where's my damn plume
from fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz on 11 Dec 20:40
https://mander.xyz/post/21817016

#science_memes

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python@programming.dev on 11 Dec 20:51 next collapse

I want the damn feathers for the social aspect! If we were allowed to preen each other, the world would be a better place!

Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de on 15 Dec 13:11 collapse

we are allowed to preen each other, just start helping your friends and family with their haircuts

Skullgrid@lemmy.world on 11 Dec 20:57 next collapse

MF walking one way into getting a pile of teratomas

Lighttrails@sh.itjust.works on 11 Dec 20:59 next collapse

Quick someone get CRSIPR therapy

ummthatguy@lemmy.world on 11 Dec 21:02 next collapse

Stunning creatures, sea lions.

Wonderful plumage.

<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/0f1b231e-2375-434f-b41b-ba67819eba13.jpeg">

Fierce Creatures (1997)

AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works on 12 Dec 00:32 collapse

There’s certainly something stunning and wonderful in that picture all right

Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works on 12 Dec 01:14 next collapse

I also have a thing for short guys in glasses!

superkret@feddit.org on 12 Dec 05:04 collapse

Her shoes

ieatpwns@lemmy.world on 11 Dec 21:14 next collapse

I’m good on the feathers I read the goosebumps book about learning to fly and it gave me a preview of my trypophobia when R.L. Stine described the feathers growing out of the main characters skin

ETA: it was “chicken chicken” not “how I learned to fly”

VanillerGoriller@sh.itjust.works on 11 Dec 21:22 next collapse

I’ll hold off too because some feathers grow straight from the bones. Eek

Iheartcheese@lemmy.world on 11 Dec 22:00 collapse

I on the other hand am all that is man and will be taking the feathers because I want to look fabulous

knightly@pawb.social on 12 Dec 00:32 next collapse

Why would I dye my hair when plumage is an option?

samus12345@lemm.ee on 12 Dec 00:47 next collapse

I feel feathery

Oh, so feathery

All my plumage is standing up tall

BakerBagel@midwest.social on 12 Dec 01:12 collapse

Yeah, just leaves more plumage for me to dazzle the ladies with. Have fun not passing on your genes because i have the superior plumage.

IMongoose@lemmy.world on 12 Dec 01:24 collapse

Huh? I just read this book and that was not in there. The kids just drank a potion and then could fly, there was no outward difference to them. Maybe you are mixing up a different one, like the chicken one? We just started that so idk how it goes. The cover has the girl as a chicken though.

ieatpwns@lemmy.world on 12 Dec 01:31 collapse

Ahh I checked the synopsis and you’re right I definitely got it mixed up with another. I need to find it now.

ETA:Definitely the chicken one jeez it just gave me goosebumps

Wofls@feddit.org on 11 Dec 21:18 next collapse

Now go into a forrest with flint and boom

infinite ammo

swab148@lemm.ee on 12 Dec 08:02 collapse

Just need two chickens, a dispenser, and a redstone clock for infinite chickens

kryptonidas@lemmings.world on 11 Dec 21:23 next collapse

What does that even mean, you have like “four letters” and dna strands of millions long. Like how selective do you have to be. I’m sure you can basically write anything that way.

Are there entire chunks that are inactive that would give feathers, that at some point gave feathers to our ancestors?

flora_explora@beehaw.org on 11 Dec 22:38 next collapse

I agree, this seems pretty misleading. And are there any other feathered animals other than on the dinosaur branch? Because if not, how should the feather DNA even end up in mammalian DNA?? Or maybe feathers are produced by very common differently used genes? But in this case this would be even more nonsensical…

pancake@lemmygrad.ml on 11 Dec 22:39 next collapse

DNA contains coding and control regions. Changes to the coding regions are rare, most of the evolutionary stuff is happening within those control regions instead. Mutations there are more likely to result in interesting effects by affecting the way genes activate and interact, while the coding regions do the heavy lifting.

