait. I still think this needs to be said.
I don't know about you americans, but as a non-bible-belt non-american, I'm seriously sick and tired of all these references to religious fanatics refusing to accept common sense. I fail to see how this is "news for nerds", or even "stuff that matters" (unless you are one of them brainwashed fanatics, in case I suspect your sick fantasy sees it as some kind of confirmation of whatever you are brainwashed to believe).
Why can't we just leave the portion of the american population that are fanatics alone, instead of mentioning them on slashdot EVERY BLOODY DAY and thereby give their miserable existance even the tiniest credibility? Just like UBL or GWB they simply can't be made to neither change their mind nor understand logic - at least not without deprogramming them as needs to be done for most previous sect members.
Once that's done, can slahsdot editors either PLEASE stop pushing this crap down the throat on us non-brainwashed people, or clearly state "WE HAVE MOVED TO UTAH, AND WE WILL TRY TO MAKE YOU ALL INTO CHRISTIAN RIGHT-WING ZOMIES! BWAHAHAHAHA!". What's next? Jesus invented computers, and Jehova invented internet? That MS Word is the creation of GOD?
Perhaps you could hire someone muslim fanatics from the arabic middle-east to provide some counter-weight to these religious right-wing christian fanatics? Add some jews too, and you have a recipie for the thirld world war, so if you do, please make that a separate domain, because such juvenile fanatic pie-throwing contests does NOT belong on slashdot - at least not with its current motto.
Madcowasaurus Rex. The modern version worked to make me switch.
Have you ever seen a cow go, "OH My God! There's a ladybug on that grass, I'm not eating it!" Herbivores that graze eat a lot of bugs.
So you're saying you eat bullshit? Are you a lawyer? :)
Why the hell does slashdot even have this article/section?
I for one welcome our extinct vegan loving dinosaur overlords .... nah
...vegitarians are dying ...hmm no
Dinosaurs confirmed it
In pre-historic soviet, you feed plants to dinosaurs
Python script to convert photos into "artsy" portraits: http://p2pbridge.sf.net/pyPortrait/
Falcarius utahensis definitely evolved morals and realized that it is moral folly to eat other animals. Definitely.
Intentional pun or typo?
The article seems to think that they saw a empty slot in ecology and filled it...
"Perhaps certain dinosaurs were pushed along the evolutionary route to vegetarianism because they lived in an area where there was no other plant-eating competitor, he suggests."
I think that if this where the case there was not just evolutionary pull but a push also. If they lived in area without plant eating competitor it makes me wonder what does a carnivore eat...
Emacs is good operating system, but it has one flaw: Its text editor could be better.
I evolved a herbivorous diet from an omnivorous one. My wife says I'm missing out, but I'm happy being veg. and I have plenty of energy.
Me lost me cookie at the disco.
Three miles from the excavation site, the same paleontologists found the fossils of carnivorous dinosaurs. After the results came back from the lab, they were able to determine that these dinosaurs were much more satisfied, and didn't whine as much as their herbivorous kin.
Also found among the fossils of the vegetarian dinosaurs were empty "Tofudactyl" wrappers.
"It was hell!" recalls former child.
a slightly mis-informed post by the parent I've always known this, but below is a quote from http://www.veganpeace.com/veganism/eating_vegan.ht m
B12 fortified soy or rice milk, B12 fortified breakfast cereals.
say what?!
i live on an alternate planet
...they went to the same doctor than I do.
He's old as dinosaurs and keeps telling me to prefer vegetables to meat.
They probably adapted for the same reason any organism adapts - it's environment changed, and with it the opportunities, and it was adaptable enough to change it's behavior. Too many predators, not enough prey = try eating plants Too many herbivores, not enough plants = try eating herbivores Whichever niche has the least competition!
The word fortified means that B12 has been added to rice and soy milk. Which means you are artificially supplementing your diet.
I know that that's why I became a vegetarian, and what's good enough for me was probably good enough for dinosaurs.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
And here I was thinking that the US govt had revived an unpopular old program...
