The scientists probably just want to study it just for the sake of studying it (we know very little about the deep seas, and discover on average 2 new species with EVERY dive), but no one gives you money to do that. Having a better "purpose" (i.e. economically viable) may be the only way to get funding.
Nope, only some corals utilize zooxanthellate algae. It's estimated that over 2/3 of all coral species do not use algae, do not need sunlight, and live in the deep sea. Huge coral reefs, some of the largest (a huge on off the coast of Norway) live along the continental shelf, which is very deep, past the photic zone.
I'm sorry - I've been arguing for science all week and it's getting exhausting. I don't mean to be rude. Just read the second paragraph:c ) I could use a beer. Or two.
Yeah, the fact that I study fossil and living animals AS PART OF MY CAREER means nothing at all, I'm sure. I wouldn't go up against the things in which you are an expert (or at least studying to be).
Lots of documentaries suck (National Geographic and Discover are going down the tubes) but the BBC has done some great stuff, and I know some of the scientists behind it. Of course this work has been published in peer-reviewed journals, several articles of which I've read, but documentaries remain a good way to dispense science to the public, and I was simply letting people know in case they want to learn more. Telling everyone that they have to read Journal of Zoology in order to understand anything about animals is a sure way to get people hating science even more, and thinking that we're all esoteric assholes. I stand by my recommendation, and think that you are underestimating how I get my information. BBC documentaries are only the entertaining part of it.
Well, I can respect that. I do want to share an interesting bit of research with you however, on the power of sexual selection.
There's this African widowbird, and the male has a very long tail. In order to test whether or not this was sexually selected, the researchers cut the tails of all the male widowbirds. To some, they left them with the shorter tails. To others, they simply reattached the tail (all birds underwent the same cutting treatment, as a control), and to others they attached a double-long tail.
The researchers were then able to observe the birds and monitor how many mates each of them got. The ones with the longest tails receive by far the most mates, and the ones with no tails received none at all. The researchers then added even more feathers to the long-tailed birds, to the point that the birds could no longer fly, and they received the most mates of all!
Studies like this are being done more and more frequently now, and show that sexual selection is an extemely powerful force, and also, these results aren't speculative, they can even be quantified.
P.S. The birds' tails would have grown back the following season, though I can imagine they were confused as hell during the study!
Are you calling me a liar? I just gave you some examples are now you're saying I'm flatout wrong. Sorry, but there's a lot more going on than apes poking sticks into holes. If that's all you know about it, then you should do some reading or at least watch some documentaries. I will recommend the BBC's Life of Birds and thei Life of Mammals. Both taught me a whole lot. If you're seeing something happen, you can probably assume that it is happening. We're not talking about the fossil record here. And if you don't try to learn about these things, you really have no right to tell people they don't happen. Ignorance breeds ignorance.
some eagles prey on monkeys, but mostly big cats and other monkeys. Anyone know of any others? Besides, our ancestors were around bigger scarier critters than those. Current apes have few predators.
Wow, my point was that people like to pick on people who may not know much about a topic, in the hopes that they themselves will be shown to be correct. I'm from Kentucky, and I don't think all Baptists are creationists. I don't care what they believe, because belief and faith are personal things. But if it doesn't follow the processes of science, it cannot be taught in a science class. I pick on no one, I'm only used to defending my own field. I have never called anyone names, but you can bet I have been called horrible things by creationists, and perhaps I ama bit defensive when I think I am speaking to one.
If dolphins indeed picked up a paintbrush and used it themselves, then that would be within what I am talking about. But people teaching a parrot to say some words doesn't count, if you understand what I mean. We can't define their culture, etc. by using our own as the best example. We can't force other animals to imitate us and say that they then have culture.
Dominion over the animals? However you want to make yourself feel better. I appreciate animals most by learning about their innate behaviors, not the ones we have taught them. Nor do I enjoy killing or breeding. I suppose all that is your expertise, but I will say that there are lots of examples of symbiotic relationships. Perhaps ours with animals is more complex, but it's fundamnetally not so different.
OK, I thought you were looking at this a lot bigger than I was, and I learned a lot from reading that and your post. I don't think this applies very well to biological evolution, however, from my perspective. Damn big picture people...:c )
I have taken a lot of evolution classes, but that doesn't make it any less difficult. It's almost no wonder why people don't want to learn it and teachers don't want to teach it, but once you start to figure it out, you see it everywhere, and it makes sense.
