I don't know why anyone would think psychedelics would have any therapeutic or medical use at all.
For no reason what so ever, 5 methoxy DMT, a powerful psychedelic and 5ht2a agonist who's shape fits into serotonin receptors and a new anti-depressant.
They appear to be Bean Geese. This is a somewhat controversial species, as there are two distinct groups -- one which normally breeds in the taiga forests of northern Eurasia, and one which normally breeds on the open tundra. The British Ornithologists' Union considers the two subpopulations to be the same species, whereas the International Ornithologists' Union classifies the Taiga Bean Goose (Anser fabalis) and the Tundra Bean Goose (Anser serrirostris) as separate species.
As the names suggest, they normally breed in the tundra or in the taiga forests of northern Eurasia, though they migrate further south during the Winter. To find a pair breeding in the temperate zone is rather unusual, unless they're living in a wildfowl center or some such place.
__________________
“The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.”
There a lot of them on the local golf course which has a challenging amount of ponds and rivers on it.
The Bean Goose does seem to have that distinct feather pattern, but when I search google pics they seem to have a sort of green bit on their beak that isn't present on the ones I see at the golf course. Like this fellow:
But on a page about Bean Geese I saw a link for 'similar birds' that had a Greylag Goose. These are residents of the area I live (eastern UK) and have that same distinct feather pattern and all orange beaks. Like this fellow:
Either way thanks for the response and always interesting to learn something new
As the names suggest, they normally breed in the tundra or in the taiga forests of northern Eurasia, though they migrate further south during the Winter eat beans.
at least they got the name from a habit of grazing in bean fields
My granddaughter, (who is 7) got really upset when we told her that we were going to show her a group of Dinosaurs, and that my wife and I had sat outside the evening before listening to them. She was only a little relieved when we tried to explain that we were talking about chickens. According to the latest information on the classification of animals a species that has evolved from another species is still members of the original species. So Humans are apes, and apes evolved from monkeys and are still monkeys but with additional descriptives to the name of the species, so humans are still monkeys, though many people don't want to admit it.
__________________ The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don’t know anything about. Wayne Dyer
According to the latest information on the classification of animals a species that has evolved from another species is still members of the original species.
This isn't quite right. Better to say that when two species develop from a common ancestral form, they both stay in the same higher-level groups as the ancestor. So birds are dinosaurs, having diverged from another group of dinosaurs some time back.
This is my attempt at a brief statement, anyway. And this clade-based approach hasn't fully caught on yet.
According to the latest information on the classification of animals a species that has evolved from another species is still members of the original species.
This isn't quite right. Better to say that when two species develop from a common ancestral form, they both stay in the same higher-level groups as the ancestor. So birds are dinosaurs, having diverged from another group of dinosaurs some time back.
This is my attempt at a brief statement, anyway. And this clade-based approach hasn't fully caught on yet.
You are quite right if 2 species evolve from a common ancestor, but I was referring to the descendent species and the common ancestor, I was not referring to another species that may also have evolved from that common ancestor. The other complicating factor is that occasionally the common ancestor survives and lives either alongside, or in a different environment of the descendent species.
__________________ The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don’t know anything about. Wayne Dyer
You are quite right if 2 species evolve from a common ancestor, but I was referring to the descendent species and the common ancestor, I was not referring to another species that may also have evolved from that common ancestor. The other complicating factor is that occasionally the common ancestor survives and lives either alongside, or in a different environment of the descendent species.
The thing is that it's problematic to refer to the common ancestor as a species, which is why I din't use the word when referring to it. Think of every species as a leaf on a tree. Sure they join to twigs which then join together to larger branches, but these twigs and branches are not themselves leaves.
It's an imperfect model of reality, but nonetheless a very useful one. It helps to remember that species and other taxa are labels we apply to a messy biological reality, not the reality itself.
