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Extinct goat was cold-blooded (2009)
- tardibear 3y ago(2009)
- dang 3y agoAdded. Thanks!
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jmclnx 3y ago[flagged]
- CommitSyn 3y agoYep, that's nature for you. The other top predators won't tell you about the bloodlines and species they've ended. I suppose that's what separates us from them. Honesty.
- smegger001 3y agoSurvival of the fittest we were fitter and they were tasty. Evolution in action. Ironicly right now the surest way for a species to survive is to be tasty to human so we will breed/plant more and remove predators. And move them to new environments when current ones change to be unsuitable.
- Havoc 3y agoWow - mind blown. I had somehow assumed large creatures can't be cold-blooded
- gweinberg 3y agoIt's a pygmy goat, it's smaller than a croc or a dragon.
- whyenot 3y agoAre dragons cold blooded? I thought most of them breathed fire.
- moron4hire 3y agoComodo dragon, I'm assuming
- scheme271 3y agoThey're certainly cold blooded enough when it comes to paying them for ssl certs.
- api 3y ago"Myotragus balearicus" would be a good black metal band name now. The cold-blooded goat.
- mistrial9 3y ago"good" LOL
- TheBigSalad 3y agoImagine have a tiny, lazy goat for a pet.
- mometsi 3y agoI want a cashmere one to use as a pillow
- aaron695 3y agoTiny is done, a Pygmy is about the same or you have a slightly larger Nigerian Dwarf of miniature. Goats 'thing' is their energy. (they will still snuggle during post lunch nap time though) It's hard to know why you'd want a lazy goat, what comes to mind is house training. That might work. Also these goats (Myotragus balearicus) are not cold-blooded (Not sure where the headline came from) and I wouldn't call them a goat, since they are closer to a mountain goat which I don't call a goat because they are not a Capra.
- _a_a_a_ 3y ago> The bones of warm-blooded animals show uninterrupted fast growth, while the bones of cold-blooded animals have parallel growth lines showing interrupted growth corresponding to growth cycles, rather like the rings seen in tree trunks. Growth and metabolism rates are adjusted to suit the amount of food available, whereas warm-blooded animals require food to be available continuously. The Myotragus bones showed the same interrupted growth as reptiles. Or the goat skeletons had regular periods of interrrupted food leading to regular harsh starvations which left patterns on the bones, maybe?
- CommitSyn 3y agoYes I'm sure the experts didn't think of the first idea to pop into both of our heads when they published their scientific paper in PNAS. https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.0813385106 https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.0813385106 However I'm more curious how a skeleton eats, can you elaborate?
- _a_a_a_ 3y agoOk, I did what I criticise others for doing, being the armchair critic. Taken on the chin. As for the goat skeleton, it eats when the goat eats, you know what I was saying.
- CommitSyn 3y ago> As for the goat skeleton, it eats when the goat eats, you know what I was saying. I'm not sure why, but this conversation reminded me of this old video. What a trip down (bizarro) memory lane. https://youtu.be/WQO-aOdJLiw https://youtu.be/WQO-aOdJLiw
- dang 3y agoPlease make your substantive points without being snarky. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
- 3y ago
- Qem 3y agoSome days ago there was news about some researchers predicting mammals would be doomed by the next supercontinent cycle, due to too high temperatures incompatible with warm blooded creatures. Well, if mammals can just evolve back cold blood, perhaps that makes their thesis moot. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37654289 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37654289
- juujian 3y agoMammals have adapted to adverse conditions before. However, the current rate of change is unprecedented. Evolution does not happen in one or two generations.
- fsckboy 3y agowhen evolutions happen, they do happen in one generation, that's where new clades are formed
- 8ytecoder 3y agoA mutation happens in one individual in one generation. Evolution happens when that mutation propagates through the population by reproduction. That itself takes many generations. Not to mention the fact that the mutation needs to be both advantageous and be recognized as such.
- lazide 3y agoEvolutionary bottle neck events don’t work in such a polite and calm fashion, and there have been many of them. What happens is 90% of the population (or often more like 99.999%!) that don’t already happen to be carrying an advantageous mutation perish. Sometimes the whole species goes extinct if there is no such mutation already there. The remainder, if there are any, then don’t have to worry about as much competition, and rapidly reproduce to fill the now mostly empty niche.
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- Ericson2314 3y agoIt became extent only 3,000 years ago?! Can we assemble a genome?!
- kristianp 3y agoJust because their bones grew in cycles like reptiles, does that necessarily mean they have to be cold-blooded too?
- stubish 3y agoI wondered that too. I wonder if you see similar bone growth patterns in hibernating animals?
- fodkodrasz 3y agoWell, debunking the myth that extinct goat was cold blooded will be a great subject for articles in the future!
- lawwantsin17 3y ago[dead]
- fsckboy 3y agoBears, and some other mammals, hibernate during which their metabolism drops. Any reason to believe this isn't just an exaggeration of that? It just seems really hard to believe actual cold bloodedness could appear like that. Why wouldn't lizards colonize the island instead?
- Modified3019 3y agoI would suggest that it's best to think of it as the exact opposite, mammals came from ectothermic ancestors, and gradually began to develop what could be considered "extreme hyper-metabolic states" in comparison, which offered various advantages (denatures the proteins in many microorganisms, allows for consistent physical performance and activity at night when when most of the reptile predators were inactive) at the cost of needing a much higher and constant food/energy intake, and began to spend most of their time in such a state until it became "normal". However many mammals still require the ability to enter significantly lower metabolic states to survive every winter. A good example is Golden Mantle Ground Squirrels for example, which need to consume enough omega-6 PUFAs (I believe linoleic acid is the primary one involved here, not sure about the others) in order to activate a switch in metabolism that ultimately drops energy use and puts them in a feedback loop to keep them there. [0] They'll periodically have rises in metabolism followed by some activity, and then drop back down into torpor throughout the winter. Squirrels that fail to kick off this change strongly enough are at big risk of burning too much energy and failing to survive the winter. Far less extreme and more well known are bears who also undergo significant fatty acid content changes. [1] Of course, metabolism is hideously complicated, and is effected by things like sunlight (touches vitamin D related pathways, among other things), vitamins (B vitamins are particularly notable) and fatty acids, proteins and carbs which all have have their own individual effects which can change in magnitude or even result in the reverse of what they "should" be doing. Look at this fucking shit and despair of ever trying to make a single correct context independent statement.[2] A perfect example I just found while looking up the other study is that while golden mantle ground squirrels appear to require linoleic acid to enter torpor, this study found that removing linoleic acid 19 days prior to hibernation enhanced how deeply they entered torpor. This isn't surprising to me, because I've heard of the possibility of linoleic acid being potentially exothermic in unusual circumstances, like extreme amounts. So laying off it once the cycle has started may allow the various feedback loops in place when monounsaturated fats run the show to more strongly express [3] I personally consider all mammals as retaining echos of our cold blooded heritage and capable of enter lower metabolic states, both daily and seasonally (to a widely varying degree) depending on the aforementioned very complex set of conditions. This study seems to agree with me. [4] So I also personally find it quite plausible that if evolution begins selecting against the hypermetabolism that was adopted, then the genetics are still ready and waiting for re-emergence, especially on an island where disease pressure is going to be much more limited. Evolution seems to like adding and repurposing things we already have, adding layers upon layers and rarely ever actually removing things. As for why lizards wouldn't dominate the island, there were and still are lizards present, unlike the goats who didn't manage to evolve back into lizards fast enough to escape notice by humans and thus extinction (though a quick search seems to show that many lizards on the island are also considered endangered). That said lizards are generally predators/omnivores, whereas the goats are herbivores, so they weren't likely to be strongly competing for the same niche. [0] "The Influence of Dietary Fatty Acids on Hibernation by Golden-Mantled Ground Squirrels (Spermophilus lateralis)": https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/physzool.65.5.30158549 https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/physzool.65.5.... [1] "Lipidomics Reveals Seasonal Shifts in a Large-Bodied Hibernator, the Brown Bear": https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6474398/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6474398/ [2] Metabolic pathway charts: - The famous Roche chart: http://biochemical-pathways.com/#/map/1 http://biochemical-pathways.com/#/map/1 - Hand assembled map of the above https://faculty.cc.gatech.edu/~turk/bio_sim/articles/metabolic_pathways.png https://faculty.cc.gatech.edu/~turk/bio_sim/articles/metabol... [3] Short-Term Variations in Diet Fatty Acid Composition and Torpor by Ground Squirrels: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1383506 https://www.jstor.org/stable/1383506 [4] "Daily torpor and hibernation in birds and mammals": https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/brv.12137 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/brv.12137
- lightedman 3y agoNo such thing as hot or cold blooded. You have: Endothermic: Generating internal heat to moderate body temperature, e.g., modern birds and mammals. Ectothermic: Relying on the environment and behavior to regulate body temperature, e.g., typical reptiles. Homeothermic: Maintaining a constant internal body temperature, e.g., modern mammals, birds, and some others. Poikilothermic: Having a fluctuating internal body temperature depending on the local environmental conditions, e.g., typical reptiles and actinopterygiian fish.
- mastermojo 3y agoLooking at only what you presented, it seems like Endothermic/Homeothermic share a lot of overlap (hot blooded) and Ectothermic/Poikilothermic share a lot of overlap (cold blooded)?