Do you have evidence to back that up, or is that just what you want to believe? I listed several critters, and can list more, and I don't see how a bowerbird decorating its bower it has constructed out of sticks, with blue flowers and other blue objects, is unintentional. They are extremely meticulous, and make sure to remove any insect or anything that is obstructing it. This requires a lot of energy. Sure, it is mainly to impress a mate (though sometimes they get so excited about decorating that they don't even notice when a receptive female shows up), but I would argue, and many anthropologists would too, that our art began as a similar purpose.
Also, was I the one who mentioned a dolphin holding a paint brush? That is a ludicrous example, and if I did, it was to say that it does not make sense. Can you counter my other (real) examples?
Regardless of what you want to believe, these things do occur and people study them and find them fascinating, as do I. Your distinctions show a gradation (MORE structured, etc...) and this is not a true distinction. You can't just draw the line at "humans" just because you want to and you have no actual knowledge of what other animals are, in fact, doing. Many of these are, I admit, recent discoveries, because it has been thinking like yours that has prevented people from WANTING to see these things in nature, and believing them when they did see them (scientists are human, after all). I wonder if I told you from where I got this information you would even check it out yourself and try to learn anything about the subject, or will you always tell people that there is a real distinction and hope that they have no counter for it?
Creationists harrass museum gift shop workers, not the actual scientists. Why?
That's a good point, but I think I was thinking smaller, from the perspective of a population or species. There is a historical context to the environment in which a population exists - each population isn't just placed down randomly at a point on the globe. Philosophically, and in the context of the universe, I think I understand what you are saying.
One reason I hate using the words "random" and "chaos" is because they aren't really true - there is order to this, though it is not necessarily "guided" by a higher power - and those terms make people feel uncomfortable. It's unfortunate that our language must sometimes be in preparation for an argument from these people, but on/., I've found that's a necessity. People misunderstand your use of "chaos" as much as they misunderstand my use of the word "theory."
That's true, abstract thought has classicly tended to be a distinctly human trait, but now experiments with crows (the most intelligent of birds) have shown that they too show this. It is hard to test though, and we're just now starting to see things like this in other animals.
I don't want to be misunderstood, however. Higher intelligence is not the goal of a lineage. Lots of critters (not to mention plants) do just fine without much at all, as they have ways of evading danger that we have only recently discovered. Bats aren't that smart, but hey, they have sonar to help them hunt their prey, and that's working good enough for them (though there is an "arms race" between some species of bats and their prey - some moths know how to screw up their sonar).
WE think intelligence is the most important because that's what we have - we lack speed, physical strength, decent sense of smell/hearing, echolocation and sonar, etc. etc. (by natural means, of course). But intelligence is just one way in which things can gain an upper hand. Evolution can't be thought of as a progression from "worms to people," (the old Linnaean system) - we're all just doing what we need to do to survive and reproduce.
That's the "biological species concept," a definition for species that Mayr came up with in the 1950s, I believe. It is one of many working definitons of species. This definiton does not work in all cases, and those exceptions are by far not limited to plants and amphibians. It is difficult to determine exactly what a species is, and your example is one that creationists use to argue that morphologically diverging species will repoduce if you put them in a cage together and force them, thereby in their minds, showing that macroevolution doesn't happen. This is just more idiot ammo, and I woudn't emphasize it if I were you, as speciation is much more complex than that.
You keep asking the same questions, and I keep trying to respond to you. These difference you talk about are ARBITRARY. Scientists don't look at them and come up with hypotheses of why they are different becasue there ARE examples of this in other animals! I also talk about how we forked off from our ancestors, at least in one respect. The answer to your question can, and HAS, filled books, so maybe you ought to read one.
Please read my other posts. I'm getting exhausted trying to follow you and repeat the same damn things.
If people are thinking phylogenetically, they may mention that apes are monkeys in the same way that apes are fish (monophyletic clades). Just something to be prepared for.
Your typical creationist however, will not have a clue as to what I just said, so carry on.
Hey, you're confusing the ID people. Read my comment above. You're right in saying that mutations are random, but evolution is about a hell of a lot more than mutations. The direction in which it goes is anything but random.
