Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Kosh on August 10, 2009, 08:07:52 am
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Ok, so bats are descended from rats, so what animals are felines descended from?
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australopithicus
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Mammals all originated from Anunuki. . Google it :)
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Cats and Dogs had a common ancestor iirc.
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Figures, so what is their common ancestor?
Mammals all originated from Anunuki. . Google it
I thought it was from the Flying Spaghetti Monster but there you have it. :p
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they're descended from Bast goddammit.
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Well, originally, from what I remember, it started with a little shrew-like creature in the Gobi Desert, Malestes gobiensis or the like.
But from memory, the closest 'real' ancestor of Dogs and Cats in particular was something else, I'll go look.
Edit: Apparently, it traces back to things like Proailurus, which in turn evolved from Miacids.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miacids
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For the record, if this turns into a creation vs evolution topic.
No warnings. :p
Also, what the heck is with the platypus? Is it in a genre of its own or what?
/me realises he could google it but wishes to give others purpose.
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I believe the platypus is a bit of an anomaly, it's a mammal, more like a kangaroo, (marsupial (sp?) family?), yet it lays eggs, a throwback to when mammals separated from the lizard family. :o ;)
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A platypus is designated as a monotreme, an egg-laying mammal, the only other living example of which is the echidna (or spiny anteater). Like Wobble said, they're kind of evolutionary leftovers of the very earliest forms of mammals. Though in the case of the platypus, maybe it's just what God came up with one night on a bender. :p
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The platypus is nature's way of saying "I made this from parts I found on the workshop floor...and it can still cripple you."
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we're all descendants from apes, aren't we?
or is it fish that grew legs and crawled onto land
:rolleyes:
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we're all descendants from apes, aren't we?
or is it fish that grew legs and crawled onto land
:rolleyes:
You seem to believe those are mutually exclusive. Drawing your knowledge of evolution from Chick tracts is bad, m'kay?
(Though in all honesty, that's an insult to Jack Chick; even he got that bit right, once. But he deserves it anyways.)
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I heard Felines are most closely related to weasels or farrets.
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weasels and ferrets are rodents, aren't they? felines are probably closer to canines than rodents...
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The theory is that all mammals came from rodent-like creatures. That's what a shrew is.
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Your fundamental premise is flawed. Bats are not descended from rats. Bats and Rats had a recent common ancestor, but they both appeared fairly close to each other (well, rodents and chiropterans did anyway, not the modern species of bat and rat). Monotremes (of which there are only 3 species, the platypus and the long and short beaked echidna) most likely represent a type of animal closer to the original mammalian ancestors - the placentals and marsupials would have split off from monotremes first, then themselves further split down the modern lines. All of this seems to have happened fairly early though, as we have fossil evidence for Monotremes, Marsupials and placentals here in Australia (not counting bats there, for obvious reasons).
Stealth I'm going to ignore because he should know the answer by now, and it's impossible to change the willingly ignorant.
Felines and Canines are relatively close (both in order Carnivora), but so are weasels and ferrets (they're not rodents - think about their teeth and it's pretty obvious). Actually, the general distinction in carnivora is a dog-like/cat-like split. I'm not sure how closely that's linked with fossil or genetic evidence, but it would suggest dogs and cats are actually descended from the two branches that diverged very early on in carnivoran evolution. NB - weasels and the like are actually in the dog-like group, so they're not the closest to cats by any stretch.
High Max - Note that "Shrew-like" and "Rodent-like" should be taken as very different things. Shrew-like is morphological, while rodent-like implies some kind of genetic relationship. Rodents are a relatively modern innovation, post KT mammalian diversification, and are quite highly evolved (again, think about the teeth - those big, constantly growing, constantly sharpened front teeth to be precise).
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Here's the def of rodent:
http://www.wordreference.com/definition/rodent
rodent
A noun
1 rodent, gnawer, gnawing animal
relatively small gnawing animals having a single pair of constantly growing incisor teeth specialized for gnawin
Is that all there is to the definition of a rodent? So anything with that description is a rodent or is the def leaving out some important qualities that make a rodent a rodent? Also, I think rodents are omnivores and eat bugs too, and I think being an omnivore is more evolved and adaptable than creatures that are only either herbivores or carnivores.
