Moontanman

The talk went quite well, thanks for asking, my audience was enthralled by the live paddlefish I brought as a prop. Most of the disagreements center around commercial exploitation of paddlefish but some are about paddlefish behavior. Paddlefish behavior is not well known, much of it is based on assumptions rather than observation. The main problem is between paddlefish ranchers and bass fishermen, bass fishermen think the paddlefish compete with largemouth bass for food so they oppose stocking paddlefish in lakes and reservoirs even though in many cases this would just be restoring paddlefish to their native range. The bass fishermen have millions of dollars to help them influence the state governments since they pay fees and licenses. paddlefish ranchers are relatively poor and have little influence. sadly the behavior i have observed backs up the bass fishermen who I think have far too much influence on what fish are stocked where, to the extent that large mouth bass are often stocked far outside their native range to satisfy the fishermen while oppose paddlefish being repatriated to their natural range. I have doubts about paddlefish being an effect predator of small fish or even competing with small forage fish for plankton since paddlefish are pelagic and would seldom feed in the enclosed spaces baby fish or forage fish feed. So far my observation of paddlefish eating other fish is explosive in this small arena, also i have yet to observe other assumed paddlefish behaviors like using their paddle to stir up the bottom sediment so they can feed on small bethnic crustaceans. They avoid the bottom almost absolutely staying in the mid to upper regions of the water. i think my observations of paddlefish eating other fish might be an artifact of confinement but it is difficult to really be sure. My own observation seems to indicate the paddle is used for more than sensory input and is probably used to create lift when the fish opens it's huge mouth to filter feed to keep from nose diving from the drag created by the open mouth. i have also observed they quickly catch on to being confined and do not beat themselves to death against the sides of their container as "common knowledge" has always claimed. I have also seen aggressive/domination type behavior that mirrors the warning behavior of sharks when they encounter each other. Only one marine biologist showed up for my talk but he was impressed by my observations and is setting up a large aquarium so he can try and observe them as well. I will be donating one to him and three more to the local state run public aquarium at Fort Fisher NC. I almost have the 75 gallon tank set up for the other four i intend to keep for further observation... I also have so ideas about the similarity of the electro-sensory mechanisms of the paddle and the sensors of sharks.

There are many different species of stingray, most are no more closely related than a human is to a cow, Dasyatis sabina is a distinct species of stingray in the genus Dasyatis, the freshwater version is not yet a distinct species but it is moving in that direction since the main population cannot live out their entire lives in freshwater, there are many genus of stingray, some so far removed they have no more in common with each other than a human has with a platypus, your assertion that a stingray is a stingray shows your total ignorance of the subject of species, speciation, evolution and what it means.... Please point out any false claims i have made and I will either retract them or show you they are correct, don't just make claims of my lack of veracity.... Emilio, tell me what Dasyatis sabina would have to become for you to consider it new species? I'd really like to know your thoughts on this....

This Saturday August 21 is the third annual "Go Topless Day"! Will you participate? http://www.thefrisky.com/post/246-will-you-take-it-all-off-on-topless-saturday/

This makes no sense what so ever.... BTW there are several different species of lungfish but you have already stated you do not believe species mean anything... There are lots of fish too, again you make no point what so ever... The lung fish alive today are obviously not ancestors of anything, you are assuming things that have no real basis in reality and lungs did not spring into existence with the complex structures you seem to demand, ZAP! is not part of evolution... This is totally false, it is entirely possible for a group of animals to split off from the main group and become a new species over time with both species still living but as i said you have already asserted that you don't believe in species. A stingray is a stingray.... is your own words and is totally false.... Why would you say this, what makes you believe such tripe? This is taken completely out of context, species is an artifact of human design that allows us to keep track of different animals, all species are just the latest version of that animal. No, instinct has evolved with animals that exhibit certain behaviors surviving and the ones who do not not surviving, the instinct is part of the natural behaviors of the animal it does not have to be learned or thought about. Only in the minds of people who desperately need to believe in something that is a total lie. No, no animal sprung up with lungs from an animal with no lungs, behaviors/instincts evolved along with the animals as they needed them. The tendency to gasp for air evolved from the natural tendency of fish to try and breath while out of water. I don't see any point in trying to explain this but primitive fish gulp air to neutralize their buoyancy, this is where swim bladders and eventually lungs came from the instinct to gulp air came before lungs not after. Evolution usually occurs from modifying adaptations or behaviors that already exist for another purpose. YEC=DNKSFS

The electric eel much like other electric fish fire their electrical organ continuously at a low level, only ramping up the field when it wants to shock a fish or other creature. The organ generates electricity as needed all the time, an electric eel can fire at a level powerful enough to kill over a hundred times with out running out of energy, it's continuous navigational field is firing all the time.... the individual firings are so close together they sound like a buzz when converted to sound waves.... the buzz generally never stops it just speeds up and slows down....

I think experiments would have to be done to confirm or deny your belief and I am pretty sure they have been done, the field can be measured or even heard by converting it to sound, the amperage is as important as the voltage and electric fish can indeed generate muscle contractions from a distance for sure...

Good question, I have always looked at it from the stand point of an electrical field and when the lines of the field are cut by prey or an enemy the eel ramps up the field and this results in extreme muscle contractions in the victim. When an elephant-nose fish, mormyrid, uses it's electricity as a means of aggression it flicks it's trunk in the direction of the object of it's aggression and the victim jumps like it's been shocked, almost like it is generating an electrical wave. I know that electric catfish can make you tingle or simply shock you causing muscle contractions, I've never been shocked by an electric eel.... I'm quite certain no ions are released into the water... But the fewer ions in the water, salts, the more current is necessary to generate the field, electric marine rays only generate a 100 volts or so but can knock you for a loop... electric eels live in water that can be quite soft and has few ions so it has to generate a much stronger field. The field of electric fish can be converted to sound by a simple device and each fish has it's own sound, a peculiar buzzing to rapid fire clicks...

The modern ozone layer as we know it is thought to have come from oxygen generated by cyanobacteria. Some photosynthetic bacteria do not release oxygen and they are thought to predate the ones that do. I personally think that some was probably generated by disassociation of water by UV light in the upper atmosphere. So how does this apply to the earth having oceans?

Electric eels are not my personal cup of tea but mormyrids are which use electricity in a similar manner to navigate and communicate with each other, many other fish use electricity on a smaller scale. Mormyrids do not hunt with electricity but I've observed them using their electricity as a means of aggression against other fishes. The electric fish creates a electric field around it's body and anything that comes in contact with the field distorts the field and the fish can use this effect to navigate and to sense the presence of each other, other fish and obstacles. Mormyrids have a larger brain to body ratio than humans, they interact with each other in complex ways not completely understood. Mormyrids use this effect to maintain position in schools in very black or muddy water. Most electric fish are functionally blind. Electric eels can also use this electricity to shock other creatures that come within range. This wiki link explains it in more detail than i can... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_eel

I'm giving a talk tonight at the local University (UNCW Marine Center) about the paddlefish, I have 20 minutes alloted to me, I'm taking one of the paddlefish with me in a cooler as a visual aid, I've generated some local interest in my paddlefish, at least one PHD of marine biology is going to be there along with a couple grad students and 15 or 20 hobbyists. I can talk for hours about almost anything that interests me but this time it's a little bit different. I'm presenting some new info that isn't being received very well in some circles, pet theories being stepped on, that sort of thing. Many of my observations directly contradict long held beliefs about these fish, wish me luck guys!

Don't get your panties in a knot rigney, all I wanted was to see your thought processes, I have shown you mine now show me yours.

I've had three cats that figured out that if they din't run from the basset hounds the hounds weren't interested in them. They often slept with the bassets, but anything that ran would be chased and when the hounds were excited by the chase the animal was in trouble...

I have to disagree with that, we have some pretty good theories about the formation of the moon, far better than the ideas when the question was first asked... The impact theory is the still the leading one but a new capture possibility might have some promise. No there is real reason to think that plate tectonics requires a nearly Earth sized or larger planet, Venus doesn't seem to have plate tectonics and neither does Mars. oceans probably help the Earth's plate tectonics but the mass of the planet does have a huge effect. The impact theory of the moons formation gives us a pretty good handle on the land sea area problem, not to mention the extra density of the Earth the less dense Moon. Could you expand on that, it sounds interesting... Why would ozone have an effect on the water content of the Earth?

So India is as full of it (pop culture) as the USA, how sad i would have thought the culture of India would have been much deeper than that. As for following the "movie stars like a pathetic puppy i agree... well except for maybe Jennifer Love Hewitt just kidding, some famous people seem to be reasonably intelligent but many couldn't find their ass in the dark with both hands and a flashlight.... i'd like to move to France, great culture, great people and a great language....

I underwent a couple years of intense acupuncture therapy and it was..... bullshit.. but the woman who did it was very good looking and always wore a short skirt and low cut blouse so it was fun but I seriously saw no real benefit from it....

Urine? or Mine? I doubt it would hurt you to drink your own urine, i know some Native Americans thought it helpful to drink the mornings first urine but I see no reason to do so and no research that really supports this but like i always say, "what ever floats your boat"....