Psst... It's called sexual selection, an often underestimated evolutionary pressure. Lots of artsy things that animals do (humpback whales singing, birds/insects constructing way too elaborate nests to impress a mate, bowerbirds showing off their collections of flowers and junk) are to attract the opposite sex.
Well, the chaos thing doesn't work for a lot of people studying it. Evolution is not random. Mutations are random. The processes of evolution require that some mutations are more beneficial than others, and adaptation occurs when a population alters to the point of becoming better adapted to its environment. This may be morphologically or behaviorally. Evolution has a lot of genetic components (it wouldn't happen at all without genetic variation), but the environment is what the population has to adapt to. Remember, evolution acts on the level of species or populations, not at the level of genome, and it is anything but random.
You said something silly and then didn't expect anyone to want to talk about it? When you bring up a fallacy abotu what some of us do as a job, yeah, we want to correct your mistake.
Given the two types of evolution we teach, how do they explain the differences in how humans forked from this common ancestor?
I wonder how well you listen to people who answer this question for you. Micro- and Macro-evolution are also kind of arbitrary, and evolution isn't really broken up like this, regardless of what the ID people say.
Erect stance was one of the primary differences, and the HYPOTHESIS is that the areas in which humans were inhabiting were becoming more arid (there is geological evidence of this) and dense forests were becoming open grasslands. As human ancestors, like all primates, were somewhat of a prey animal, they had to stand frequently to scan for predators. This is the classic hypothesis of why our ancestors started to stand, and there is a species of monkey that lives in grasslands now (forget what they're called though) that are standing erect as well. Other primates live in forests, and erect stance, shorter arms, smaller tail, would be hindrances to climbing around in trees.
The point is, this is a hypothesis, based on real evidence of paleoclimate, anatomy of the fossil ancestors, as well as observing those monkeys who appear to be going through a similar process now. With more evidence, this may be strengthened. This is how science works, and it's working pretty well.
An anthro person could cover other divergent morphologies if you're interested, but erect posture is perhaps the most important. Watch the last couple episodes of the BBC's The Life of Mammals if you want to learn more about human evolution and what's going on with monkeys right now. Or not, if you want to pretend like no one can answer your questions.
Read my above comment. We are NOT the only species to develop such things, and ants are a pretty bad example to begin with. Birds, primates, elephants, whales and dolphins in particular have developed art, culture, and language, though perhaps not in ways you would view it. No, perhaps they don't mix pigments and put paint on a canvas, or speak in perfect English, but it's there, or at the very LEAST the beginnings of it. If you don't want to see it happening because it makes you feel faithless towards your deity, then fine. But fortunately, scientists are all about trying to see things for how they actually are.
Also, please don't mix your goofy statistics and try to make a point about evolution. Physical evidence trumps all, despite how badly you don't want to see it.
Culture - traditions that are passed down over time. These are taught, and are not done by instinct. There are several bird species, as well as primates and orcas, that have "cultures" distinct from other populations of the same species. Some orca pods have learned (and taught their offspring) how to kill seals by beaching themselves. Other orcas don't do this. Similar things happen with dolphins, tool-using birds, Japanese macaques and other primates, and the list goes on. Umm, no, they don't get fancy headdresses and dance around, but where are you going to draw the line? Arbitrarily? Psychologically, these things are culture.
Art - Bowerbirds. Look them up. Yeah, maybe it's for sexual purposes, but maybe our own art began that way as well. Several birds have taken art to an extreme to the point that sex does not appear to be the main goal.
Language - birds of the same species have different dialects in different regions. Dolphins have sounds that represent names of individuals, each name being a part of the mother's name. It's true that we don't know exactly how animals communicate, but I doubt you would say that "dolphins are different from everything else" and mean this as a point in denying the processes of evolution for that species simply because they use echolocation.
These "people do this and animals don't" never hold up, because the same distinctions can be made with EVERY organism. You are creating arbitrary boundaries.
So now you argue that someone that believes in something that can't be proven is a "conspiracy theorist" yet someone that doesn't believe in something that can't be proven is...also a conspiracy theorist.
Yep, both true. If it's something that can never be proven, then it is something for which there is no actual evidence. Therefore it's not a scientific hypothesis, it's just a "belief." It's easy to argue against anyone who uses a belief to attempt to stand up against that which has actual evidence. You can "believe" anything you want, just don't try to pass it off as true when you have no evidence for it.
