[HN Gopher] When Armor Met Lips
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When Armor Met Lips
Author : akkartik
Score : 457 points
Date : 2024-03-17 16:44 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (crookedtimber.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (crookedtimber.org)
| jimkleiber wrote:
| I thoroughly enjoyed the author's writing style. Anyone know
| where I can find more by him, Doug Muir?
| HankB99 wrote:
| Google knows: https://crookedtimber.org/2024/01/03/welcome-to-
| doug-muir/
| jimkleiber wrote:
| Normally a blog just lets me click the author's name and see
| more by them, and even the link you posted doesn't really
| show more essays.
|
| This one did though: https://crookedtimber.org/author/doug-
| muir/
| daemonologist wrote:
| Thanks for the link, that's a worthwhile click - their
| previous article is great too:
| https://crookedtimber.org/2024/03/08/occasional-paper-the-
| ir...
| pizzalife wrote:
| Personally I can't stand it, yeah?
| HankB99 wrote:
| > geology nerd
|
| Shouldn't that be "paleontology nerd?"
| skavi wrote:
| See footnote 1
| HankB99 wrote:
| Where is footnote 1?
|
| I just looked up the authors of the article from their links
| at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/363885520_Seals_w
| ha... and none mentions geology, though they did mention
| paleobiology, paleontology and fossils.
|
| What did I miss?
| nearbuy wrote:
| The footnotes for the article are in the first comment. The
| author put a humorous footnote about being pedantic.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| And, in doing so, was pedantic!
| ahazred8ta wrote:
| https://www.google.com/search?q=pedants+revolt
|
| "I'd expected there to be less of you." "FEWER!!"
| angiosperm wrote:
| Paleontology used to be a subspecialty of geology, for a long
| time after they proved fossils had once been animals. Which the
| geologists had to do.
| mannykannot wrote:
| "Pinnipeds evolved about thirty million years ago. They showed up
| first in the colder parts of the northern hemisphere, _then in
| the Antarctic_ , then in temperate zones."
|
| That's an interesting sequence, given that the continents then
| were about where they are now.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| Maybe they evolved in both places independently, or maybe it
| took a couple million years for a pod of seals to make the
| journey from north to south, and then start dominating the
| local ecosystem.
| ivanbakel wrote:
| Wikipedia says pinnipeds are monophyletic, so there's only a
| single evolutionary branch they originated from.
|
| The travel question is much more interesting. Napkin math
| puts the distance between the polar circles at 12500 miles,
| the max swim speed of a seal at 25mph, giving a travel time
| of ~3 weeks of nonstop swimming as the crow flies. How does
| that happen? What would a pod of Arctic seals have eaten
| along the way, and what would have compelled them to make the
| trip out of familiar territory? How and why did they cross
| the temperate equatorial seas with a load of blubber?
| ekanes wrote:
| Agree, this stuff is fun to imagine. Check out the many
| species that landed (and then kept evolving in isolation)
| in Hawaii. Seals, many birds, etc.
| DabbyDabberson wrote:
| Look up monkey raft theory. How did monkeys from Africa get
| to South America? Also roughly 30 MYA.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| Life travels on the ocean a lot farther than people
| realize, and often species you'd find improbably.
|
| Ants spread around the world by hitching rides on
| coconuts or waterbirds. This now means there's something
| like a global war among various ant colonies that invade
| each other this way.
| riffraff wrote:
| It's my understanding the ant spreading was more related
| with increase in navigation than birds/floating. that'd
| be why the Argentine ant has spread everywhere in Europe
| in the last century rather than being ubiquitous since
| the dawn of time.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| I thought Wind, Wings and Waves to be a pretty
| interesting description of how species made it to Hawaii.
| Basically it either gets picked up in storms or large
| clumps of land make it across the ocean. Life only has to
| make the journey seldom or almost never and then take
| hold once to get to a new place.
| tetromino_ wrote:
| Could an iceberg with a few seal families on it have
| drifted from the Arctic to the Antarctic? Presumably in
| the tropics the seals would have had a bad time and gone
| hungry and overheated, but once they got to cooler waters
| again, they would have been surrounded by food they love
| with zero competitors.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| The distance is not surprising, animal trackers have shown
| they routinely travel vast distances in the ocean [1, 2,
| 3].
|
| All you need is a fluke event, once in a thousand years
| where they for some reason make, and survive, this trip (I
| say thousand to give us some scale, could be actually once
| in a million years).
|
| [1] https://www.ocearch.org/tracker/detail/nukumi
|
| [2] https://www.ocearch.org/tracker/detail/dr-brent
|
| [3] https://www.wur.nl/en/show/seal-telemetry.htm
| ducttapecrown wrote:
| Well the ocean was filled with free floating ammonites, so
| maybe food wasn't an issue. Another commenter suggests a
| volcanic winter to lower the sea temps enough for the seals
| to cross.
| nateb2022 wrote:
| It is possible that they fed on extremophiles which thrived in
| really cold regions and later evolved to feed on other food
| sources.
| thriftwy wrote:
| It takes one volcanic winter for them to cross the oceans and
| emerge on the other side, without being fit for the warm
| waters.
| aendruk wrote:
| That's the sequence of notable populations; individuals did who
| knows what.
| pfdietz wrote:
| "So, you're saying the nautiloids did okay until the pinnipeds
| sealed their fate?"
| Terr_ wrote:
| I'm nautiloid to say more about their spiral into the depths.
