Hyrax, Elephants and Florida

“What unlikely cousins are there in the animal kingdom? (looking at elephants and the hyrax.)”

Didn’t…you just answer that a little…? Hm…Well, I’ll tell you what: there are MILLIONS of “unlikely” relatives in the animal kingdom. Or at least, they LOOK very unlikely, but for a variety of reasons (most of them evolution….all of them evolution), it does make sense that they now seem so different. With regards to the hyrax and the elephant, they are one another’s CLOSEST living relatives. Which means they had other, closer relatives, but they’re all gone now (to Florida, maybe?). To get from the small, furry hyrax to the gigantic, wrinkled elephant, millions of years of divergent evolution occurred. There was an accumulation of different traits between populations of their common ancestor that led to different species. As these different traits were selected for and emphasized with evolution (ex. Animals evolved bigger and bigger or smaller and smaller as it proved advantageous), the descendant species came to look more and more different. Eventually, some species’ traits proved deleterious; they were selected AGAINST and at an increasingly severe disadvantage in terms of survival and reproduction. These species are the elephant/hyrax’s relatives that are currently extinct (or in Florida).

My point is that if you go back far enough, EVERYTHING has some hella unlikely cousins. These cousins seem particularly unlikely when you no longer can see the gradient between X and Y species. Is this a downer? Hell, probably. Am I making evolution less mysterious? God, I hope so. The elephant and hyrax may not look like they belong at the same family reunion, but the fact that they who are SO different remained while the rest of the family kited off to Florida, is damned impressive.

The State of No Return

So I know this is not the answer you’re looking for, but in researching this, I realized a few things: 1) there are several ways to answer that question 2) one of the ways I could answer that would be very hard for me to personally determine 3) I did not know what a hyrax was (apparently, not a type of goat). I could list off things that are closer to one another than to other things that make more sense (which I can still do, cause hey! It’s fun), but again, evolution ruins the party because those “close” relatives are millions of years of evolution, and many closer relatives apart.. I could personally determine which animals’ closest relatives are such and such surprising thing (as with the elephant and hyrax), but that research would take time that I do not have. Conversely, I could look at existing lists (which I will link to), but I’d prefer to be original here. Also, I think I was confusing hyrax with ibex. THESE ARE VERY DIFFERENT THINGS.

You can tell the difference thusly: this bro is cute and twee…

…while you can tell by the eyes that this guy WILL push you off a ledge. That one. That ledge. Avoid that ledge.

And now, a list:

• Shrimp and potato bugs (aka pill bugs, aka sow bugs, aka woodlice, aka the bug I tracked into the apartment yesterday &etc) are more closely related than potato bugs and millipedes or centipedes. That’s because they’re both crustaceans and the blanky-pedes are not (they’re myriapods).
• Cephalopods (squid, octopods, cuttlefish) and snails and slugs and oysters Rockefeller are all Molluscs.
• After decades of debate, scientists have decided that pandas are less like large, greyscale red pandas and more of an “aberrant bear”. A-BEAR-rant, right? Ha ha…ha…
• Hyenas, despite looking like hairy, ‘roided up pit bull/wolf hybrids, are more closely related to cats and have stinking ADORABLE pups.

• Sea pigs are related to sea cucumbers. Sea pigs exist. They exist and just…WHY. THEY ARE GOO WHAT WAS EVOLUTION THINKING.

WHY

Sources

Laidler, Keith. 2009. Animals: A Visual Guide to the Animal Kingdom. Quercus Publishing Plc, London.

Zweifel. 2002. “Hyraxes”. Encyclopedia of Animals. Barnes and Noble Books, New York.

Two separate CRACKED articles about unlikely animal relatives

5 Species You Won’t Believe Are Related

10 Animals You Won’t Believe Are Closely Related

Schrodinger’s Cat- Now You See Me…

Finally got some topic requests! Some of which are pretty brutal and some are just full of it (you know who you are). First up is Schrodinger’s Cat.