A driving force in plant diversification is said to be resistance of predators. Chemicals like the furanocoumarins (sp?) in wild parsnip developed because they were a natural pesticide. The mutant plant that can make them suddenly flourishes until another species develops a way to work around the defense. Slowly, more predators join in until things are back in balance. Then another mutant develops a new way of doing things and the process begins again.
... okay, I'm speculating and I'm tired and I'm going to stop now. Good night all.
The logical implication of this is that any sudden massive change in the plant world is likely to lead to a situation where fewer herbavores have a food source. The result would be a sudden drop in herbavores and a tremendous opportunity for any animal which could consume the new plants.
This could be totally off base. But since they mentioned the rise of flowering plants, this is what came to my mind.
This would suppose a sudden drop in certain types of fossils in that area.
Alternatly, I wonder if a dryer environment or temp change would force a change of diet if this creature had imperfectly developed maxillaries. Maxillaries are prerequisites for the developmnent of warm bloodedness since warm blooded animals breathe more. Without maxilaries,a rapidly breathing animal would dry out. Anyone who's actually an archeologist (I'm not) know these details?
Is 'sudden emergence of flowering plants' the only change on record? Maybe with their long necks they were the only creatures who could eat fruit from trees...
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
That whooshing noise that you hear is the sound of a joke going over your head.
Actually, he was just hoping to impress this cute vegan hippie herbivore that hung out near the flowering plants.
Heck, even dinosaurs can get constipation from time to time? Did you see Jurassic Park?
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
vegitarisaurus
didnt the pandas used to be meat eaters, but made a bad evolutionary step and now have to spend 80% of their waking time chewing bamboo.
Perhaps, but I still net 3000 calories with every Big Mac, and that's better than eating 10 pounds of radishes any day.
;*)
You don't eat radishes to become satiated. Your meal should either be of grains, or beans, lentils, chickpeas, soy, etc. Stuff with proteins. Without proteins, your vegetarian diet will become a disaster, as you point out.
I'm a 100% lacto-ovo vegetarian and have no problems whatsoever. I am more healthy and aware than ever. Don't even miss the Big Mac (Quite the opposite!
The grandparent post was wrong. It is referring to veganism, ie: no animal products either. I am a lacto-ovo vegetarian, so have no problems. It is very common to mix these two forms of eating habits up, thus people believe in myths like you don't get enough nutrients from a vegetarian meal. Quite the opposite is true: People are dying earlier and having health problems from eating so much meat! WHO has been recommending to cut down on meat more and more the last decades.
;*). Cool factor: 10/10 :-)
Most studies show that to eat less - and that vegetarian food is the best for our bodies. Meat is good in difficult areas, but only for staying alive. Like the Escimos who only eat whale-meat during the winter.
By drinking milk, cheese and a bit of egg you get all the vitamins you need being a lacto-ovo vegetarian. You just need to make sure you get enough proteins, from beans, lentils, chickpeas, soya and so on.
I do warm up the milk though, since cows-milk is not easily digestible. That helps the digestive system. It follows from the ancient Ayurvedic science from Asia.
It also follows from that science that with a positive attitude towards life, you are more healthy. Mind is more powerful than flesh, all that Yoda-stuff (actually it's Yogi-stuff
... when theres such a simple explanation.
dinosaurs slowly became gourmets and started enjoying a little of that certain herbs with their brontasaurus cooked blue (very, very rare), slowly the dinasours included more and more of the herbs and grasses with their meats, adapting to eating their greens, until some widespread disease or other catastrophe killed off most of their walking food.
those that had been eating the more fashionable foods had over the millenia evolved to be able to get by on greens, whilst those that had stuck with traditional food got hungry, weak and died.
its all about trends... well, not really, but you know...
dogs and cats seem to eat grasses as well (and dogs that arent homeless will eat anything, those that are tend to be more careful)
I am very sucseptible to "let's have another drink"
Acually, back when Carnivore was released people didn't trust it and someone came up with a free implementation called Herbivore, that did what the FBI said the Carnivore should do.
