User talk:EnderWiggin1

Welcome!

Hello EnderWiggin1, welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Our intro page contains a lot of helpful material for new users—please check it out! If you need help, visit Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on this page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Pcap ping 21:34, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Second law of Thermodynamics

You're correct on one point- the solar system is a largely isolated space. The sun blasts the earth with an absolutely incredibly amount of energy every day. If we paved Arizona and set up solar panels covering the state, we could power the entire planet from that alone.

Now I can see why this might appear to some as violating the second law- but it doesn't. Our solar system is approaching entropy (a state of either cold or energetic equilibrium) as the sun burns itself out. Granted, there is an ABSURD amount of potential energy tied up in the sun, so it won't go 'dark' for tens of billions of years, but progress is progress. --King Öomie 14:37, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Oh, also. The current theory is that birds evolved from small dinosaurs, first surviving colder temperatures with feathers, blah blah blah, so at no point did a creature actually have "half a wing". Bats in particular can still use their thumbs to grip, despite the rest of their fingers being elongated and webbed. Birds often use their wings to intimidate or batter prey/rivals. You may also want to take a look at Evolution of the eye, which has photos that catalog a series of eyes of varying complexity found in nature, from single, photosensitive cells to multi-lensed and compound eyes. --King Öomie 14:43, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

No birds with useless wings? Turkey, Chicken, Silkie, the list goes on. Why did they evolve useless wings? Does the ability to not fly help them survive? --EnderWiggin1 (talk) 18:17, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Another common mistake. Creatures don't automatically evolve towards the best possible form as though guided by a designer. Random mutations can be harmful, neutral or advantageous- but these judgments aren't damning. As I said, birds evolved from dinosaurs. Somewhere in the chain, they lost the prehensile 'fingers' you see in raptor fossils, but in the case of most of the species we see, it did not significantly impact their ability to survive and reproduce (the only real factor in whether a mutation will propagate through the species). Bats still have theirs, and use them frequently.

Similarly, at some point, some of the birds you mentioned may have had flying ancestors- or they may have simply followed the form of their cousin-species as coded in their genetics- fingerless appendages covered with long feathers. Whatever the reason, their ability to survive was not significantly impacted, and survive they did, as ground-birds. --King Öomie 18:29, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

That flies in the face of Natural selection. The species most adaptable will survive. Take the Chicken. The Chicken developed from a red bird in Malaysia which did have the ability to fly. The species best to survive would be the flying Chicken, as predators wouldn't be able to catch it, whereas the modern chicken can not fly and is thus easier to be eaten and not reproduce. --EnderWiggin1 (talk) 19:11, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

No, the species adaptable enough will survive. The Dodo was an incredibly weak species, one that only survived for as long as it did due to a complete lack of predation in its natural habitat. The thing laid its delicious, delicious eggs in open, ground-level nests, for cripe's sake. It didn't become extinct until a combination of overhunting and non-native dogs preying on their eggs wiped them out. But they were fit enough to survive, pre-man. Again, 'perfect' creatures hardly ever come about. I can't think of any given animal that wouldn't benefit from venomous fangs and the ability to regenerate limbs. I didn't say the loss of flight didn't make the chicken less adaptable- I said it didn't hurt its survivability.

Say you have a battery in your car (you probably do). Say it's a very high-end battery, able to cold-start the engine from like -30°F. Very adaptable battery.

Now say you live in Miami. If you swap that battery for a run-of-the-mill one able to cold-start from only -10°F, you've lost a degree of adaptability. But it won't effect the car's ability to start- because that extra potential wasn't required. --King Öomie 19:32, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Which begs the question. Why did the wing fade? The trait was more adaptable, and should've been the one that survived. Let's put this a different way. Both those batteries cost the same. Which one do you buy? --EnderWiggin1 (talk) 22:08, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

That's not how it works. At no point is an animal presented with a 'choice' of how its kids will look, beyond mate selection. Mutations are essentially random. If the random mutation in some individuals (to reduce wing size) had led to the individuals dying before reproductive age (whether it be due to defect or predators), then the mutation would have been naturally de-selected. That didn't happen. Instead (and this is speculation), reduced bodymass led to lessened dietary requirements, and an animal better able to survive drought and food shortages. Keep in mind that body parts with densely-packed muscle mass are 'expensive' in terms of energy. There's a reason Huntington's disease survived for tens of thousands of years of human development (or longer)- its symptoms don't claim the life of the individual until they're well into reproductive viability. --King Öomie 14:53, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

February 2010

Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to contribute to Wikipedia, at least one of your recent edits, such as the one you made to Environmental issues with war, did not appear to be constructive and has been reverted. Please use the sandbox for any test edits you would like to make, and read the welcome page to learn more about contributing constructively to this encyclopedia. Thank you. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 05:27, 26 February 2010 (UTC)