The Biology, Agriculture, and Paleontology thread

Couldn't find many threads related to this, so...Here's an ultra-general thread about animals of any kind from any place or time, from dinosaurs and trilobites, possible extraterrestrial life, modern charismatic megafauna, creepy crawlies, weird deep sea creatures, domestic animals, and all those weird Frankenstein animals we're beginning to cook up with biotech.

Their evolution, behavior, cognitive and emotional capacities, their interactions with humans, wildlife conservation, and all their peculiar eccentricities that we barely understand. Whatever, it can all be here.

This thread is so broad in scope that I suspect it will probably die out unless a couple of people get really enthusiastic about a sub-topic within the broader scope.

I'll let the thread have its run, though. Who knows, hopefully I'm wrong.

Thanks, Best Of.

As my first post in this thread, I will ask this biotechnology-related question: How much progress has been made in the field of animal cloning since Dolly's relatively short-lived existence?

The processes has improved a fair bit but we are still decades away from any practical application of the technology.

You can commercially try to have your pet dog or cat cloned (or prize-winning race horse) if you have 200 grand to burn. But the results have been less than impressive compared to a good old-fashioned healthy broodmare.

Volunteer Discovers 70,000-Year-Old-Mammoth In Idaho Reservoir

New sparkling apple variety fizzes in your mouth

Science casts light on sex in the orchard

Seeing dinosaur feathers in a new light

What do you think about genetically modifying life stock? What could be done to improve our animal products in that way?

Personally, I'm all for better ways to supply us, though we shouldn't save on the testing. It would be interesting what new stuff we could make by genetic engineering. I've heard about goats which have spider-silk enzymes in their milk but I'm not sure if that was just a fix idea or if they actually made that.

We've been genetically modifying livestock for millennia with selective breeding. Hacking the source code directly is just a faster way to do it.

And yet carries a whole new set of risks due to still incomplete knowledge about the number and scope of natural processes that govern natural genetic modification (no, really; it's called meiosis).

this my feeling on such things, more or less. Selective breeding is more or less faced-paced evolution for our benefit.

messing with genes directly is, quite literally, hacking the source code of life. could screw things up very easily.

Of course, with enough trial and error, genetic modification may very well become as relatively risk-free as good old selective breeding.

Frankly, considering some of the messed-up mistakes we've made with dog and cat breeding, it's not like we're doing great with selection. <_<

thing with that is they were intentionally aiming for screwed up stuff, like hairless cats and weird traits in dogs.

The possibilities of directly screwing with genes is quite a bit more vast

Best way to learn is just get stuck in, really. Every horrific mutant is a learning experience.

Getting more out of nature: Genetic toolkit finds new maximum for crop yields

'Telomerator': New tool could help reshape the limits of synthetic biology

@Joe: It's our responsibility to ensure our pets have the best possible health. And genes play a very large part in health. Neither selective breeding, nor the old-fashioned genetic roulette can really ensure that.

Sure, genetic engineering is still an incomplete science. But nothing is ever risk-free, certainly not natural reproduction. Animal experimentation is vital for improving both animal and human health. Certainly there are costs, but it's necessary for progress in medicine.

The most powerful marine reptile ever

Convergent evolution can be pretty eerie. That looks exactly like early whales.

Damn that thing is big. It looks more like it should be firing torpedoes rather then biting things. It just oozes Nope levels of menace.

... Damn. That is one huge badass sea beast. Why settle for the Dinosuchus as a Jurassic Park game's marine boss when you could go for this guy?

edited 7th Nov '14 5:39:07 AM by MarqFJA

Imagine that thing grinning at you while you're in a sub. Even with missiles backing you up, you'd still want to crawl under something.

edited 7th Nov '14 6:47:02 AM by Euodiachloris

Cat genome reveals clues to domestication&#8203;&#8203;: "Cats and humans have shared the same households for at least 9,000 years, but we still know very little about how our feline friends became domesticated. An analysis of the cat genome reveals some surprising clues."

"Cats, unlike dogs, are really only semidomesticated," said senior author Wes Warren, PhD, associate professor of genetics at The Genome Institute at Washington University​. "They only recently split off from wild cats, and some even still breed with their wild relatives. So we were surprised to find DNA evidence of their domestication."

Odor that smells like blood: Single component powerful trigger for large carnivores: "People find the smell of blood unpleasant, but for predatory animals it means food. When behavioral researchers wanted to find out which substances of blood trigger behavioral reactions, they got some unexpected results."

edited 10th Nov '14 5:11:14 PM by rmctagg09

The fragmented remains of the prehistoric whales they used to describe the evolution of modern day whales from their aquatic mammal ancestors bugs me due to how many assumptions they made with so few pieces.

How would somebody know the shape of an archaeocete's foot would change into a paddle when the only thing they found were the teeth and a portion of the jaw bone?

Is this thread concerned only with animals, or plants count too?

rmctagg09: Thanks for those summaries. They were really informative.