Something very wrong...

[JKS]

There's something very wrong with this picture. I'd love to hear the explanation for it. That boa is 9ft...
http://market.**************/image/27864.jpg

Oh yeah, forgot it won't post the name of that "other site". Ya know, the one that starts with a king and ends with a snake.com

[DragnDrop]

No snake expert here, but I would think that a HUGE snake, sitting on a teeny tiny hot rock which is sitting on a wet spot of a towel, is a good start to the list of errors.
Aside from still using a hot rock, what kind of dimwit would think one that small would even be enough to warm a snake that size? What's he supposed to do - warm up one scale at a time?????

Sheeeesh. I'm a newbie to snakes, but I sure know better than that, doesn't take a mental giant.

And then there's the rock plugged into the outlet in the 'enclosure' if that's what it is - I can't tell for sure. Not safe, since that snake can easily dislodge the plug part way, flick it's tongue in the gap and get zapped.

Is there any way of growing brains to dish out to people who need them?

[Dom]

more importantly Who still uses heat rocks .. thats what im thinking .. forget the fact that he is big and requires a large heat rock .. those are so unsafe and tend to have very warm spots on them wich can seriously burn your animals .. lol poor husbandry .. it really is too bad for the animal..

[Nanashi04]

He doesn't look very comfortable, that's for sure.

[J.J.]

really, who uses heat rocks?? I mean come on! If you do use a heat rock, then stop! well, that is a fricken huge snake and one flippin tiny heat rock. Strange

[eyespy]

Why does it seem that morons multiply faster than the rest of us?

[ls1grrrl]

Originally posted by eyespy
Why does it seem that morons multiply faster than the rest of us?

Because no one is willing to give the gene pool a good dose of chlorine, and the rest of us are smart enough not to be breeding like rabbits - I personally don't want to bring a child into today's world, not with the state things are in currently.

[Tim_Cranwill]

No doubt.
A buddy of mine had an idea about Darwin's theory being dead when it comes to humans. The idea is that the wild way is "survival of the fittest" but with today's medical advances and government funded social programs, the weak are able to lead longer and more fulfilling lives. So now it has become "survival of everyone". This also means more stupid people who should have died on hunting excursions.;)

Now, I'm NOT saying at all that the sick and weak should be left to die. But it's an interesting thought.

What do you think.

[MNR]

Darwin's theory wasn't an entirely accurate description of evolution, as "survival of the fittest" isn't the way the evolutionary process works. It's not the strong or smart that are selected, rather, evolution selects for the variant that produces the most offspring. In the case of humans, it doesn't seem to be the strong or the intelligent that fill that particular niche.

[Jeff_Favelle]

Darwin's theory was NOT a theory that suggested that those with the most offspring survive. Not even close. His underlying theory (and the theory that unified Biology as the 4th hardcore science) was that nature selected individuals to survive and reproduce that were BEST ADAPTED to a particular environment/habitat/set of life conditions.

Please don't butcher the classics.


Cranwill, that buddy of yours is totally on to something. Think about it. Many smart people have.

Sick, weak, handicapped, and dumb people get to breed all the time. Normal animals would have been selected out, but not us. Our genetic makeup has the extreme possibility of getting reeeeaaal weak over a relatively short number of generations. We won't see it (evolution cannot happen within a lifetime of the individual, only the population can evolve), but it will happen. But then again, its better then genocide, because also being inherently wrong, who would get to decide?

On the flipside, and not totally unrelated, think about antibiotics and other drugs that we use to kill the nasties that try to harm us. What are the nasties doing? They are being selected at an accelerated rate. Fast! And what does that mean? A resistant super bug. So not only are we getting weaker, the bugs are getting stronger! Wonder if the "smarties" have a graph as to exactly when science is gonna fail and bugs win.

Ok, enough depressing talk. Its almost X-mas!! Yayyy!!!

[Tim_Cranwill]

Just a few articles on the subject...

http://www.strangescience.net/darwin.htm

http://www.thedarwinpapers.com/

http://www.darwins-theory-of-evolution.com/

http://www.netlondon.com/news/1999-50/870FAC7B0CFCED71802.html

While in actual fact, this was not "originally" thought of by my friend, it still makes for some decent debate. Enjoy.

[MNR]

Darwin's theory was NOT a theory that suggested that those with the most offspring survive. Not even close. His underlying theory (and the theory that unified Biology as the 4th hardcore science) was that nature selected individuals to survive and reproduce that were BEST ADAPTED to a particular environment/habitat/set of life conditions.

I never said that was Darwin's theory, I said that Darwin's theory wasn't entirely accurate. The actual basis of evolution is that the variant that produces the most viable offspring under a given set of conditions is the variant that is selected. Meaning that evolution favours the individual that produces the most offspring. It's been experimentally proven. Fitness is a measure of fecundity.

Some more points:
The fact that people feel that strength and intelligence are traits that should be selected, doesn't imply that they will be selected.
And for people to suggest that evolution of the human species isn't and will not progress any further because of technology or anything else is ignorant. Natural selection always occurs, just because the environment changes (humans have changed their own set of evolutionary conditions) doesn't mean evolution stops, it simply takes a different course.

On a little bit of a tangent:
People are very arrogant creatures, in that we think we control the world, and that somehow we (and the organisms that inhabit this planet with us) are the be-all and end-all of the evolutionary process. People say "extinction is bad" and (on a note a little closer to home) "hybridization of species is bad", well I hate to break it to you folks, but the world isn't so black and white. Think of it this way: extinction is part of evolution, it isn't bad. Species that can't cope with the changing conditions die off, they aren't "adaptable" enough to survive. So what if they are extinctinct or endangered? That's LIFE, that's EVOLUTION! Even if there were some nuclear holocaust and the entire terrestrial surface of the planet were wiped clean of all life (which would be impossible, by the way), that niche would be refilled eventually. No matter what humans do or what happens now, or in a hundred years, or even in a hundred thousand years, it won't matter a smidgen in the long run of things. It will matter in the case of human survival, as our own actions may very well cause OUR extinction. But as for the destructive effect of humans on life itself, there isn't one. Life will still exist on this planet, until it's entirely demolished by an enormous asteroid, or the sun engulfs it.

I've been called a nihilist, but I feel I'm more of a realist. ;)

[Jeff_Favelle]

I would agree with you that the variant that has the most VIABLE offspring (although I'm not sure what you mean by viable) is the one that gets to keep reproducing and repopulating.

But that doesn't mean its the variant that produces the most offspring, which is what you initially stated! Right? Because that's not it at all. There are proponents for both K-selected species and R-selected species. R-type species being crabs, most amphibians, fish, insects, etc etc. They have a ton of offspring in which only a percentage make it. R and K types have nothing to do with Darwin's underlying theory and that's why I tried to make the distinction from what you said.

I hope by viable you mean "best suited to exploit the particular niche it lives in"?

Cheers.

[Tom P]

Sick, weak, handicapped, and dumb people get to breed all the time

Thanks for posting your thoughts Jeff. LOL. That made me laugh.

Tom P

[Jeff_Favelle]

Heh heh, I was laughing when I typed it too man! I was just hoping that no one was offended by it or anything. I am not a proponent of genocide by any means! I was just telling it "like it is" so to speak.

Thanks buddy.