:P
Yeah, when I saw the headline I thought it was some rant about both applications
This sucks. My vegetarian friends will soon be telling me that the therizinosauroids would still be alive today if they hadn't started eating meat.
What'd be easier for you to eat?
A cat or a five-pound bunch of bananas?
Scientists ***believe*** the previously unknown species was in the process of converting to vegetarianism from a rather more bloodthirsty diet.
Falcarius utahensis ***seems to represent*** an intermediate stage between a carnivorous and herbivorous form.
The creature, which lived about 125 million years ago, provides a "missing link" in dinosaur evolution. (Wish, Hope, Pray, BELIEVE!)
scientists cannot be entirely sure what it ate itself.
The adult dinosaur walked on two legs, was about 4m long (13ft) and stood 1.4m tall (4.5ft). It also had a woolly feather-like plumage and sharp, curved 10cm-long (4-inch) claws. (Of course, these are blind guesses based upon no empirical fact)
These formidable talons were probably a hang-over from the dinosaur's ferocious past, the researchers say, and may not have had a function in its more sedate new lifestyle. (i.e. we just try to avoid saying "I don't know")
Falcarius shared an - as yet undiscovered - ancestor with the Velociraptor, which was ***almost certainly*** a fleet-footed, small-bodied predator, the researchers ***believe***.
At some point, two major groups of dinosaurs split from their carnivorous cousins and shifted into plant-eating. But until now, the intermediate stages of this process remained a mystery. (Because it's a bunch of GUESSING and WISHING)
"With Falcarius, we have actual fossil evidence of a major dietary shift, certainly the best example documented among dinosaurs," said Dr Sampson. "This little beast is the missing link between small-bodied predatory dinosaurs and the highly specialised and bizarre plant-eating therizinosaurs." (Stated as fact, verified by none)
Although the team cannot know whether Falcarius was a committed vegetarian - it may have eaten a bit of meat, too - its emergence did coincide neatly with the evolution of flowering plants. (and if it didn't, we'd just move a few dates a few million years so that we have a "workable" theory)
"Mass mortalities are known in a number of dinosaur groups," said Dr Sampson. "In this case, it is difficult to work out what happened. It could have been a spring which dried up, and the dinosaurs died of thirst. "Or organic poisons could have contaminated the water - it is hard to know for sure." (But we'll keep publishing guesswork that we *hope* sounds intelligent as long as the research grants keep a flowin')
So, in summary...we don't *know* anything, but we guess a lot. Anything but believe the Bible. Our own fantasies are MUCH more plausible, to *us*.
The "normal" slashdot crowd mocks and scorns "religion", but seriously...is this not a belief system? Sure it is. Just admit it. You'll believe anything if it was written by a rockhead with "PhD" in his sig...
Nobody seems to provide any actual details on this find, just artists' reconstructions based on something, but from what I've read so far this thing sounds similar to an ostrich with claws. From the Chicago Tribune article, http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi -0505050246may05,1,5853353.story?coll=chi-newsnati onworld-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true, "It had the built-for-speed legs of meat eaters, but it was developing the bigger belly of plant-eaters. It had lost the serrated teeth needed for tearing flesh; those were replaced with the smaller, duller vegetarian variety." Sounds like a toothed, clawed ostrich, not some strange "intermediate form."
Isn't it funny how many "mass fossil graves" we found all over the earth, almost like there was a global flood...?
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
Think about how this constitutes positive evidence for the theory of evolution. Consider how it says nothing whatsoever about the ID hypothesis, and what this implies about the nature of ID "science".
The world is everything that is the case
Do I want to ask why you know what people tastes like?
For paleontologists to be surprised about such a thing seems quite stupid. There have been lots of examples of other animals evolving one way or the other depending on the conditions.
A really easy example is mammal evolution. At the time of the dinosaur extinction, mammals mostly consisted of very generalized, small omnivores. From there, the easiest evolutionary advantage for them to develop was to get bigger and become more carnivores so they could eat the other mammals. Size is also often an advantage in competition for other things such as territory and sexual rights. So they got bigger and you'd many early large mammals are nightmarish-looking carnivores. The ancestor of the pig, and the ancester of the whales and hippos, both make excellent examples.