This one is brutal for me because I am not a physics or quantum anything sort of person. However, a lot of people like talking about Schrodinger’s poor, pent up kitty, so I’m going to try and clear things up a little. If anyone has any questions or corrections, please let me know; I am by no means an expert.

First of all, here is the original scenario by Schrodinger, translated from German:

“A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following device (which must be secured against direct interference by the cat): in a Geiger counter there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small, that perhaps in the course of the hour one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube discharges and through a relay releases a hammer which shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed.”

Although it may not be clear immediately, this is a model intended to describe the state of sub-atomic particles, such as electrons. Schrodinger used the cat to make a point and to get people thinking about applying the existing modes of thought to something from “real life”. At least as “real life” as a cat in a box with acid and radioactive matter can be.

Anyway, one of the existing modes of thought was the “classical model”, which said you could predict whether the cat is alive or dead based on models. However, Schrodinger points out that people made these models and you can’t expect reality to conform to a man-made model. The cat’s conformity to the model’s prediction would be arbitrary (as would that of the subatomic particles), that is, it may or may not follow the prediction and whether it does or not is random. So the classical model is not helpful.

Another idea follows the concept of the wave function, also called the psi-function. This would say that the cat’s state is blurred between all possibilities, “mixed or smeared out in equal parts” between living and dead, as Schrodinger put it. You could say the cat is undead, but that would have to encompass a complete range, from completely living to completely dead. So whether or not you believe in zombies, that’s a pretty hard concept to envision (let alone accept). Schrodinger invented the cat because he agreed: this isn’t how life works. Psi-function assumes the blurring of states is confined to a sub-atomic scale, when in reality, sub-atomic particles affect macroscopic objects and systems. A particle can no more be in two places at once than a cat can be dead and alive at once.

Schrodinger’s solution is simply that the cat is dead or alive. The only way to discover its state is to open the box and observe it. In a similar way, sub-atomic particles may be anywhere, but we only know where when we try to observe them.

So how is any of this useful? Consider the various models of the atom. The first models you see of atoms show sort of an onion, with protons and neutrons at the center, and electrons arranged in layers surrounding them. Getting into college chemistry, you understand that electrons have “atomic orbitals”, regions in which you are most likely to find the electrons. Diagrams show the orbitals as specific shapes, but that’s just the shape of the area the electron moves around in. So while you have a certain probability that the electron will be in a given location, you can’t predict it. Neither can you say the electron is smeared around its orbital. It is the cat, but rather than alive or dead, it is in this spot or somewhere else, and you won’t know until you look at it.

Hope that helps a little. Now that I’m done, I think I’ll have lunch, maybe draw, or return some books. You won’t know which unless I’m observed.

But that would be creepy, so please don’t.

Sources

Kramer, Melody. 2013. “The Physics Behind Schrödinger’s Cat Paradox.” National Geographic. Jan 8 2014. < http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/08/130812-physics-schrodinger-erwin-google-doodle-cat-paradox-science/&gt;

Schrodinger, Erwin. Trans. John D. Trimmer. 1996. “The Present Situation in Quantum Mechanics: A translation of Schrodinger’s ‘Cat Paradox Paper’.” Technical University of Hamburg-Hamburg. Jan 8, 2014. <http://www.tuhh.de/rzt/rzt/it/QM/cat.html&gt;

Diagram credit to Dhatfield, Wikimedia Commons.

Science in Action!

My arms are currently going through a bonus puzzle level in Video Game Me. Which is to say, I burned my arms at work and now I have a couple inflamed spots where Flamethrower Carl has gone to town and made my capillaries leaky. I focused on immune response to pathogens the other day, but white blood cells do react to tissue damage and the immune system will kick in even for a paper cut. It just doesn’t go full hog unless the cut gets infected. Because I have only light burns, there’s no open wound for pathogens to enter so Carl will just calm down when the damaged tissue is taken care of.

Calm down, Carl. Just calm down.