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What you think being of course immaterial; Black Wolf is defining things from a biology standpoint, not that of a layman.
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Ok, maybe an encyclopedia or wikipedia would be better, like I thought.
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How about related university classes or three?
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Only if you want to waste money and time. It's free to use the net to learn besides the bill of internet access you pay. I don't need to get a degree or take classes on it since I don't plan to be a doctor or biologist. The satellite channels are good for learning too.
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Here's the def of rodent:
http://www.wordreference.com/definition/rodent
rodent
A noun
1 rodent, gnawer, gnawing animal
relatively small gnawing animals having a single pair of constantly growing incisor teeth specialized for gnawin
Is that all there is to the definition of a rodent? So anything with that description is a rodent or is the def leaving out some important qualities that make a rodent a rodent? Also, I think rodents are omnivores and eat bugs too, and I think being an omnivore is more evolved and adaptable than creatures that are only either herbivores or carnivores.
It's the teeth which make all the difference. Those paired incisors were an extremely potent evolutionary innovation, and allowed the rodents to spread out to pretty much every continent, and fulfill a bunch of evolutionary niches. That's the problem with "Rodent-like" incidentally - you probably mean "mouse-like" or something, but rodents come in all sorts of different shapes and sizes (think mice, rats, gophers, squirrels for different shapes, and then the Capybarras or whatever they're called in South America, which are sort of sheep-sized. Hell, if you go prehistoric you can find ones closer to hippo sized in South America). Shrews are morphologically much more constrained, and they're generally less specialized than rodents (again, see the teeth, but also other features like diet), so they make a better comparison to ancient mammals than something like a mouse, which is really quite an 'advanced' organism by comparison.
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I also imagine raccoons and possums. Maybe even sloths.
When I say rodent-like, I imagine that small creature that was hiding in a hole while the T-Rex was out and about. Also I have a habit of picturing a raccoon in my head when I hear the word "rodent". According to what I know, the extinction of the dinosaurs (if you believe in the evolution theory or if the evolutionary history happened this way) is said to have created an evolutionary opening to allow for mammals to get much larger, and a while afterwards, they became much larger than the ones we see these days. Now they say that mammals aren't doing very well, probably from rising temperatures.
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I also imagine raccoons and possums. Maybe even sloths.
Y'know, I'm not sure any of those are rodents.
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When I say rodent-like, I imagine that small creature that was hiding in a hole while the T-Rex was out and about. Also I have a habit of picturing a raccoon in my head when I hear the word "rodent". According to what I know, the extinction of the dinosaurs (if you believe in the evolution theory or if the evolutionary history happened this way) is said to have created an evolutionary opening to allow for mammals to get much larger, and a while afterwards, they became much larger than the ones we see these days. Now they say that mammals aren't doing very well, probably from rising temperatures.
You're broadly right, the majority of the mammals that coexisted with dinosaurs were small, probably nocturnal and spent, I would suspect, a large part of their lives avoiding getting eaten by dinosaurs, and there was a huge diversification following the KT. The only thing I'd dispute is the idea that mammals are struggling at the moment due to rising temperature. I'd be amazed if even 0.1% of the threatened mammalian species on the planet got that way due to global warming. The vast, vast majority of the problems they have come down to three things - overhunting (think whales, rhinos etc.), habitat destruction and introduced competition (be it foxes introduced into Australia killing all the woylies or humans fishing out a river so otters can't egt enough food).
I also imagine raccoons and possums. Maybe even sloths.
Y'know, I'm not sure any of those are rodents.
They're not - Possums are marsupials, I think raccoons are some kind of carnivoran and I have no idea where sloths fit, but i'd imagine they'd be some little branch off on their own. They're weird. But they're definitely not rodents.
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I think Sloths are distantly related to Anteaters, which are a sub-group all on their own, but I'm not certain on that.
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Stealth I'm going to ignore because he should know the answer by now, and it's impossible to change the willingly ignorant.
It was clearly a joke.
If you didn't get that, then i'm not the ignorant one here :rolleyes:
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Snuffleupagus !!!
Spam :wtf: