Posted on 02/08/2005 3:50:43 AM PST by PatrickHenry
IIRC (big "if")
cheetahs are most closely related to the American Puma.
cheetahs have so little inter-specimen genetic diversity that they are almost clones - full inter-specimen transplant compatability, etc...
cheetahs are the only old-world great-cat capable of purring
the fixed claws are not compelling evidence of closer relation to the splite between canidae and felidae than other great cats - could just as easily be one of the many speed-related adaptations from an earlier, more conventionally "catty" ancestor
and, as I detect a decline in my ability to compose and spell, I believe it is time to retire.
see you around.
More precisely it would be populations that do not interbreed naturally in the wild.
My post 286 goes into some of the problems in defining species.
To repeat and elaborate on some of it:
On the way to speciation is diminished fertility. They can breed but fewer offspring survive, or the offspring can't breed etc.
another route is distance: New York squirrels breed fine with Ohio, less well with Montana and not at all with California populations. How many species?
Or, picture a very large round lake. The population at 12:00 can breed with 1:00 which can breed with 3:00. which can breed with 5:00 etc, but here's the kicker: when you get back to 12:00 there are now TWO species: the original denizens and the ones which bred themselves all the way around the lake. They don't interbreed at all.
AIG says that the eyes are wired backwards to protect the rods and cones from UV. Why didn't God just make the rods and cones more resistant to UV instead of wiring the eye backards ...
ah, you beat me to it. good to see my memory is working.
Common descent is a primary pillar of the modern synthesis theory of the theory of evolution (as I think js knows)
AIG goes to great lengths to explain all the "design" problems of the eye away. "The eye is wired backwards to protect the rods and cones from UV". This is evidence of how smart God was in designing the eye. They never do address the fact that it would have been easier for God to design the eye correctly and just make the rods and cones less prone to UV damage. What a racket.
your round lake illo is identical to the paradigm of the arctic circle seagulls (I mentioned them some posts back)
yeah, there are hazes ruining the precision I would prefer.
Wow! You want me to refute that which you will not post! Sorry, unlike some of the creationists here, I cannot read your mind.
"No it couldn't, because your Mustang doesn't replicate itself"
I don't know about that, Ford's done a pretty good job with the '67 GT
I don't give a hoot what creationists think, just keep that darn false science out of the public arena.
Darn right. We can't have people hearing about Creationism, and maybe thinking that evolution isn't all that it's cracked up to be. We ought not to allow people to freely make up their own minds. We oughta ban the books and then burn them, anything to do with creation or the proponents of creation. Maybe we oughta behead the rascals too. Sounds like a novel thought to me.
No, wait. I think the Taliban beat you to that idea.
That was a Shelby GT.
250 or 500?
Don't give me that "innocent what did I do, post", you did that knowing full well you were bearing false witness.
Of course you have totally misrepresented my post (no surprise) but it is the creationists using false propaganda that have the similarity to the Taliban.
I was thinking of the Ensatina slamanders...I'm way past time to get offline so just google the name and ring species
You bear false witness implying that I said that!
What I said was for the creationists to keep their FALSE SCIENCE out of the public arena.
How? random mutation to genetic information contained in the gametogenitor cells and inherited by the offspring, repeated a great number of times over time (random mutations occur at fairly predictable rates, given enough time and a large enough population) in geographically separated subpopulations of the original species, giving rise to filial lines sufficiently divergent from each other that interbreeding is no longer possible, eventually leading to sufficient genetic divergence between these daughter populations and the original species to render P-to-F interbreeding also impossible.
repeat, over and over again, and you end up with enormously divergent (ie: fully speciated) daughter lines descended from the same parent species.
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