Paul Flocken
Posts: 290
Joined: Dec. 2005
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dacook thinks he knows how to intelligently design animals
| Quote | | She has a housecat, (felis-catus) named Chester of whom she is very fond. He seemed a good starting point. We designed several adaptations to Chester to enable him to thrive in the arctic tundra. First, and most obviously, we made him all white to blend into the snow. |
Duh. They thought of that all by themselves.
| Quote | | Then we regressed his legs to vestigial stumps |
Cats are carnivores and therefore predators. There are already animals in the arctic that are missing their original quadrupedal legs. They are called seals. And from the point of view of arctic predators they have another name. Prey. Any animal that can't outrun predators is toast. Some predator this cat will be.
| Quote | | and flattened him out dramatically so he could hug the ground and better avoid being picked off by predators, |
There is a well known relationship between internal volume, surface area, and heat loss. Making your vol/s.a. ratio as large as possible is a good thing as it conserves heat. Making your cat broad and flat lowers the ratio and increases heat loss. Making him flat to the ground with a large contact patch also increases heat loss as air is a better insulator than the ground the cat would be in contact with. Not mentioned is if the cat has belly fur, but never mind as fur is a better insulator if it is fluffy and full of air instead of flat between the cat and the ground with all the air crushed out of it.
| Quote | | as well as stay low out of the wind. His species is therefore felis-flatus. (That’s “flatus” as in flat to the ground, rhymes with “catus” not the other meaning which my son already had fun with.) |
Polar bears and arctic foxes don't seem to mind the wind much. Must not be that much of a problem. Of course they really are adapted to the cold.
| Quote | | For locomotion we gave his edges the ability to undulate, like a Manta ray’s. So he gets around by flapping along the ground. |
This sounds like suspiciously like flying. Lots of energy expended to heave oneself into the air only to fall by to the ground. Well maybe not flying. I think Mr Cook is remembering something else: Barbarella's skiing manta ray.
| Quote | | This action also helps him clear snow from the burrows of his prey. He doesn’t have to be fast as he can’t outrun predators anyway, and his own prey is small rodents that live in the ground. |
Funny, arctic foxes dig with their claws.
| Quote | | To extract them he positions himself over their burrows and runs his very long (heavily modified) tongue down the hole, wraps it around their little necks, and pulls them into his mouth. |
Has anybody yet found an aardvark in the arctic?
| Quote | | When it’s very cold he can roll up into a tube to conserve heat, with his soft belly deep inside a cocoon of fluffy insulating fur. |
Ah, so that is how he stays warm. Of course, he won't be doing much hunting when he is rolled into a crepe. And how does he stay warm when he is hunting?
| Quote | | My daughter thought he should be able to fight back if attacked, rather than just huddle up, and so added spikes to his tail, so he can whip it up and clobber anything that steps on him or tries to bite him. |
Arctic animals either have a minimal tail to conserve heat or a large fluffy, bushy tail to serve as a blanket. This tail would be a source of heat loss(spikes of horn, bone, or keratin), and would also serve to entangle the cat in any vegetation he tried to pass through. Why is vegetation important? Because anyplace where small animals burrow(this cat's intended prey) will by necessity not be in permafrost or ice covered areas(no burrows possible) and vegetation would be a norm. Arctic vegetation that comes to mind is normally low to the ground, perfect for snagging spikes. Spikes would also be limited in size so something as small as a cat flapping on the ground could move them. Polar bears would probably think of them as appetizers.
Now granted this was a school exercise by a child, no doubt intended to foster creativity and imagination as opposed to critical thought about whether the adaptations make sense. But if the entirety of the biosphere is allegedly created by intelligence then why do we not see these adaptations already? Why is this nothing more than a proud father showing off his lack of critical thought?
A cool school exercise I ran over where there is an actual experiment, not simply thought exercises about what must be(the essence of IDC).
http://library.thinkquest.org/3500/Activities.html#adapt
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"The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived, and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."-John F. Kennedy
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