Oh, and yes I read that Van Allen belt crap. You guys will just come up with just about anything, won't you? It dangerous, not impossible, to go through it. Maybe you should reread it yourself, and put your beliefs aside. That's what scientists have to do all the time in order to get anything done. Personal belief does not = evidence
You're right, in that the rate of evolution changes. However, that paper by Eldridge and Gould on Punctuated Equlibrium (Gould was not the primary author, though he made the idea well-known later) was based on fossil evidence. Due to the incompleteness of the fossil record, "fits and starts" seem to typify most evolution! Whenever the fossil record seems more complete (some marine strata), evolution seems to progress much more gradually rather than in fits and starts. It is also unclear as to what adaptive radiations are, exactly - whether or not cladogenesis exists at all is debateable.
This is why there's so much debate as to the rates of evolution - people who study fossils see much different patterns than people who study extant taxa. This may be a time artefact (i.e., we've only been observing evolution in extant taxa for about 100, 150 years or so, whereas we have 3.8 By of time in the fossil record, albeit incomplete) but my point is, our resolutions are very different.
That said, I will get back onto topic by saying that I have no clue what will happen to migratory birds during a magnetic reversal. My guess is that they will continue to do what they're used to doing year after year, and will adjust to the polarity changes eventually. The species that go extinct will be those where only one generation migrates (they only live a year or so, and so can't rely on past experience of where to go), but these usually happen to be weedy species that may be able to adjust better than others anyway, due to the shorter generation times (usually = faster evolution).
Except that the "biological species concept" is outdated, despite its acceptance 50 years ago. There doesn't seem to be any one species definition that fits for everything, and I think Parent's point was that the idea of species is outdated. "Species" is a Linnaean concept that goes way back, certainly before evolution was understood at all. Transitions between species were unthought of. We are trying to find definitons and distinctions that work, but with all the complex components that go into speciation events, it's very difficult. But why study something which is understood completely? This is an exciting, collaborative field of study, and has grown with the cooperation of people who study fossils as well as people who study extant life.
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The scientists probably just want to study it just for the sake of studying it (we know very little about the deep seas, and discover on average 2 new species with EVERY dive), but no one gives you money to do that. Having a better "purpose" (i.e. economically viable) may be the only way to get funding.
Nope, only some corals utilize zooxanthellate algae. It's estimated that over 2/3 of all coral species do not use algae, do not need sunlight, and live in the deep sea. Huge coral reefs, some of the largest (a huge on off the coast of Norway) live along the continental shelf, which is very deep, past the photic zone.
I'm sorry - I've been arguing for science all week and it's getting exhausting. I don't mean to be rude. Just read the second paragraph :c ) I could use a beer. Or two.
Yeah, the fact that I study fossil and living animals AS PART OF MY CAREER means nothing at all, I'm sure. I wouldn't go up against the things in which you are an expert (or at least studying to be).
Lots of documentaries suck (National Geographic and Discover are going down the tubes) but the BBC has done some great stuff, and I know some of the scientists behind it. Of course this work has been published in peer-reviewed journals, several articles of which I've read, but documentaries remain a good way to dispense science to the public, and I was simply letting people know in case they want to learn more. Telling everyone that they have to read Journal of Zoology in order to understand anything about animals is a sure way to get people hating science even more, and thinking that we're all esoteric assholes. I stand by my recommendation, and think that you are underestimating how I get my information. BBC documentaries are only the entertaining part of it.
Well, I can respect that. I do want to share an interesting bit of research with you however, on the power of sexual selection.
There's this African widowbird, and the male has a very long tail. In order to test whether or not this was sexually selected, the researchers cut the tails of all the male widowbirds. To some, they left them with the shorter tails. To others, they simply reattached the tail (all birds underwent the same cutting treatment, as a control), and to others they attached a double-long tail.
The researchers were then able to observe the birds and monitor how many mates each of them got. The ones with the longest tails receive by far the most mates, and the ones with no tails received none at all. The researchers then added even more feathers to the long-tailed birds, to the point that the birds could no longer fly, and they received the most mates of all!
Studies like this are being done more and more frequently now, and show that sexual selection is an extemely powerful force, and also, these results aren't speculative, they can even be quantified.
