I am off to see Gov. Mark Warner and future Rep. Patrick Murphy (PA-08). I don’t think there will be any chocolate fountains or coconut shrimps at this luncheon.
While I am away you can use this thread to discuss all things meta, like whether Chris is right that guinea pigs are cute or Albert is right that we should kill them on sight.
Or you can tell me why you think this site sucks. Constructive criticism is welcomed too. Just don’t listen to anything Chris says. He’s not stable.
Ask Warner about his foreign policy positions and see if they’ve changed at all since Yearly Kos.
I will if I get a chance.
… cause they blog … Jasmine’s Blog … >’o'<
Who? Me? Unstable? I’ll tell you why this site sucks. It’s because guinea pig haters call me unstable right on the front page! Lordy! And by the way, if guinea pigs aren’t adorable ass shit, then nothing is adorable ass shit. Damnit!
And while we’re on the subject, how does that wanker Albert get a pass on the mental instability thing? This is the dude who lost the Great Guinea Pig Flame War of ’06 and it fucked with his head so much he actually wants to kill the cute little things.
i totally forgot to cream pie these suckers. must remember tonight!
They are rodents.
Yes. Very good. Would you like a prize of some sort?
As long as it’s not a rodent.
Ok, it won’t a rodent. It will be two.
lol!! Go, Chris! Knight of the Guinea Pig! These other people, pfft, giant guinea pigs will devour them in a hell realm where there are no chickens.
THIS is what brings me out of lurking? Well yeah!
Feh. MY chickens are way cuter than Chris’ guinea pigs. Way cuter.
Chickens do not, however, look good in hats. This is indisputable truth. Chickens look good in gravy.
Pshaw! Not only are chickens distinctly not cute, but they aren’t even a half decent fowl. A duck? Now that’s both cute and tasty. Chicken? Not so much.
Dammit Chris, you’ve done it again. This was the photo that set of the Great Guinea Pig Flame War of ’06. And I believe it was because, as I mentioned at the time, the piggie on the right was terrified Boo would steal his carrot.
Turns out he was right… Boo does like carrots.
He’s unstable too.
Here they are after Boo got at their carrot. Poor little buggers.
That mean ol’ BooMan!
Okay, you win!
Sorry, Chris, this is where I lay down my chicken wings and slowly back away from the guinea pigs.
That’s no pig. She’s just trying to change the subject with her naked mole rats. Pick up the wings and break out the chicken salad. This is war.
Rodent.
See how cute that is?
Okay, Chris, she is officially out of bullets.
what?
Because you called that nekked chicken cute! Only a desperate chicken lover, down to her last defenses, could possibly say that.
(Don’t ever tell Chris that I actually think chickens can be beautiful. or at least, handsome. But not cute. Never cute.)
Look at the thighs on that bird…they’d look fabulous on a red Weber grill.
I do not! I do, however, see how cute this is.
That thing, whatever it is, has got a hold of The Donald’s Onion Loaf!
This site sucks because you don’t post often enough while you are drinking. You are so much more fun when you drink, although you make more sense when you are writing and sober.
See you tonight, looking forward to hearing about Warner and Murphy.
BTW remember last time you talked to him I told you to tell him to support Pat, and now he is. I should tell you to tell him something else, even though you probably didn’t say that last time either.
You should tell him to tell him to tell Joe Lieberman to get out of the race in CT…
Have fun tonight…:::sniff:::
Captain, oh captain, I regret that I have to depart for the work realms. Hold the fort against the chickens and the chicken hawks. I’ll bring back fresh shredded paper. Be strong, be brave, be cute.
That appears to be it. We’ve won. I declare victory and now I’m going home.
June 13, 1996 Guinea Pigs Not Rodents? Scientific Panel Says DNA Is the Key
By NATALIE ANGIER Copyright 1996 © The New York Times
Consider it the case of the guinea pigs that roared. One cried, “I am Rodent!” and the other, “You’re nuts — Rodentia is dead!” In a bluntly worded new report, researchers from Italy and Sweden have declared that the guinea pig, famed as a child’s pet and medicine’s sacrificial lamb, is not now and never has been a rodent.
That conclusion may sound like a rather narrow scientific matter, but in fact the implications of the guinea pig’s unmoored status are profound, calling into question the entire concept of rodenthood. People may think they recognize a rodent when they see it scurry by in the park, gnaw through apartment plumbing or jump merrily over a glue trap. Yet the new analysis suggests that guinea pigs, rats, mice, squirrels, porcupines and hundreds of other species, long classified together under the order Rodentia, may not warrant assemblage into a single distinctive order.
Instead, the new work indicates, the creatures may be better thought of as a ragtag band of only vaguely related animals displaying generic and ancient mammalian features. The report, a detailed molecular analysis of genetic relatedness among various species of rodents and other mammals, appears on Thursday in the journal Nature. Among the hallmarks of a biological order is that members of the group are all thought to descend from a single common ancestor — that is, they are said to be monophyletic. But the latest report presents data indicating that rodents stem from at least two distinct ancestors, and possibly more.
