Texas Teach
Posts: 2084
Joined: April 2007
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| Quote (Seversky @ Dec. 26 2010,13:20) | Agony aunt Denyse O'Leary (so called because reading her prose is agony) marvels at some weird-looking bugs, sneers at "the proposed Darwinian explanation":
| Quote | A first guess is that it’s a sexually-selected trait, but those are often limited to males, and these creatures (and the ones below) show the ornaments in both sexes. Kemp hypothesizes—and this seems quite reasonable—that “the hollow globes, like the remarkable excrescences exhibited by other treehoppers, probably deter predators.” It would be hard to grab, much less chow down on, a beast with all those spines and excrescences.
Note, though, that the ornament sports many bristles. If these are sensory bristles, and not just deterrents to predation or irritating spines, then the ornament may have an unknown tactile function. |
and asks
| Quote | | Things can’t just be weird, can they? |
What she doesn't ask is what it says about Her Favorite Designer if the excrescences have no purpose and are just weird?
Could it be her god was just screwing around when he made us? Maybe we're just purposeless and weird excrescences (hi, Clive!) and the real centerpiece of creation is on the next solar system over. |
The Just Weird Hypothesis would certainly explain Denyse, BA77, Gordo, Gil...
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"Creationists think everything Genesis says is true. I don't even think Phil Collins is a good drummer." --J. Carr
"I suspect that the English grammar books where you live are outdated" --G. Gaulin
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