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| tth_tth
| klipt wrote:
| Never trust a pinnipedophile.
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| Also: https://crookedtimber.org/2024/02/19/death-lonely-
| death/#com...
|
| about Voyager 1, recently in the news
| vitiral wrote:
| I really enjoyed this article, but I was really disappointed. For
| some reason I thought it was going to evolve into a Lovecraftian
| epic of how the grand and horrifying civilization of the ancient
| cephalopods and their relatives was thwarted by another species,
| one who paved the way for our own ignorant and doomed
| civilization to thrive.
|
| I kept this feeling until the very end [spoiler] even when it was
| revealed to be seals I held out hope they could be a Lovecraftian
| player in a grand epic saga.
| csours wrote:
| who do you think is protecting us from the lovecraftian
| horrors?
| vitiral wrote:
| In general? Mostly ignorance. From cephalopods? I guess it's
| the seals
| leashless wrote:
| Italian love of calamari.
| Muromec wrote:
| Paperclip counting bureaucrats of course
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I wanted to go fossil hunting (and for ammonites in particular)
| after watching these guys just haul them out:
|
| https://youtu.be/9XWhdPL58is
| Affric wrote:
| Great photo selection with the shifty looking seal (gotta love
| the whites of caniform eyes) and a nice little summary of the
| article.
|
| One thing about zoology and animal morphology is that we all know
| how important feeding is for animals but only real nerds love the
| digestive tract. Transport, skin, and reproduction are far more
| glamorous; but the mammalian sense of smell and mouth parts gave
| us such an advantage in the tertiary period.
|
| It's interesting that this sort of feeding never arose in the
| sea. I wonder what the ancestors of the pinnipeds who first
| ventured back into water ate...
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| If they're related to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustelidae
| , probably just about any catchable animals?
| Affric wrote:
| Probably otter like to an extent. Would be interesting if the
| first thing they ventured into shallow seas for was ammonites
| though.
| angiosperm wrote:
| Do not neglect the Paper Nautilus, a kind of Mediterranean
| octopus.
|
| https://www.sciencefriday.com/articles/the-seamstress-and-th...
|
| https://www.themarginalian.org/2022/12/26/jeanne-villepreux-...
|
| Jeanne Villepreux-Power invented marine biology, single-handed in
| the early 19th century.
|
| She observed them repairing a hole in their shell by gluing on a
| found patch.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| That is interesting. I looked it up on wikipedia and the
| Argonaut / Paper Nautilus "shell" is a thin walled eggcase and
| that males do not have. It does not provide protection.
| angiosperm wrote:
| Female argonauts have the shell their whole life long, and do
| not only construct it when they have eggs to put in it. We
| may reasonably assume that it has survival value even when
| there are no eggs. We know, for example, that they carry
| bubbles in it to tune their buoyancy.
| readyplayernull wrote:
| > If you're inclined to be pedantic about the nautilus' limbs and
| say that /actually/ they are "arms" and not "tentacles" because
| tentacles have suckers on them, then (a) congratulations on
| remembering that long-ago biology class, and (b) see Footnote 1,
| above.
|
| Something tells me an arm is a mechanical limb composed of
| connected poles that turn at their joints. And a hose-like limb
| without suckers should have its own name. A foot is an "arm", a
| penis is something else.
| nehal3m wrote:
| Hey, speak for yourself!
| pineaux wrote:
| Penis is definitely something else because it contains (almost)
| no muscles, while your other examples do (contain muscles).
| Karellen wrote:
| Also, tails
| zem wrote:
| you don't need a new name, "tentacle" is fine and does not
| imply suckers. see hydra e.g.
| jrflowers wrote:
| It is a shame that this is not about when Armour Meats perfected
| their hot dog formulation
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| "Ah! Love! The only thing my armor can't withstand!"
| a3w wrote:
| So the ideal tank buster is a carnivorous unicorn: penetrate that
| armor, then schlorp out the crew! Genetics will go too far, if we
| ever get these.
| h2odragon wrote:
| That's why the graceful, horse shaped unicorns of classical
| times died out; and what we have now is the up-armored,
| heavyweight rhinoceros version.
|
| Evolution is amazing innit.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| A fascinating case of how gunpowder has shaped biology.
| mec31 wrote:
| Reminds me of one of my favorite Far Side cartoons
| https://www.reddit.com/r/TheFarSide/s/g5y9E0ZlmI
| CoolGuySteve wrote:
| If you find this evolutionary history interesting then I can't
| recommend PBS Eons enough. It's a great youtube series on the
| subject: well researched, a dense but breezy pace, and the paleo
| art + fossil images help convey information without being overly
| dry.
|
| Here's the one about this subject:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vQ55ToQeWI
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