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That last one hit best.
I’ll constantly make entire spreadsheets to analyze the most random things, and then I get annoyed when my wife doesn’t want to hear the summary and conclusion.
I’m currently on my taxonomy obsession. Does anyone want to hear about how birds are actually reptiles?
Yes…yes I do. Their legs are all scales but they don’t shed. Pretty sure dinosaurs had feathers too.
Had? They still do! Birds are literally dinosaurs. Theropods to be precise. The same clade as the iconic T-Rex.
Yup, they did. Feathers rarely leave any evidence in the form of fossils or whatever, but I remember an article from close to 20 years ago now where they had found the imprints of feathers on a small dinosaur.
Cassowary has entered the chat
Yes, please!
Okay, so the classic classification we all learned in school, that separates animals in Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus and Species, was created by a guy called Linneaus.
Now, back in Linneaus’ time, they didn’t know about evolution, much less genetics, so he tried to classify animals based on the physical similarities he could see. All animals with scales in the same group (reptiles), all animals who lactate in the same group (mammals), all animals with feathers in the same group (birds), and so on and so forth.
Nowadays, though, we can use genetics to determine more precisely how related different species of animals are to eachother, and so comes a new classification, that puts animals that evolved from the same ancestor together in the same group. Which is the cladistic classification
Now a lot of animals did fit more or less with the linnean classification, but a lot of them don’t. A lot of animals we thought were related are actually very distant genetically and only look similar due to convergent evolution, and a lot of the ones we thought had nothing to do with eachother turned out to be be really closely related.
Birds and reptiles are one such case. Both birds and the animals we more commonly consider as reptiles, are descended from the same ancestor and are currently considered part of the class Reptilia, which are all diapsids, meaning they have two openings on each side of the skull. Not only that, birds are descendants of a now extinct group of theropod dinosaurs called Archaeopteryx, which makes them living, breathing dinosaurs!
That’s so interesting! I didn’t expect convergent evolution to happen so often, I always thought it was a huge accident when that happens. Are there specific areas where it happens more often or is it combletely random?
Are all reptiles dinosaurs, or did reptiles and dinosaurs have a more distant common ancestor? I often heard things like chickens are the distant cousins of t rex or crocodiles are living dinosaurs. How much truth is there to that?
All Birds are dinosaurs, but not all dinosaurs are birds. All dinosaurs are reptiles, but not all reptiles are dinosaurs. Crocodylians for example, are not dinosaurs
I’m not sure about chickens specifically, but as you can see above, all birds are part of the theropod clade, which is the same clade as T-Rex, so they are indeed closely related.
Convergent evolution tends to happen when animals face similar environmental challenges, because sometimes a certain body plan is simply the most efficient way to tackle these challenges. For example, if animal A and animal B both live in the water, and they both need to swim fast to fill their niche, they’re likely going to evolve a similar streamlined body with dorsal and pectoral fins. Ex. Sharks, Dolphins and Ichthyosaurs.
My favorite example of how cladistics has changed our perception of animals is the elephant shrew.
We named it shrew because it’s obviously a shrew, right? And the elephant part was just a funny little joke because of his big snout, even though it obviously isn’t related to elephants! Well, it turns out that not only is it NOT a shrew, it is actually one of the closest living relatives to elephants! How crazy is that?
That is so cool! Are there any theories as to why elephants have grown so big when one of the closest relatives is so small?
Fun fact: I had to look up what a shrew is, since I’m not a native speaker. It turns out in my native tongue the name has mouse in it, despite shrews not being mice!
When i say they’re one of the closest, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re close, just that a lot of the other, more closely related ones, such as mammoths, are extinct. That said, the closest living relatives to elephants are actually manatees and dugongs.
These are still different animals that evolved to fill different niches though. They’re part of the clade Afrotheria, which is very, very diverse.
For more information on why this is such a diverse clade, i’d recommend Clint’s Reptiles’ video about it: https://youtu.be/bO2DpSJtFBo
Just wait until you get to the monotremes
Not a programmer.
I spent the odd hour a day for a year and half, googling VBA to make a multi-page report with pictures and such generate automatically after the import of a CSV file.
All so I could do 30 reports I was secretly backlogged on that would have taken me about 3 days to do manually.After getting into Linux I decided I should learn programming too in case it’s useful and I’ve been trying to slap together little programs for doing things like logging the weights of my tree frogs or data scraping image hosting sites. Coding is actually pretty fun for the ADD brain. Lots and lots of problem solving, a system to figure out, autism brain logic stuff, it’s great.
I used to play this game called RAGE many years ago. It was a first person shooter, with a bunch of late game overpowered guns, had a crafting system to make ammo and the like, shops to sell and buy said ammo, but had strict resource controls to keep it competitive and fun.
So I spent around four days tabulating values of every ammo and crafting material in the game, mapping out which in-game traders sold what and when, and then spent maybe the next three days just craft-selling the cheapest item, a wingstick(basically a boomerang) in the game.
