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What Birds See [evolution of the eye]
Scientific American ^ | July 2006 | Timothy H. Goldsmith

Posted on 07/03/2006 10:05:56 AM PDT by doc30

We humans customarily assume that our visual system sits atop a pinnacle of evolutionary success. It enables us to appreciate space in three dimensions, to detect objects from a distance and to move about safely. We are exquisitely able to recognize other individuals and to read their emotions from mere glimpses of their faces. In fact, we are such visual animals that we have difficulty imagining the sensory worlds of creatures whose capacities extend to other realms--a night-hunting bat, for example, that finds small insects by listening to the echoes of its own high-pitched call. Our knowledge of color vision is, quite naturally, based primarily on what humans see: researchers can easily perform experiments on cooperative human subjects to discover, say, what mixtures of colors look the same or different. Although scientists have obtained supporting information from a variety of other species by recording the firing of neurons, we remained unaware until the early 1970s that many vertebrates, mostly animals other than mammals, see colors in a part of the spectrum that is invisible to humans: the near ultraviolet. ...

(Excerpt) Read more at sciam.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: bird; creationism; evolution; eye; ignoranttheocrats; kindastupid; ludditefundies; lyingforthelord; paganjunk; pavlovian; roadtohorseshitpaved; saganscience; youngearthcultists
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To: null and void

I think UV would appear as a new primary color. To describe it to the rest of us would be like trying to describe the difference between red and green to a person with red/green color blindness. It's all the same color to them. If it did appear as a new primary color, we would no longer have a color wheel, but a color tetrahedron with the primaries at each corner, the blending of two colors would form the edges and the blending of three colors would forn the faces.


281 posted on 07/04/2006 9:32:12 PM PDT by doc30 (Democrats are to morals what and Etch-A-Sketch is to Art.)
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To: Central Scrutiniser

It was not funny. It was insipid. Typical wordy Trudeau. I stopped reading his cartoons before I was 20 years old. His works are never funny, and they are idiotic.

Liberals love him for the exact reasons that that I stopped looking at that crap so long ago.


282 posted on 07/04/2006 9:35:26 PM PDT by Radix (Stop domestic violence. Beat abroad.)
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To: doc30
a color tetrahedron

Yeah. I think that would work.

283 posted on 07/04/2006 9:36:16 PM PDT by null and void (Good advice is always certain to be ignored, but that's no reason not to give it. - Agatha Christy)
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To: BipolarBob
"Something like the universe is went from order to chaos, right?"

Sort of like Entropy, which is what your sentence reminds me of.

284 posted on 07/04/2006 9:38:45 PM PDT by Radix (Stop domestic violence. Beat abroad.)
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To: Radix

It was funny, you are just a tightass. It was dead on, and you can't handle it. I'm looking at the cartoon, not the author.


285 posted on 07/04/2006 9:39:37 PM PDT by Central Scrutiniser ("You can't really dust for vomit.")
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To: b_sharp
"Just as a note to all:Linnaean taxonomy was developed long before Darwin released 'The Origin of Species' (more than 100 years) and before the Theory of Evolution was proposed. It could not possibly be based on Evolution."

How long have fungi been classified as Eukaryote organisms?

Taxonomy is an ongoing process.

286 posted on 07/04/2006 9:53:07 PM PDT by Radix (Stop domestic violence. Beat abroad.)
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To: Central Scrutiniser

Honestly. it was not funny.

I like good humor. If I saw humor in it, I'd say so.


287 posted on 07/04/2006 9:54:07 PM PDT by Radix (Stop domestic violence. Beat abroad.)
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To: null and void
Any group that can find the Tetragrammaton in the Koine New Testament is not seriously deserving to be considered a "Christian sect."
288 posted on 07/04/2006 9:58:03 PM PDT by Radix (Stop domestic violence. Beat abroad.)
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To: Radix
Are you the soul sole arbiter of who is and who isn't Christian?

Remarkable!

289 posted on 07/04/2006 10:06:36 PM PDT by null and void (Good advice is always certain to be ignored, but that's no reason not to give it. - Agatha Christy)
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To: Radix

Honestly, you are a tight ass, If I saw any humor in you, I'd say so.