“The main achievement of this paper is to say that rodents are polyphyletic,” said Dr. Cecilia Saccone of the University of Bari in Italy. “There are at least two, and maybe other, branches in the group.” Dr. Saccone wrote the report with Dr. Ulfur Arnason of the University of Lund in Sweden and their colleagues. Not surprisingly for a report with such radical ramifications, other scientists attacked it as uncredible, naive and full of holes. “It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard of,” said Dr. Rodney Honeycutt, who studies the molecular evolution of rodents and other mammals at Texas A&M University. “There’s a huge amount of data showing that rodents are unequivocally monophyletic.”
Beyond upsetting traditional notions of what a rodent is, the report threatens biology’s understanding of mammalian evolution as a whole. Dr. Michael Novacek, an expert in evolution and taxonomy at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, explained that rodents had long been viewed as a sort of exemplary group of mammals. They are extremely successful and diverse, with more species to their credit than any other mammalian group. By current reckoning, half of all 4,000 known mammals are rodents. “Looking at a model system like rodents can tell us a lot about how evolution works,” Novacek said. “Understanding whether rodents come from one or two or more points of origin has a lot of bearing on how we view the world’s most successful mammalian group.” Regarding the group’s importance in understanding the evolution of mammals, he said, “it’s like asking whether life on earth originated once or multiple times.” Novacek said that while he was not yet ready to “dissolve the entire order Rodentia,” he was impressed by the strength of the new molecular data.
The current report is not the first to question the sanctity of the rodent order, or the classification of the guinea pig. In 1991, Dr. Dan Graur of Tel Aviv University and his colleagues fired the first shot by writing a paper for Nature titled, “Is the Guinea Pig a Rodent?” and proceeded to cast doubt on the matter. The latest study does not twitch in its bold declaration, again in the headline, “The Guinea Pig Is Not a Rodent.” Previous molecular studies of rodents were based on more limited comparisons of a handful of genes or proteins. Dr. Saccone and her colleagues took the burdensome route of spelling out, or sequencing, all 16,000 subunits in the rings of genetic material found in the structures that power the cell. After completing the sequencing, they compared the genetic pattern in guinea pigs to that found in rats and mice, as well as in 13 other mammalian species, including chimpanzees, humans, gray seals, cows, opossums and others.
Through complex statistical and computational manipulations, the scientists constructed phylogenetic “trees,” linking animals that were genetically most closely related. Those calculations allowed them to conclude that while rats and mice are close cousins, as any city dweller can attest, guinea pigs are off on a distant branch and deserve their own order. And with the guinea pig, in theory, would go 17 other types of South American rodents thought to be its close relatives. Other recent studies have also cast doubt on the presumed kinship between rabbits and rodents, while still others have questioned the relationships between porcupines and other rodents of the Americas. All told, a bit of disorder has shaken the great rodent burrow.
Opponents of the notion of multiple lineages for rodents criticize the strictly molecular approach on many fronts. Dr. Patrick Luckett of the University of Puerto Rico, an expert in rodent anatomy and embryology, said it was ludicrous to reach so many sweeping conclusions about rodent taxonomy based on a sampling of three rodent species, guinea pigs, rats and mice. “There are 2,021 living species and probably that many extinct ones,” Luckett said. “There are 29 families in the rodent order. The authors of the Nature paper have looked at three species taken from only two rodent families. They say they have a ‘comprehensive’ data set. Well, 3 out of 2,000 is not comprehensive to me. It’s scanty.” Luckett, Honeycutt and others pointed out that the integrity of the rodent order was buttressed by vast amounts of data from morphology — the study of body structure and form — and paleontology. They said rodents were distinguished by their entire head region. They have specialized incisors with enamel only on the front of the teeth, allowing them to be self-sharpening and ever-growing. The jaw musculature permits them to gnaw with their incisors at the same time that they are chewing with their molars. The fetal membranes found in rodents are unique among mammals, as is the pattern of embryonic development. “I could show a guinea pig to my 10-year-old daughter,” Honeycutt said, “and she could tell me it’s a rodent.”
But Graur insists that molecular results are stronger and more objective than anything to be gleaned by studying anatomy or paleontology. “I am one of those people who believe that DNA is the ultimate way to answer questions,” he said. “I don’t believe morphological data; they’re defined so vaguely. People talk about something being ‘slightly slanted’ or ‘moderately curved.’ I come from a mathematical background, and I don’t like definitions like that.” But when it comes to a subunit of DNA, Graur said, there is no arguing which is which. Graur admits that the debate now is polarized beyond immediate resolution. “People call it the Big Divorce,” he said. “There really is no point in talking to each other. We just quarrel.” Yet he cannot help but knock the morphologically minded as being, in his view, scientific fossils. “We people who do taxonomy have a 300-year history of being nasty to each other,” he said. “I like to keep up with tradition.”
Copyright 1996 © The New York Times
Oh, blah blah blah blah blah. Feeling very smart aren’t we? Well a smart person would have taken me up on the $2000 bet rather than insisting the bet only be for $5.
I’m glad I balked at taking your side on this one. But still…the things are rodents.
No matter. I’ll be consulting a biologist before I turn over any cash to Ms. Madrak. This not over. I concede defeat in a minor battle, but the great rodentia flame war of ’06 has just begun.