P.S. The birds' tails would have grown back the following season, though I can imagine they were confused as hell during the study!
Are you calling me a liar? I just gave you some examples are now you're saying I'm flatout wrong. Sorry, but there's a lot more going on than apes poking sticks into holes. If that's all you know about it, then you should do some reading or at least watch some documentaries. I will recommend the BBC's Life of Birds and thei Life of Mammals. Both taught me a whole lot. If you're seeing something happen, you can probably assume that it is happening. We're not talking about the fossil record here. And if you don't try to learn about these things, you really have no right to tell people they don't happen. Ignorance breeds ignorance.
some eagles prey on monkeys, but mostly big cats and other monkeys. Anyone know of any others? Besides, our ancestors were around bigger scarier critters than those. Current apes have few predators.
Wow, my point was that people like to pick on people who may not know much about a topic, in the hopes that they themselves will be shown to be correct. I'm from Kentucky, and I don't think all Baptists are creationists. I don't care what they believe, because belief and faith are personal things. But if it doesn't follow the processes of science, it cannot be taught in a science class. I pick on no one, I'm only used to defending my own field. I have never called anyone names, but you can bet I have been called horrible things by creationists, and perhaps I ama bit defensive when I think I am speaking to one.
If dolphins indeed picked up a paintbrush and used it themselves, then that would be within what I am talking about. But people teaching a parrot to say some words doesn't count, if you understand what I mean. We can't define their culture, etc. by using our own as the best example. We can't force other animals to imitate us and say that they then have culture.
Dominion over the animals? However you want to make yourself feel better. I appreciate animals most by learning about their innate behaviors, not the ones we have taught them. Nor do I enjoy killing or breeding. I suppose all that is your expertise, but I will say that there are lots of examples of symbiotic relationships. Perhaps ours with animals is more complex, but it's fundamnetally not so different.
OK, I thought you were looking at this a lot bigger than I was, and I learned a lot from reading that and your post. I don't think this applies very well to biological evolution, however, from my perspective. Damn big picture people... :c )
I have taken a lot of evolution classes, but that doesn't make it any less difficult. It's almost no wonder why people don't want to learn it and teachers don't want to teach it, but once you start to figure it out, you see it everywhere, and it makes sense.
Do you have evidence to back that up, or is that just what you want to believe? I listed several critters, and can list more, and I don't see how a bowerbird decorating its bower it has constructed out of sticks, with blue flowers and other blue objects, is unintentional. They are extremely meticulous, and make sure to remove any insect or anything that is obstructing it. This requires a lot of energy. Sure, it is mainly to impress a mate (though sometimes they get so excited about decorating that they don't even notice when a receptive female shows up), but I would argue, and many anthropologists would too, that our art began as a similar purpose.
Also, was I the one who mentioned a dolphin holding a paint brush? That is a ludicrous example, and if I did, it was to say that it does not make sense. Can you counter my other (real) examples?
Regardless of what you want to believe, these things do occur and people study them and find them fascinating, as do I. Your distinctions show a gradation (MORE structured, etc...) and this is not a true distinction. You can't just draw the line at "humans" just because you want to and you have no actual knowledge of what other animals are, in fact, doing. Many of these are, I admit, recent discoveries, because it has been thinking like yours that has prevented people from WANTING to see these things in nature, and believing them when they did see them (scientists are human, after all). I wonder if I told you from where I got this information you would even check it out yourself and try to learn anything about the subject, or will you always tell people that there is a real distinction and hope that they have no counter for it?
Creationists harrass museum gift shop workers, not the actual scientists. Why?
That's a good point, but I think I was thinking smaller, from the perspective of a population or species. There is a historical context to the environment in which a population exists - each population isn't just placed down randomly at a point on the globe. Philosophically, and in the context of the universe, I think I understand what you are saying.
/., I've found that's a necessity. People misunderstand your use of "chaos" as much as they misunderstand my use of the word "theory."
One reason I hate using the words "random" and "chaos" is because they aren't really true - there is order to this, though it is not necessarily "guided" by a higher power - and those terms make people feel uncomfortable. It's unfortunate that our language must sometimes be in preparation for an argument from these people, but on
That's true, abstract thought has classicly tended to be a distinctly human trait, but now experiments with crows (the most intelligent of birds) have shown that they too show this. It is hard to test though, and we're just now starting to see things like this in other animals.
I don't want to be misunderstood, however. Higher intelligence is not the goal of a lineage. Lots of critters (not to mention plants) do just fine without much at all, as they have ways of evading danger that we have only recently discovered. Bats aren't that smart, but hey, they have sonar to help them hunt their prey, and that's working good enough for them (though there is an "arms race" between some species of bats and their prey - some moths know how to screw up their sonar).
WE think intelligence is the most important because that's what we have - we lack speed, physical strength, decent sense of smell/hearing, echolocation and sonar, etc. etc. (by natural means, of course). But intelligence is just one way in which things can gain an upper hand. Evolution can't be thought of as a progression from "worms to people," (the old Linnaean system) - we're all just doing what we need to do to survive and reproduce.
That's the "biological species concept," a definition for species that Mayr came up with in the 1950s, I believe. It is one of many working definitons of species. This definiton does not work in all cases, and those exceptions are by far not limited to plants and amphibians. It is difficult to determine exactly what a species is, and your example is one that creationists use to argue that morphologically diverging species will repoduce if you put them in a cage together and force them, thereby in their minds, showing that macroevolution doesn't happen. This is just more idiot ammo, and I woudn't emphasize it if I were you, as speciation is much more complex than that.
You keep asking the same questions, and I keep trying to respond to you. These difference you talk about are ARBITRARY. Scientists don't look at them and come up with hypotheses of why they are different becasue there ARE examples of this in other animals! I also talk about how we forked off from our ancestors, at least in one respect. The answer to your question can, and HAS, filled books, so maybe you ought to read one.
Please read my other posts. I'm getting exhausted trying to follow you and repeat the same damn things.
If people are thinking phylogenetically, they may mention that apes are monkeys in the same way that apes are fish (monophyletic clades). Just something to be prepared for.
Your typical creationist however, will not have a clue as to what I just said, so carry on.
Hey, you're confusing the ID people. Read my comment above. You're right in saying that mutations are random, but evolution is about a hell of a lot more than mutations. The direction in which it goes is anything but random.
Psst... It's called sexual selection, an often underestimated evolutionary pressure. Lots of artsy things that animals do (humpback whales singing, birds/insects constructing way too elaborate nests to impress a mate, bowerbirds showing off their collections of flowers and junk) are to attract the opposite sex.
Well, the chaos thing doesn't work for a lot of people studying it. Evolution is not random. Mutations are random. The processes of evolution require that some mutations are more beneficial than others, and adaptation occurs when a population alters to the point of becoming better adapted to its environment. This may be morphologically or behaviorally. Evolution has a lot of genetic components (it wouldn't happen at all without genetic variation), but the environment is what the population has to adapt to. Remember, evolution acts on the level of species or populations, not at the level of genome, and it is anything but random.
You said something silly and then didn't expect anyone to want to talk about it? When you bring up a fallacy abotu what some of us do as a job, yeah, we want to correct your mistake. Given the two types of evolution we teach, how do they explain the differences in how humans forked from this common ancestor?
I wonder how well you listen to people who answer this question for you. Micro- and Macro-evolution are also kind of arbitrary, and evolution isn't really broken up like this, regardless of what the ID people say.
Erect stance was one of the primary differences, and the HYPOTHESIS is that the areas in which humans were inhabiting were becoming more arid (there is geological evidence of this) and dense forests were becoming open grasslands. As human ancestors, like all primates, were somewhat of a prey animal, they had to stand frequently to scan for predators. This is the classic hypothesis of why our ancestors started to stand, and there is a species of monkey that lives in grasslands now (forget what they're called though) that are standing erect as well. Other primates live in forests, and erect stance, shorter arms, smaller tail, would be hindrances to climbing around in trees.
The point is, this is a hypothesis, based on real evidence of paleoclimate, anatomy of the fossil ancestors, as well as observing those monkeys who appear to be going through a similar process now. With more evidence, this may be strengthened. This is how science works, and it's working pretty well.
An anthro person could cover other divergent morphologies if you're interested, but erect posture is perhaps the most important. Watch the last couple episodes of the BBC's The Life of Mammals if you want to learn more about human evolution and what's going on with monkeys right now. Or not, if you want to pretend like no one can answer your questions.