After a point, larger stops being better because it takes so much hunting and good predator/prey ratios to maintain. From there, the easy evolutionary advantage turns to diversification of foodstuffs.
Maintaining size still helps because it reduces the number of predators you can be subject to. It helps to be a herbivore if you want to maintain your size because most organic matter is plant life. Herbivores can become very specialized because plants develop defenses, particularly poisons. The herbivores have to develop immunities or develop instincts as to what minerals or other plants contain the right counter-agents to consume to offset the poisonous plants they eat.
Once a herbivore species refines itself well enough, its population explodes and then provides a better source for the carnivores, who begin to spring back. And we all have heard about the "arms race" that predators and herbivores develop in a stable ecology.
With species occupying the large niches, evolutionary advantage goes to specialization and now you get more diversity.
Once something horrible happens to the environment, it's the small generalists that survive best, and we're back where we started.
I'm certain this sort of cycle has repeated itself from the very early points of life, such as the beginnings of life, Burgess Shale, amphibian, and dinosaur periods. The cycles just get less extreme as the environment stabilizes. When there's a major change, it has to start over again.
In Soviet Russia, the _______ ________ you!
So, if i get this right, the missing link here would be a vegetable made out of meat ?
after being carnivore for 18+ years i just started to be more self concious and realised that not eating other breathing-moving-living creatures is probably a better choice ... that might have happened back there ...
... they feel things with bad karma ... such as a gun, or place .... or just "feel" a bad person by instinct ...
..... but on the other hand why not ....
:)
........ but still, they discovered lemon-dulce (kinda of a cross betveen an orange and a lemon) and since then they are picking the oranges more than the squirrels from the tree ....
.....
..
I do not mean that that members of that early species society were reading articles about how being a veg is more environment friendly, but as we know(?) animals have a 6th sense
OK maybe not
maybe they just realised how easier it was to catch a plant rather than chasing the prey for hours ?
my dogs are real killers... they catch birds, opossums, squirrels and lizards
I was a real carnivore (my favourite sandwich consisted 3 different meats and goose-lard with various cheeses).... and now i live on veg stuff probably for life
i switched from one day to the other....
disclaimer: this is not a "i turned veg yesterday so let's save the pigs" propaganda. i am in it for 15+ years now
Aw, damn.
For a moment, I hoped this would be good news on some *sensible* scaling back of the privacy-violating Carnivore project (and I wondered what the *hell* changes would get classed as an 'herbivore' personality... )
"and many of these are known to have been excellent at catching a meaty meal. "
Yes all the first hand visual accounts of that time confirm this to be 100% true
I dunno, taken from the perspective of a software developer who averages about 6 hours a night right now due to workload, I'm thinking that the whole 'sleep for 20 hours' sounds like a great idea.
That obviously means the lions can get done what they need to get done in 4 hours, whereas the herbivores might take a better chunk of their 18.
I'm thinking I know which one I'd rather be. Plus it isn't all that often that a lion gets an arse whuppin' from herbivores. The reverse is obviously not the case.
And maybe someone can explain to me why this refered to carnivores and herbivores, since the former dinosaur had a mixed diet making it an omniovore?
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
You're confused about the terms. It's not that plants have more energy than meat, it's that you're getting the energy directly from them instead of eating an animal that spent its whole life eating plants and expended much of that energy walking around, eating, etc.
Meat has a far higher energy to size ratio than plants. A large carnivore like a lion only has to eat every several days after a large kill. It only needs to eat about 11 lbs of meat a day. A similar sized grazer needs to eat many times that amount in grass every day.
So you're not getting less energy from eating predators, it's that the total amount of energy consumed in the food chain up until you eat the predator (which includes everything the prey ate) is far greater than energy contained in the predator itself.