Losing some feature could be as simple as a mutation that permanently switches off the control region of a gene, even if the gene itself and the interactions formerly coded around it still work. Over time, those accumulate mutations and degrade, since they are not useful and therefore evolution doesn’t preserve them, but they are still there. For example, we have an inactivated gene that used to make an enzyme that would break down uric acid. So we get gout, but our ancestors didn’t.

Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 11 Dec 22:40 next collapse

All things DNA is full of code that doesn’t get activated and is just passed on anyways

Gene expression is what they mean by “activated”

Basically think of it like having a library of instruction books and only grabbing a few of them to do the project that needs done.

psud@aussie.zone on 12 Dec 02:56 collapse

I recall that scientists reactivated chicken genes for teeth and grew a toothed chook

Cruxifux@feddit.nl on 11 Dec 21:43 next collapse

If people had wings and could fly it would be considered exercise and nobody would do it.

RandomLegend@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 11 Dec 21:50 next collapse

Americans wouldn’t do it, the rest of the world would

Cruxifux@feddit.nl on 11 Dec 21:55 next collapse

Yes. Burgerlanders are very averse to any level of self improvement that might be difficult. I blame the car culture propaganda more than I blame the people though.

anomnom@sh.itjust.works on 12 Dec 02:57 collapse

I’m tall and fairly light. Skipping steps helps a lot with efficiency.

TheDoctor@hexbear.net on 11 Dec 21:56 next collapse

Yeah one time I traveled to Europe and everyone was just running everywhere. Very efficient.

Flyberius@hexbear.net on 12 Dec 04:25 collapse

I know I’m China brained, but go to a park in China and you’ll have a hard time walking the paths because of the number of people running, and the squares will be filled with people paying badminton and dancing.

It shamed me into exercising regularly.

frickineh@lemmy.world on 11 Dec 22:47 next collapse

I was about to be offended and then I remembered how I got out of breath walking up the stairs this morning. (To be fair, I’m anemic af and almost certainly have a touch of long covid, but still.)

pearsaltchocolatebar@discuss.online on 12 Dec 00:24 collapse

There’s just something about stairs that gets me. I can run a sub hour 10k, hike 15+ miles a day, and my resting heart rate is in the 50s, but stairs always get me winded.

Klaymore@sh.itjust.works on 12 Dec 00:49 next collapse

My french teacher in high school said that everyone gets winded going up stairs, cause people who are fitter walk up the steps faster

flicker@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 12 Dec 03:37 collapse

This just solved it for me. That is exactly it. I’ve been angry at stairs my whole life and now I realize it’s because I go up them as fast as I walk- which is considerably faster than most people I know.

Cruxifux@feddit.nl on 12 Dec 20:55 collapse

Stairs are different muscles. I used to work at a dam where I would have to climb 20 flights of stairs/ladders multiple times a day with 80 pounds worth of tools on me. Before then stairs were difficult for me, now I can run up that with that much weight no problem. I haven’t worked there for a year but I also can do sub hour 10k (barely) but those muscles stay with you as long as you stay on your feet regularly during the day.

If it’s an issue for you I suggest weight training up and down the stairs you have available to you (in your house maybe?) 5 minutes a day with a couple 20 pound weights up and down those bitches and you’ll make walking stairs your bitch for the rest of your life. If you can do a sub 10k you have the willpower to do it if you want to.

SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml on 12 Dec 01:24 next collapse

Please stop bad-mouthing Americans, it’s just self loathing at this point. It cannot be that black and white.

lseif@sopuli.xyz on 12 Dec 01:38 next collapse

dont mention black and white around americans… one of those might shoot the other.

AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee on 12 Dec 03:02 next collapse

As an American, it’s that black and white

[deleted] on 12 Dec 03:38 next collapse

.

HawlSera@lemm.ee on 12 Dec 04:55 collapse

In America it’s a lot of white, black typically winds up on skid row or at the morgue.