290 posted on 07/04/2006 10:31:08 PM PDT by Central Scrutiniser ("You can't really dust for vomit.")
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To: b_sharp
If two species have numerous morphological similarities and few differences, baraminologists will place the two in separate baramines if the Bible so dictates. In this case, whales would be placed in with fish rather than with mammals even though whales are distinctly mammals. The evidence is that whales are mammals - they have far more in common with mammals (they share diagnostic features with mammals) than with fish -, yet baraminologists can ignore that evidence and focus on the fact that whales and fish both live in the water and are classed as fish by the Bible, then decide to place them together in a single baramine.

You are not suggesting that there are those so out of touch with reality as to make such a claim, are you?
291 posted on 07/05/2006 6:00:05 AM PDT by Dimensio (http://angryflower.com/bobsqu.gif <-- required reading before you use your next apostrophe!)
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To: Central Scrutiniser

"Unfortunately, for some, to be conservative, you must be a white christian who believes in creationism, and never ever veers from that."

Yes, it is a work of genius how they take a book of the history of the Jew's struggles, give Jesus a white boy look, and tell the people (that the book is written about to begin with) that they are going to hell if they do not adapt the Christian way. The Mayan's loved being the Christian's slaves. The Crusaders went out to save the world. Yeah boy, it is just a history of love and joy.


292 posted on 07/05/2006 6:22:52 AM PDT by SaveUS
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To: doc30
I think UV would appear as a new primary color.

What do primary colors look like? Serious question. I'm I guy, I "know" five colors. Not three...

More seriously, I see Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Brown and Purple as distinct colors. I know intellectually that there are two sets of three primary colors (red green blue, and yellow, magenta, cyan) but in my personal 'perception space' I have the seven listed.

293 posted on 07/05/2006 7:30:11 AM PDT by null and void (Good advice is always certain to be ignored, but that's no reason not to give it. - Agatha Christy)
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To: staterightsfirst
Here's where this started as support for the discussion of 'leg development'. The process of developing novel features through gene duplication and/or modification of regulatory genes has been reproduced in the lab. Please provide a relevant example where this did not result in a freak. No polyploidy in plants please. That wouldn't be relevant.
294 posted on 07/05/2006 7:37:31 AM PDT by GourmetDan
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To: js1138

Yes, Newtons words do speak for themselves and they did not require that man reject creation to pursue science.

So your post was irrelevant.

But you knew that.


295 posted on 07/05/2006 7:39:00 AM PDT by GourmetDan
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To: b_sharp
Gene duplication followed by an indel can create a modified version of a feature. An example of this is the 125 million year old gene duplication event in the common ancestor of Arabidopsis thaliana (mustard plant) and the Antirrhinum majus (snapdragon) in which the AG gene in the A. thaliana and the PLE gene in the A. majus have both diverged from the copy and each other.

Poor guy. Still doesn't know the difference between an observed gene duplication and an assumed one. That's the problem w/ these guys. Their imagination is transferred into reality in their minds and they think that everyone else has to accept it.

296 posted on 07/05/2006 8:11:25 AM PDT by GourmetDan
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To: b_sharp

Ah yes, redefinition. That always helps to deceive.

Evidence is facts. Interpretation is speculation.

To equivocate speculation w/ 'evidence' is to deceive.

The basis of evolution.


297 posted on 07/05/2006 8:13:48 AM PDT by GourmetDan
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To: doc30

We do not see legs 'evolving' today. Why should that process have stopped? No reason.

You do not understand that imposing a 'leg evolution' sequence on a jumbled mess of geology is not science.


298 posted on 07/05/2006 8:16:25 AM PDT by GourmetDan
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To: doc30
What does a bird see?


299 posted on 07/05/2006 8:17:14 AM PDT by poindexter
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To: GourmetDan; b_sharp

It seems GourmetDan believes science can only be done with direct observation using our 5 senses. GourmetDan. virtually everything in science is the result of indirect measurements through various techniques and instruments. I suppose you believe that the speedometer on you car or a cop's radar gun is an inferred measurement based on assumptions. I'd love to see the expression on a cop's face after he pulls you over for speeding and you tell him he's wrong because his measurements are assumptions and inferred facts!


300 posted on 07/05/2006 8:22:15 AM PDT by doc30 (Democrats are to morals what and Etch-A-Sketch is to Art.)
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