I've known quite a few vegetarians and I can say they have 2 things in common:
1. They looked horrible, like a heroin junky. They had sunken in eyes and were built like a bag of bones.
2. They all thought they looked just *great* and healthier than everyone else.
I frequently hear vegetarians say how they don't eat meat, but they do eat fish.
Fish *is* meat. You are eating the muscle of an animal. Just because it swims instead of walks doesn't mean it's not meat.
Advanced research has found that when you're hungry, you'll tend to eat *anything* that keeps you alive. Who woulda thunk it?
Hmm, did I miss something. Why is it a big deal that some dinosaur ate both meat and veggies. Many animals do this today, including humans. Why would they turn to veggie-only diet then? Well, some people do too - vegetarians, heheh. But jokes aside. Maybe veggies were just easier to get than meat? Maybe many of them ate meat when it was available, though rarely, and they just got 'lucky' finding one with meat.
But as an established predator you can easily compete for potatoes and other plants. What herbivore is going to fight you over food when it can easily become the food by doing so?
From an evolutionary standpoint this is a great strategy which is why it happened. It works well for bears too.
if 180cm, 82kg is small and if running 45 minutes a day is inactive, then why, yes, I am an inactive small person :)
You can't handle the truth.
I've been vegetarian (not vegan) for three years, exercise moderately, and I still have a gut.
I evolved a omnivorous diet from a
herbivorous one because of vitamin
deficiency.
It's more likely the species had split early on and that for some reason (e.g. scarcity of yummy leaves) one of the lines tried their hand at being carnivorous but it ended up not working out for them in the end (indigestion? bad karma?). Then, when they died out, the line that had remained strictly herbivore continued on for some generations afterwards. Thus giving the appearence of going from being a carnivore to a herbivore, when in fact it was the other way around.
...first we find dinosaur meat (well, marrow and stuff) and now vegetarian dinosaurs. Is there a connection? (-:
Silence is the sound of one brain imploding.
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If the fossils were found with a mixtrue of meat and plant matter, that would make them an OMNIVORE...not a vegetarian.
Who cares about the ozone layer?...thanks to CFC's I can write my name......IN CHEESE!!!
Consequence of having a randomly-formed brain, y'see? (-:
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In the case of the RCC, God is actually a problem for the church in that he represents competition for Pope and Magisterium alike.
Despite this, Joseph Ratzinger AKA Pope Benedict XVI has already clarified the RCC position on evolution, and not in a direction you'd like.
By making a few clever guesses based on minimal knowledge of the ongoing power struggles within the RCC, I predicted Ratzinger's papacy at least three years ago. Those guesses include Ratzinger not taking God at his word, either, so his decision actually surprises me, and I look forward to the unfolding of the reasons behind it.
Either way, evolution is not a simple scientific principle. It is an hypothesis which rides over the top of contradicting evidence with an awesome indifference.
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...that some aquatic sorting occurred. The carnivores, being marginally denser, sank faster and/or further on average than the herbivores.
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...that is, pretty much the opposite of what you asked for. Before you write the guy off as an idiot, run the calculations. (-:
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Somewhere along the chain there has to be a vegetarian. No serious food chain goes rocks -> critter -> large predator and of course a food chain consisting of only predators (Barsoom?) isn't going to lat too long.
What did the vegetarians feed on before flowing plants, if not other plants? Connecting a switch away from carnivory with a rise in flowering plants is just insane.
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I'd always wondered what those round, brown things in the box were.
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There you have the scientific proof of devolution!
Actually, the pig comparison might not be accurate - according to the cannibalistic Andean soccer team: "the slight browning of the flesh gave it an immeasurably better flavor, softer than beef but with much the same taste."
Allow me to invite you for lunch and you can find out ;)
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It might have something to do with the cooking method, or the fact that South American soccer players have a different diet to New Guinea highlanders. I'm surprised about the "softer than beef" part, I would have thought soccer players were all tough and stringy...
That said, the highlanders have a longer tradition of cannibalism, so I'm prepared to take their word for it (a good rule: never argue with the angry looking guy holding the spear, he has ways of getting his point across).
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...[cue head-spin] e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g-!
So play nice. (-:
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