Cruxifux@feddit.nl on 15 Dec 17:33 collapse

How can it be self loathing if I’m not American?

tdawg@lemmy.world on 12 Dec 01:50 collapse

Why would I fly for twenty minutes when I can drive for an hour 🙄

Akasazh@feddit.nl on 12 Dec 10:03 next collapse

If you look at birds like the kakapo, they would’ve had flight in the evolutionary past, but evolved out of it due to lack of predatory threat.

This can be part of Island syndrome, where the dodo also suffered from, till sailors came around and found out they were tasty.

callyral@pawb.social on 12 Dec 20:32 next collapse

We’d end up making flying cars so we wouldn’t have to fly ourselves…

Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de on 15 Dec 13:08 collapse

this is literally how it works for birds, that’s why you see especially pidgeons and corvids walking so often, they just don’t need to fly a lot so they simply walk.

Dasus@lemmy.world on 16 Dec 17:35 collapse

That can be dangerous in the long term.

Mitchell and Webb - Flightless birds

TheDoctor@hexbear.net on 11 Dec 21:57 next collapse

TIL evolution is bad at deleting legacy code

Sundial@lemm.ee on 11 Dec 22:29 collapse

We just comment it out in case we ever need it again.

SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml on 12 Dec 01:22 next collapse

This sounds like a fun PhD project

InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world on 12 Dec 04:53 collapse

No funding. Less fun

rockerface@lemm.ee on 12 Dec 01:44 next collapse

Behold, a feathered biped

Thteven@lemmy.world on 12 Dec 02:35 collapse

Plato is gonna be fuckin pissed

HawlSera@lemm.ee on 12 Dec 04:49 next collapse

Between this, my stripes, and my tail… all things I have genes for, but no activation…

I’m kinda pissed, being human could be far less cringe

webghost0101@sopuli.xyz on 12 Dec 06:18 collapse

Humans do have stripes but we ourselves can’t see them.

Look up Blaschko lines

ashley0_0@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 12 Dec 08:52 next collapse

isn’t that only true for XX chromosome people?

Colalextrast@lemmy.world on 12 Dec 14:49 collapse

I say this without doing any googling (big risk) but I’m pretty sure everyone has them - they’re the lines along which your skin originally formed in the womb. Or where your skin currently grows and migrates from. Or both. Maybe I should have googled lol

MBM@lemmings.world on 12 Dec 09:25 collapse

Unless you have the right skin condition I don’t think they’re visible in any wavelength

BlueMagma@sh.itjust.works on 12 Dec 07:59 next collapse

Is this true ? It doesn’t feel true with my current knowledge.

Strawberry@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 12 Dec 09:25 next collapse

My guess is they mean we have the genes to encode the proteins, since we have similar keratinized tissues like hair and nails. But probably not the hox genes to encode the structure

starman2112@sh.itjust.works on 12 Dec 09:58 collapse

Well then put the box genes in me so I can have a damn plume

dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world on 12 Dec 15:34 next collapse

While we’re on the topic, we all have very slightly webbed digits, multiple involuntary reflexes for when we get wet, and a nasal/respiratory system that is (partially) adapted to swimming. I wonder how far our DNA could be pushed to pad out what was started here?

LovableSidekick@lemmy.world on 12 Dec 21:06 collapse

Our throat region seems poorly thought out. As somebody said recently, tube food goes in or you die is right next to tube food must never block or you die.

zalgotext@sh.itjust.works on 12 Dec 21:13 collapse

The fact that billions of us still get that right hundreds of times a day is honestly pretty fucking insane, with how delicate that whole setup is

LovableSidekick@lemmy.world on 12 Dec 21:20 collapse

Sometimes when I’m chewing a mouthful of food in the car it occurs to me that if I suddenly get in a wreck I will have no control over my gasp reflex.

MashedHobbits@lemy.lol on 12 Dec 20:49 next collapse

I’ll settle for hair regrowth.

LovableSidekick@lemmy.world on 12 Dec 21:04 collapse

OTOH it would be kind of cool to look like the hawk man on the old Buck Rogers tv show.

LovableSidekick@lemmy.world on 12 Dec 21:03 collapse

DNA power - ACTIVATE!!!