The thing is that it's problematic to refer to the common ancestor as a species, which is why I din't use the word when referring to it. Think of every species as a leaf on a tree. Sure they join to twigs which then join together to larger branches, but these twigs and branches are not themselves leaves.
It's an imperfect model of reality, but nonetheless a very useful one. It helps to remember that species and other taxa are labels we apply to a messy biological reality, not the reality itself.
It is my understanding that every thing that is or was alive belonged to a species, whether science had named that species or not. In that sense all common ancestors did belong to a particular species. Using the analogy of the tree of life, not only are leaves species, but also the twigs, branches and the trunk are separate species, as well as the roots. The whole tree consists of different species that have a different location on the tree of life. The analogy only becomes problematical when you consider the roots, they should not branch, to be entirely accurate with current understanding of evolution, however it is possible that several lines came together to form a single common ancestor, but that is outside the current understanding of evolution. I believe the current understanding looks only at the tree from the trunk up.
__________________ The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don’t know anything about. Wayne Dyer
The thing you're not getting is that taxonomy is really a snapshot. Certainly there were ancestors. If we lived 10 million years ago we might well classify those ancestors by species. But we don't. We do dig up fossils and classify them as species, but we treat them as leaves that come off a branch closer to the trunk, not as branches themselves (within phylogenetically-informed taxonomy, anyway).
The thing you're not getting is that taxonomy is really a snapshot. Certainly there were ancestors. If we lived 10 million years ago we might well classify those ancestors by species. But we don't. We do dig up fossils and classify them as species, but we treat them as leaves that come off a branch closer to the trunk, not as branches themselves (within phylogenetically-informed taxonomy, anyway).
Then what are the trunk and branches if not species.
__________________ The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don’t know anything about. Wayne Dyer
Then what are the trunk and branches if not species.
They represent the relationships between different species. Where branches join there is a hypothetical common ancestor. A particular branch and all of it's sub-branches and leaves off them represents a clade, which might be given a name, and that name might be at a taxonomic rank above species, such as genus, family, etc.
I'm probably not explaining this well. Keep in mind that the tree is the map, not the territory, and we're trying to draw that map based on the incomplete information we have. We expect there was a reality and that the tree is a simplification of it into a comprehensible form without losing too much relevant information.
There's two things we're talking about here, reality and representation.
In reality each animal breeds or doesn't breed with other animals, passing on genetic mutations and changes which affects how and with who their progeny will breed or not breed with, creating continues chains of often interrelated individuals.
In representation us humans came along and decided that grouping things was the only way to make better sense of the mess and decided on 'species' as a representation of groups of these continous chains of individuals. However these groups don't necessarily come one after another or are automatically closely related genetically. After species we started grouping things based on similarity which can often match genetics but not always.
A prime modern example of reality hitting representation is the neanderthal. Genetically able to breed with humans, we might consider them part of the human species, yet at the same time they appear both different enough and isolated enough to be considered a different species in our classification and there's no way to tell if one came from the other. If white there's a chance you're related to neanderthals through one or multiple individuals, each one of these individuals is related to a variety of other individuals, a few may be varied enough to be considered different species in our classification, and hopefully it doesn't take long to see that this shit gets fuzzy fast. In comes the branching tree model to give a representation that isn't just a giant fuzzy cobweb.
Then what are the trunk and branches if not species.
They represent the relationships between different species. Where branches join there is a hypothetical common ancestor. A particular branch and all of it's sub-branches and leaves off them represents a clade, which might be given a name, and that name might be at a taxonomic rank above species, such as genus, family, etc.
I'm probably not explaining this well. Keep in mind that the tree is the map, not the territory, and we're trying to draw that map based on the incomplete information we have. We expect there was a reality and that the tree is a simplification of it into a comprehensible form without losing too much relevant information.
It is still my understanding that every living thing was of a particular species, whether science had named that species or not. Not knowing the name does not indicate that the organism was not of a particular species.
__________________ The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don’t know anything about. Wayne Dyer
It is still my understanding that every living thing was of a particular species, whether science had named that species or not. Not knowing the name does not indicate that the organism was not of a particular species.