I have seen some aggression in labs, I always figured it was the result of poor breeding, many dog breeds suffer from poor breeding in these days of puppy mills and inbreeding in backyards. I prefer a dog with a little aggression, i don't want a dog that goes looking for trouble but if he finds I want him to be able to respond to it. I have a basset hound now you could skin alive with a rusty knife and he would just cry and howl... My basset hounds were always very protective of my children and would never allow strange adults in the yard but they never every looked twice at neighborhood kids. Once two pit bulls attacked my son on the side walk in front of my house and my basset hound pushed a chain link fence gate apart to get to the them to defend my child and he ran both the pit bulls off. He was a pretty special case when it came to basset hounds, (he weighed 90 pounds and had very little fat, almost too big to be a basset hound) or even dogs, one of those once in a life time type dogs, very smart very strong and very protective of anything he thought belonged to me. I had another red-bone hunting hound that though the had to drag everything i touched up onto my deck and pile it in front of the door, he destroyed several prize bonsai trees doing this but he was a sweet dog and very smart as well. (one morning i went out side after splitting a load of fire wood the previous day to find it all piled in front of my back door.) I've seen this type of behavior to varying degrees in many dogs both in my bassets and other dogs, intelligence in dogs is very hard to measure, some dogs are smart but have little desire to please anyone but themselves and bassets tend to be in that category, Labs seem to be at the opposite extreme and tend to live to please their masters but as I indicated any dog can suffer from poor breeding and all dogs are different.

That's a reasonable question for sure, most sources seem to think the formation of the oceans only took a few million years at most to form and land was indeed rare at first. If the collision that formed the moon is a realistic view of how the moon formed then the ocean probably reformed very fast after the impact and that collision could be what keep the Earth from being a water planet with oceans miles deep and no land at all. (much of the water would escaped into space during the impact event and subsequent reformation of the earth, for a few hundred to a thousand years the earth may have had a gaseous rock atmosphere) This ocean was probably very close to being as salty as it is now, (salt is recycled by plate tectonics) and a very steamy atmosphere could provide some protection from UV via UV breaking water into hydrogen and oxygen high in the atmosphere but how much real protection it offered is debatable.

It's quite simple, not to mention totally wrong.... you are about as confusing as tic tac toe and about as predictable... And I have the center square... Again you show a profound ignorence of both biology and evolution not to mention a total lack of problem solving skills, you really don't have a clue do you? Please show your evidence of this assertion... or more to the point why is that a problem for fish evolving into amphibians? Zap? "More Bounce to the ounce?" Nothing goes Zap, WTF do you mean ZAP? magical thinking does not apply to science.... Again you show that you are really drinking the koolaid, do you dance and shout while you handle rattle snakes too? Diaphragms came much later, this has no bearing on the problem what so ever... Bullshit begets more bullshit yet again.... I really don't know whether I should laugh histerically or cry, why are you here? oh wait, my troll detector is glowing brightly in the deep violet YEC=DKNSFS

Terrible incident not involving Glen Beck.... http://www.theonion.com/video/victim-in-fatal-car-accident-tragically-not-glenn,14380/

I know UFOs are not exactly a popular subject here but J. Allen Hynek, toward the end of his career come to the conclusion that inter-dimensional travel had to be considered a real possibility for at least some UFOs...

Any dog can be a danger, i have basset hounds, hard to find a dog with a friendlier disposition but my absolute favorite one who saved my son from possibly serious injury and loved everyone tore off my lower lip when i unexpectedly got in his face. Any dog can be dangerous, they can also be life savers and the best friend you can ever have but they have to be taught discipline (not by beating them either) and you have to respect their boundaries. I love my basset hounds, I've had seven of them over the last 34 years but i know that even a little rat bog will bite if provoked in the correct way....

You fail to make a point with this... Again what is your point? Your point please? Still no point.... Other than the idea of designed you are correct... Can you back up that assertion? What about an animal that has both structures? There are fish that have both structures, as well as amphibians, not to mention turtles that breath through their anus.... I can back my claims... can you?

Rigney, while I think that photosynthesis probably occurred in the prebiotic Earth chemo-synthesis, what the critters at the bottom of the ocean use to make food, almost certainly occurred first... chemo-synthesis produced the first organic chemicals that not only fed but formed the first life forms.....

If you really think that a sting ray is a sting ray then you have a profound lack of understanding of what a species is. How can you even pretend to understand what life is much less evolution? You come to a discussion making claims you have no clue about, asking questions you do not want an answer to, and only looking to disrupt what you cannot even pretend to understand.... total failure....