- wiml 3y agoI think endo/ecto are mechanisms and homeo/poikilo are results. They mostly match up (why spend all that energy generating body heat if you're not going to use it to maintain a constant maximally-biochemically-effective temperature?) but not 100%. An ectothermic-homeothermic animal would have to put more effort into using the environment to maintain a constant body temperature. Google says there are some lizards in that category.
- TylerE 3y agoI guess the distinction would be that hot and cold are quantitative. There are "cold" blooded reptiles that love temps well in excess of 120 degrees.
- qart 3y agoWe still have one cold-blooded mammal species around[1]. And a few marine fish species that are partially[2] or fully warm-blooded[3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_mole-rat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_mole-rat [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swordfish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swordfish [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunnus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunnus
- sigmoid10 3y agoHuh. TIL tuna fish are warm blooded.
- steve_adams_86 3y agoBluefins can generate so much heat in their bodies that their muscle fibres denature. Sometimes this happens while stressed on a fishing line, for example.
- cyberax 3y agoSome lizards are (somewhat) warm-blooded as well: https://www.science.org/content/article/world-s-first-warm-blooded-lizard-heats-mating-season https://www.science.org/content/article/world-s-first-warm-b...
- DoreenMichele 3y agoThere are bison on Catalina Island, left there by a film company around a hundred years ago. They are smaller than bison on the mainland: “They’re very challenged healthwise when they’re on this island because they don’t have the adequate nutrition during the right time of year,” King said. “So, our bison are in fact a little smaller than the mainland, and it’s not a genetic difference. It’s due to not having the right nutrients at the right time.” https://www.voanews.com/a/history-catalina-bison-hollywood-tourism-ecology/3930517.html https://www.voanews.com/a/history-catalina-bison-hollywood-t... The article also notes that bison from the island were relocated back to the mainland on three separate occasions to try to reestablish herds here. I can't currently find a citation, but I recall reading that bison that were returned to the mainland put on weight. It's well established that island populations of animals trend physically smaller. That part isn't at all news.
- mkl 3y ago> It's well established that island populations of animals trend physically smaller. Big animals trend smaller (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insular_dwarfism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insular_dwarfism), and small animals trend bigger (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_gigantism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_gigantism). Hence the giant rabbits on Menorca that these goats outcompeted when the islands were connected (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuralagus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuralagus).
- londons_explore 3y ago> Myotragus survived on the island as dwarf cold-blooded animals for millenia because they had no natural enemies, but they could not survive the predation of humans when they arrived on the island about 3,000 years ago. One more thing killed by humans.
- samus 3y agoDon't be fooled, animals and other organisms happily extincted each other throughout all the history of life. We just have less data about them.
- pugworthy 3y agoKind of a crossover thing from the blind cooking post, but it's interesting that they have smaller eyes and smaller brains. Basically, if you assume that vision requires a lot of compute power to process, and that compute power (that is, brains) are major energy users, those with simpler vision processing needs use less energy. It's kind of a first principles thing I suppose. What uses a lot of energy? Brain. What is the brain doing a lot? Managing vision. Idea? Reduce vision input.
- tough 3y agohow does this apply to octopuses having brain-like tissue ina ll it's arms?
- adrian_b 3y agoThey have that for the same reason, because they have huge arrays of sensors in their arms and they need to process their output close to the sensors, due to the low speed of propagation of signals through nerves. An artificial robot does not have these constraints of proximity between sensors and the place where their output is processed, because the delay over electrical wires is negligible at the time scale of most sensor outputs.
- samus 3y agoA big factor is also the lack of predators. To help avoid predators, it helps to have good eyes and the brains to process what you see. If there are no predators, then other factors exert their influence. Large, complex organs consume lots of energy and "harmful" mutations that shrink them will accumulate because the lack of energy on prehistoric Mallorca makes that an advantage.
- Groxx 3y agoHuh. Is the evidence mostly bone growth patterns? That certainly seems likely to follow metabolism... but it does make me wonder what the difference is compared to hibernating mammals. (Much) longer periods at each rate? Something else?
- RachelF 3y agoYes, it is a huge jump to assume the were cold blooded, rather than slow growing, or seasonal depending on the plants they ate. There's a lot of mammalian metabolism that stops working at room temperature.
- pvaldes 3y agoVery unlikely. needs better proofs ... and they need also to review the concept of fibrocartilage, that shows very similar rings, in animals not suspicious at all of having a reptilian metabolism or cold blood (Like, for example: humans). The main problem could be trying too hard to milk a poor sample. If this animal was cold blooded, why the other goats and sheep living in bad places didn't developed a similar system? We have lots of sheep races selected for very poor environments. We fully explored their different genetic possibilities... nobody has seen a "crocodile like" sheep in the whole planet