"Species" is a conceptual construct, a distillation of the observation living things reproduce offspring that are like themselves. There have been many different attempts to refine the idea of species with a useful definition: Species - Wikipedia
You can't logically say that every living thing is a member of a species and in the next breath talk about branches in the tree of life where one species split into two or more new species. The more you zoom in on the fork the more ridiculous it becomes - you end up having to claim that siblings belong to distinct species or that parents raised young that were a different species than themselves.
Even with things alive today there's no clear distinction of what defines a species: for example lions and tigers can interbreed - so are they one species or two, or more?
Indeed. We shouldn't expect that it's always easy to distinguish one "species" from another, given that speciation is usually a very gradual (as measured on human timescales) process. As such, it's inevitable that there will be plenty of groups that are of indeterminate species.
Since speciation seems to almost-always occur when one population is divided into 2 or more isolated (or semi-isolated) populations that then begin to gradually diverge, there's no hard-and-fast line where you can say whether or not the 2 populations are still members of the same species.
That's precisely why there are so many different definitions of "species" used by biologists -- each is tailored to different situations. And even so, there are plenty of organisms where even biologists argue vigorously about whether or not they're members of different species.
The following diagram provides a useful illustration of how speciation is generally thought to occur. The vertical axis is time, and the diagram shows one population dividing into two populations, which then begin to diverge.
I think that we can all agree that at point "A", we have just one species. We can also agree that at points "B" and "C", we have 2 species. But where do we draw the line and say that the two populations are now separate species? That decision is necessarily arbitrary, and not everyone will agree where to draw the line -- or even that such a line should be drawn.
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“The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.”
Similar issues exist with delineating separate languages.
It's totally clear that, say, Swahili and Japanese and Swedish are all different languages. There is no evidence that they are related (although some people hypothesize a common origin for all human languages, that will probably be an open question forever given the lack of historical evidence).
It's also clear that Swedish and English are different languages, although they are fairly closely related as far as languages go (it is possible to construct many highly similar sentences like "Vad kan vi se där?"/"What can we see there?").
But then when you get into Danish vs. Norwegian vs. Swedish, the boundaries become a lot fuzzier. And then you might ask, "which version of Danish or Norwegian or Swedish?", because that can make a big difference in how similar the varieties are. But the standard forms of particularly Swedish and Norwegian would most likely be considered the same language if not for them being separate countries and having separate orthographies, etc. My mom can speak Swedish just fine with someone speaking Norwegian (although it may require adjustments). Danish is more different, but varieties just as different are considered dialects of the same language in many other instances.
So the fact that we consider them separate languages is somewhat arbitrary.
The relation here is, of course, that saying when Icelandic ceased to be the same language as Norwegian and Swedish is similarly arbitrary to defining when speciation occurred. And the same for when did Old English stop being the same as Old Norse, or any other split between languages. They gradually become less similar and at some point you say they're separate languages.
However, the point I've been trying to get across, which is admittedly a bit tricky, is different. Presumably it's not too problematic to say that people living on the Pontic steppe 6000 years ago spoke one or more languages, even if we don't know what it was, what methods we use in reconstructing proto-Indo-European, or if the boundaries between languages/dialects were very fuzzy.
Phylogenetics is a bit different. The methods used to construct phylogenies assume that species are the leaves of the tree, to the best of my admittedly inexpert knowledge. Therefore, it's not clear that to say "hypothetical ancestors were members of some unnamed species" is even a meaningful sentence.
That is, within the phylogenetic context. I'm applying that context because the statement "birds are dinosaurs" is a phylogenetic one. It might well be that when discussing Cretaceous ecology talking about proto-birds as species makes some sense. This is about how words take on meanings within domains of discourse, an area which I'm even more inexpert in, but isn't talking out of one's ass one of the pleasures of the internet?
Re: A Question For The Lone Ranger
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