The evolution of vampires
posted by Darren Naish at 12:17 AM
Thursday, January 18, 2007
About Me
- Name: Darren Naish
- Location: United Kingdom
Darren Naish is a science writer, technical editor and palaeozoologist (affiliated with the University of Southampton, UK). He mostly works on Cretaceous dinosaurs and pterosaurs but has an avid interest in all things tetrapod. His publications can be downloaded at darrennaish.wordpress.com. He has been blogging at Tetrapod Zoology since 2006. YOU ARE CURRENTLY AT A VERY OLD VERSION OF TET ZOO: for modern articles, go to: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/tetrapod-zoology/ And check out the Tet Zoo podcast at tetzoo.com!
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8 Comments:
IMO, passerine parasitism is mainly due to their altricial nature. Parasites evolved gaping red mouths to take advantage of this.
Of course real life is seldom as simple. Waiting for more musings.
Hi Darren,
Not really germane to this post, but I thought you might find this interesting:
http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070115/full/070115-4.html
I especially like the notion of a "phase change" around 13-14 kg.
Any thoughts on this?
Doug M.
Is an oxpecker a parasite or a helpful scavenger- your basic feathered cleaner wrasse?
Doug, you might want to read up this paper
It talks about the cost of carnivory and dietary groups based on the weight of the carnivore. Interesting read.
Concerning that article, Doug M., I can't say it makes a heck of a lot of sense to me.
The equation I was taught states that caloric consumption increases with to the three quarters power of mass. Large animals are actually more metabolically efficient than small ones on a calorie per kilogram basis.
Furthermore, there are examples of predators under the 13 kilogram mark that take prey their own size. An interesting example would be falcons, in which the hunting strategies are sexually dimorphic. Male falcons of many species focus on multiple small prey items, while the females tend to gun for items their size and above. I know for darn sure that there's no falcon in the world above 13 kilograms too, else civil aviation wouldn't exist!
-R. A. Wilderson
Mr. Naish, I'm waiting for this article, because it is very interesting and important for my Neocene project. Can you also post articles about poisonous birds of N. Guinea? And next, I want to read about "exotic" fossil mammals - uintatheres and Astrapotherium. Tell more about Astr. - I know its habit of life is a mistery according to its skeletal anatomy.
Hi Paul, thanks for your comment. The vampire post will be up some time within the next few days. I wasn't planning to post more about the poisonous birds (as you may know, I already wrote some material about them here), but I may do so. Good news for you is that, coincidentally, there is a planned post titled 'What did a dinoceratan do?'. I also plan to do astrapotheres some time (and looked just yesterday at the skull of one), so stay tuned. Thanks for your interest and your thoughts.
We LOVE your blog, and would much appreciate any feedback you can give us on ours...we just went live last week.
www.zooillogix.blogspot.com
Any suggestions would be great!
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