Re: Lizard engines and rat engines


"r norman" <rsn_@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:damprs$1f2n$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> On Fri, 8 Jul 2005 08:21:36 -0400 (EDT), "g" <gillawton@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> There is an extensive discussion of this same topic over in
> talk.origins, including a rather long post by me about the
> comparative and environmental physiology of temperature regulation.
> There are a number of advantages and disadvantages to homeothermy
> (maintaining a constant body temperature). As is always the case in
> biology, there are animals that "choose" one strategy and animals that
> choose another. Furthermore, there are many physiological tricks
> animals can use to maintain regulate their body temperature. Large
> animals tend to have a problem with overheating, the larger the animal
> the worse the problem. Large "chunky" animals have a much worse
> problem than animals with long, thin elongated body regions,
> especially if those regions are not covered in thick, heavy skin and
> fur or feathers. Having large ears is just one trick to cool off.
> Few organisms use that technique, elephants and rabbits being the two
> most common examples. Other organisms have different tricks.
>
> Note: True, rabbits are not particularly large. Nevertheless, they
> found that trick to be useful. Evolutionary tricks, like all weird
> adaptations, are sporadic in distribution demonstrating independent
> evolutionary origin.
>
I think we are starting to get on the same page here.

If we are careless about how we say things then we plant subliminal
suggestions as to assumptions that are not so. And, if we are not
careful, those suggestions -- even though, when we are pinned down,
skew our thinking.

Too much language that has been used in statements made about
evolutionary biology has been suggested of many misleading notions.
And thank you for putting quotes around the word "choose" in the
sentence stating that various animals "choose" various ways of,
as it were, "skinning a cat."

Choose is a good word. But there must be many words that would
say the same thing and not even hint that animals choose to do
any evolutionary thing.

To my way of thinking, if life did NOT have the capability of making
reproductive errors, there would either be one species only, or zero.

How different is the conception of error, when our capacity to
indulge in it lies at the very root of all evolution.


g


.

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