Something To Read: Lampreys, Caves, and Shrinking Fish
Just a wrap up of the latest articles that you might find worth reading.
Researchers found that embryos of sea lampreys discard millions of their DNA units. The lamprey is basically a living fossil and I’m not just typing that because it’s the popular thing to type! This could give insight into the genetic evolutionary history of vertebrates living now and those extinct. Jeramiah Smith, the main author of the research say the discarded DNA is most likely DNA that were to become body parts. If this is found to be true then the next question is whether scientist can find out what some of those discarded DNA would actually code for? That would definitely be a major help to evolutionary biologist and taxonomists.
Apparently, ants are more rational than humans. Great, another claim to fame for the ant population!!
Doesn’t this cave look huge…
Biggest cave in the world. Pic via. National Geographic
This cave is located in Vietnam. It’s the biggest cave in the world….until we find a cave bigger then this one. It looks amazing in this picture. Caves are great, they’re booming with invertebrates, microscopic organisms, and minerals. If you’ve been lucky to see the movie Caves at an IMAX theater then you can imagine how cool this would have looked on an IMAX screen.
Looks like humans are at quite the disadvantage when the earth further warms. We’ll most likely die from not only the heat but starvation. A study shows that fish are actually shrinking due to rising water temperatures. Yeah, that’s why I threw in the starvation because that means less meat on the fish! That means that I’ll have to buy two salmons just to get a full meal…ok, I may be overreacting but this could be our future. This is classic, smaller organisms more likely then not survive dramatic changes to earths temperature and disasters. Fish shrinking is more proof of adaptation behavior in organisms. Unfortunately, humans have only gotten fatter bigger, we’re doomed! Nonetheless, this is very cool news. But we really need to get this global warming thing under control because the good fish is too expensive for me to buy more then what I get now.
okay, sorry, that’s all I got. Bye *waves*
I think all other species are more rational than humans. They just don’t seem to screw up as much as we do!
I really like caves (as long as I can walk into them instead of climbing up/down). Last one I visited was for photography class, a couple of years ago. Too bad I only had a film camera back then and was therefore limited in the amount of shots I could make. Otherwise, you’d have already seen photos of it. It was a rather small cave, but there was an open area at the end, allowing sunlight to come through, and people would climb and stand of this rock in the middle, with light shining down on them. Would’ve made some great shots, but my attempts failed. Oh, well.
My evil mind is imagining lamprey embryos coming into contact with toxic waste, causing all that DNA to activate and resulting in large, many-limbed creatures that would destroy us all. Could make a convincing argument for toxic waste management.
I never been in a cave before and I remember the cave you went into, the one where I thought the Jeebus was a for real carving by ancient island people(?) You showed two caves I think, or it could have been the other one where you said you waited for two guys to come out before take pictures or something. Those were already good pictures. btw, climbing is fun!
Thats very creative, unfortunately I and most other
normalpeople would imagine that the lamprey would just die, which is why it wouldn’t be a convincing argument. I think a 3 eyed fish would be more convincing argument.Oh, I completely forgot about that cave with the Jeebus thing (yeah, it’s only one). But that was more open area than anything. And there was that stage thing built in the middle of it that kinda ruins things … but the illusion of it being ancient is already gone with Jeebus being there.
Anyway, the cave I’m referring to was very memorable, and more cave-like than the Jeebus one, being gloomy and all. There were a few signs on the sides of it with something like “Do not walk past this point”, but I couldn’t quite see what was beyond the signs. And the small open area at the end … capturing someone standing under the light would’ve made something worthy of one of those fancy magazine thingies. Too bad I don’t even remember the name of it, or else I’d look it up.
But, but … the lampreys … the discarded DNA … the toxic waste … think of the possibilities! There could even be eye lasers involved!
Let it go! The only place you’ll see those type of lampreys is in a Japanese horror film or in my secret dark thoughts, especially since you decided to throw in the eye lasers, really omar, really?! lol.