Read my above comment. We are NOT the only species to develop such things, and ants are a pretty bad example to begin with. Birds, primates, elephants, whales and dolphins in particular have developed art, culture, and language, though perhaps not in ways you would view it. No, perhaps they don't mix pigments and put paint on a canvas, or speak in perfect English, but it's there, or at the very LEAST the beginnings of it. If you don't want to see it happening because it makes you feel faithless towards your deity, then fine. But fortunately, scientists are all about trying to see things for how they actually are.
Also, please don't mix your goofy statistics and try to make a point about evolution. Physical evidence trumps all, despite how badly you don't want to see it.
Read a science book.
Culture - traditions that are passed down over time. These are taught, and are not done by instinct. There are several bird species, as well as primates and orcas, that have "cultures" distinct from other populations of the same species. Some orca pods have learned (and taught their offspring) how to kill seals by beaching themselves. Other orcas don't do this. Similar things happen with dolphins, tool-using birds, Japanese macaques and other primates, and the list goes on. Umm, no, they don't get fancy headdresses and dance around, but where are you going to draw the line? Arbitrarily? Psychologically, these things are culture.
Art - Bowerbirds. Look them up. Yeah, maybe it's for sexual purposes, but maybe our own art began that way as well. Several birds have taken art to an extreme to the point that sex does not appear to be the main goal.
Language - birds of the same species have different dialects in different regions. Dolphins have sounds that represent names of individuals, each name being a part of the mother's name. It's true that we don't know exactly how animals communicate, but I doubt you would say that "dolphins are different from everything else" and mean this as a point in denying the processes of evolution for that species simply because they use echolocation.
These "people do this and animals don't" never hold up, because the same distinctions can be made with EVERY organism. You are creating arbitrary boundaries.
So now you argue that someone that believes in something that can't be proven is a "conspiracy theorist" yet someone that doesn't believe in something that can't be proven is...also a conspiracy theorist.
Yep, both true. If it's something that can never be proven, then it is something for which there is no actual evidence. Therefore it's not a scientific hypothesis, it's just a "belief." It's easy to argue against anyone who uses a belief to attempt to stand up against that which has actual evidence. You can "believe" anything you want, just don't try to pass it off as true when you have no evidence for it.
Oh, and yes I read that Van Allen belt crap. You guys will just come up with just about anything, won't you? It dangerous, not impossible, to go through it. Maybe you should reread it yourself, and put your beliefs aside. That's what scientists have to do all the time in order to get anything done. Personal belief does not = evidence
Only 4% pooping and 8% eating? Maybe kids aren't as bad as I thought...
You're right, in that the rate of evolution changes. However, that paper by Eldridge and Gould on Punctuated Equlibrium (Gould was not the primary author, though he made the idea well-known later) was based on fossil evidence. Due to the incompleteness of the fossil record, "fits and starts" seem to typify most evolution! Whenever the fossil record seems more complete (some marine strata), evolution seems to progress much more gradually rather than in fits and starts. It is also unclear as to what adaptive radiations are, exactly - whether or not cladogenesis exists at all is debateable.
This is why there's so much debate as to the rates of evolution - people who study fossils see much different patterns than people who study extant taxa. This may be a time artefact (i.e., we've only been observing evolution in extant taxa for about 100, 150 years or so, whereas we have 3.8 By of time in the fossil record, albeit incomplete) but my point is, our resolutions are very different.
That said, I will get back onto topic by saying that I have no clue what will happen to migratory birds during a magnetic reversal. My guess is that they will continue to do what they're used to doing year after year, and will adjust to the polarity changes eventually. The species that go extinct will be those where only one generation migrates (they only live a year or so, and so can't rely on past experience of where to go), but these usually happen to be weedy species that may be able to adjust better than others anyway, due to the shorter generation times (usually = faster evolution).
Except that the "biological species concept" is outdated, despite its acceptance 50 years ago. There doesn't seem to be any one species definition that fits for everything, and I think Parent's point was that the idea of species is outdated. "Species" is a Linnaean concept that goes way back, certainly before evolution was understood at all. Transitions between species were unthought of. We are trying to find definitons and distinctions that work, but with all the complex components that go into speciation events, it's very difficult. But why study something which is understood completely? This is an exciting, collaborative field of study, and has grown with the cooperation of people who study fossils as well as people who study extant life.