Hundreds and hundreds of wingsticks, grinding like a little kid in a sweatshop. I made enough money to max. out capacity on every ammo capacity in the game. As a result I breezed through the endgame, and what was supposed to be a long, tough, engaging mission into the heart of the enemy turned into a caricature of a boss fight, and I probably spend more time admiring the environment design there than worrying about dying or running out of ammo. I think I ran out only on one ammo type, and in total I used only the three most powerful ammo types in the game.
A level I should have enjoyed and formed the neat little bow for that game to be wrapped in, turned into a comical doom guy-esque slaughter of the scariest enemy in-game.
I am truly my own worst enemy.
It’s like that saying goes. “Players will optimize the fun out of a game.” Game studios spend many, many man hours on just this one aspect of development. It’s the reason Skyrim’s systems were fewer and simpler than Oblivion and Morrowind. I believe Todd Howard himself said they were trying to get away from all the spreadsheet inducing aspects of their games.
What they fail to realize is that optimizing and spreadsheets are fun for some people
Exactly. I stay away from EVE online because I know that if I start it, my life is over.
Caffeine and I have a very strange relationship. Sometimes, it keeps me alert. Sometimes, it makes me crash within an hour of consuming it. I thought I didn’t have ADHD for the longest time because I was told of I did have it, caffeine would make me sleepy.
For me, it seems to have no effects. I’ve been known to down mugs full of coffee and still manage to fall asleep. (It gets the bowels running, though)
I’ve found constantly slamming energy drinks throughout the day to be a semi effective way of getting through work.
For me it’s music and pomodori
I’m not sure what the ‘less sleep/mild cold’ one is trying to say but it did make me realize something about myself. When I’m sick, but not super sick, I do find it very peaceful. It makes me okay with laying on the couch watching stuff all day long whereas if I were healthy I’d feel anxious about wasting my time.
I think that might be what it’s trying to say except for the fact that that is NOT the case when I’m running low on sleep.
I have a similar experience when I’m sick. I usually feel more calm and it seems easier to cook or read.
Same for me, my internal (probably wrong) explanation for this has been that it’s quite similar to having something going on (in this case, the recovery from sickness) so that it’s a bit easier for the brain to not actively worry and be useless.
I don’t know if what I wrote makes sense, I’m not sick right now
You guys keep coins in your wallet??? That seems like it would be terribly uncomfortable
My wallet has a lil coin zipper pouch thing
You guys have money?
Not all wallets are billfolds.
I havent used coins regularly for a decade.
I don’t carry coins very often myself
You guys use a wallet?
Where do you keep your coins?
In my right pocket with my keys
Without a pouch or anything?
I never have a whole lot of change anymore so yes when I have a few coins they just rattle around loose until they end up in the change jar!
Everyone know those are supposed to go in your left pocket! …right?..
They could I suppose, but then they’d scratch up my phone screen
Coins are generally pretty hard on pants pockets… Do you often end up with holes?
Nope, it’s never been an issue. I would think coins would be a lot harder on a thin wallet that you’re sitting on constantly
Cool. Personally my pants pockets started lasting much longer when I stopped carrying coins in them, but I’m glad it’s working for you.
I’ve also deformed/worn out wallets from carrying coins too… So now I just don’t carry them, lol.
That sounds like a lot of coins, I keep coins in the coin pocket, it’s just named so for a reason.
Why don’t energy drinks work for us???
For the same reason Adderall let’s us focus, while it makes everyone else jittery.
Chemicals are weird. Thanks a lot, brain.
I don’t know if I have ADD, but amphetamines definitely help me focus when the dosage is medical and the intent is not recreational. I haven’t heard of anyone not being more productive if they pop 10mg of D-amph at work. People get jittery when they do lines of speed in a rave.
Caffeine and AD(H)D seem to have all kinds of funky relationships/cross effects
I don’t know. When I was younger, caffeine made me sleepy. Nowadays, it makes me focus.
It’s great to finish activities, but I cannot take it frequently as it affects my mood if I do so (bipolar disorder). It’s only my emergency focus 🪄.
If all the column B’s describe me, is this meme a diagnosable test of ADD?
I didn’t phrase that right but you know what I mean.
Caffeine addiction can also cause needing caffeine to sleep. Like, a very high amount of caffeine addiction. (Source: a phase where I needed caffeine to go to sleep.) Right up there with the caffeine withdrawal shakes.
One can additionally have ADHD.
Currently prepping for a nap by finishing my second cup of coffee.
I have the worst of both world
I partly see myself in this meme and I don’t like it.
literally me
I do indeed remember a couple of dreams from when I was a very young child, didn’t realise it was an adhd thing. At least caffeine works properly for me though.
I love this.
I have that coin from the year where my sister was born
No one can have it
Maybe her child if he ask politely
I actually use monsters as a sleep aid.
