Mokele

Serious, Ephedrine *alone* has been linked to numerous deaths. It is not safe. Keep taking this and you will have serious, possibly life-threatening, medical complications, I guarantee it.

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Look closely, Moontanman. He's holding the ruler much, much closer to the camera than the tank. You can get an idea of the scale by looking at the tank stand the stuff around it (looks like a good 75 gallon to me).

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Not so far as I know.

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Or, if you're in a coastal area where there's fishing, scrounge the shucked oyster and clam shells. Or any other mollusc shell, really.

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Actually, not entirely, as it highlights one of the most important principles in biology, namely geometric scaling relations. If you shrink an animal to half it's normal length, all surface areas (muscle cross section, skin area, etc) will be 1/4 and all volumes (mass) with be 1/8th. This means, gram-for-gram, an half-sized animal has twice as much muscle power. So technically, it's an accurate analogy, and merely illustrates the vast difference a bit of scaling can make in proportional capabilities. Mokele

Nah, I've never been to antartica. And actually, penguins, various fish offshore, and such live there. It actually *used* to be tolerable, with a climate not much different from the UK.

According to the Guam Tourism Dept, mount Machao on the northern end of the island is the tallest mountain in the world. But they're measuring from the bottom of the Marianas Trench, just offshore of it.

Just like there are carnivorous plants, there are carnivorous sponges, which trap passing prey with tentacles and engulf them, eventually digesting them. As with carnivory in plants, the sponges resort to this method in environments where their primary nutrient source (particulat matter filtered from the water) is not availible in sufficient quantities. Mokele

All baby armadillos in a litter are geneticly identical, derived from a single fertilized egg. Armadillos are also the only other animal which can contract leprosy.

The problem is our lack of knowledge of what the future holds. Clearly we will have the *capacity* to consciously alter our own DNA (as a species if not as individuals), but will we use it at all, or if so, how? How will this affect evolution? Is it even fair to call it evolution? Since we got this by evolving big brains, it could be argued that even genetic engineering is a highly derived type of evolution. Alternatively, because it's so different and under conscious control, it could be claimed to be totally different. Half the battle is terminology. I have little doubt that human form and genetics will change over time (just look at how many people are unsatified with theirs), but the question is *how* such changes will occur, and how this applies to evolution. Mokele

Things get sections because they're needed, not based on the field's validity. We're missing lots of sections simply because we have nobody asking questions about that subject and nobody who can answer them. The best way to get the ball rolling on getting a new subject area is to actively contribute threads and posts in that area in the existing forum structure. Mokele

A few quick comments: There isn't a simple, 1:1 result of "if you have this gene, you will do this" in most cases, and evnironment does play a role, correct. But there's a difference between a gene "causing a behavior" and "causing differences in behavior". Any behavior needs nerves, muscles, etc to be carried out, and thus cannot be the result of any one gene. *But*, differences in behavior *can* be caused by a single genetic difference. An excellent example occurs in fruit fly larvae. Some larve will move very little in a nutrient plate, others with roam widely. Not only is the difference genetic, it's been traced to a single gene that displays classic mendelian dominant/recessive interactions. Anything shaped by natural selection *must* be heritable, either geneticly or culturally. A behavior that is not transmitted, but leads to reproductive success, will vanish, regardless of whether it is genetic or cultural in origin. While, of course, not *all* behavior can be explained genetically, certain behaviors with certain characteristics seem to be best explained by genetics. The face humans make when angry is pretty much the same as that of all mammals. This makes it likely that it is genetic in nature, rather than cultural. The occurance of a behavior among all primates or all apes also makes this likely, though less clear-cut. Given the occurence of kissing in other species of ape, I'm inclined towards a genetic view. But then again, I'm inclined towards a genetic view for *most* human behavior, as I don't think we're as smart or rational as we think we are. Mokele

Also, lip-to-lip contact is seen as a social and pair bonding ritual in chimps and bonobos, including wild ones. Mokele