the bartender

The Japanese are already on it: http://singularityhub.com/2011/01/1...ext-five-years/

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You who build these altars now

To sacrifice these children

You must not do it anymore

Burgery

im gonna get one

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crazysam23_Atax

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I am on break from recording until I buy a new computer in June. Look at the bandcamp page to see the track list for upcoming EP "Discarnate".



Terry Prachett is funnier than you! Discworld

luvs2gro

It's a shame that clones have shorter life span and have such a high risk of death/failure at living... how ever if the clone lives long enough to produce an off spring then the off spring will remain healthy and have a normal lifespan.

funny how that works

captaincrunk

i'm saying they'd have trouble with it for reasons like that

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luvs2gro

Mammoths and Mastodons were both Pleistocene Mega fauna, thats why they're so bad ass.

If it would be unreliably hard to maintain the environment and diet of a species for long enough to see it transform into a mega fauna, what if you alter the genes of an embryo (i have no idea what im talking about) so it activates some sort of "gigantism gene" and place it in an egg, when its born you should have a giant creature within 1 generation right?

but it wouldn't necessarily be a new species of mega fauna it would just have a genetic "disorder" so to say?

lets talk a little more about biology and cross species breeding, humans and chimps can't create an off spring, this is because of a difference in the number of chromosomes. Lions and Tigers have been successfully bred to create Ligars but the cross species animal can not create a baby of its own.. What if we found a way to match chromosomes of 2 different species, one large and one small, could we use selective breeding to take the trait of the large animal and apply it to the small one to make it large?

Sorry for my silly/ungodly talk of cross species breeding im sure many of you think its wrong lol. If any body has some other sort of question or hypothetical genetic/breeding scenario please ask I like to read and discuss about these sort of topics.

the bartender

Well, we do know what genetic disorder causes gigantism in humans, so theoretically it would be possible to breed an animal with a such defect. Humans with this effect only grow up to 50% larger than average though, so there's a limit to it.

I doubt that it would be unreliably hard to maintain a suitable environment for whatever species we choose though, as long as we take one that isn't too needy. We've got polar bears and penguins living in zoo's all around the world, though the climates are often a lot different than in their original habitat. We don't have to replicate the exact circumstances as they would be in the wild, as long as we meet those that are required for the animal's health and the breeding proces.

Indeed it would. It's quite hard to draw a line as to where one species ends and the other begins, but one of the most solid criteria is wether cross-breeding the two would give fertile offspring as a result. If so, they're still the same species, if not, they're seperate species. Since gigantism doesn't affect reproduction abilities, they'd be perfectly capable of succesfully mating with their non-giant peers. You could, however, make sure they only breed with other giants, which in the end would result in the giants and non-giants becoming two seperate species due to divergent evolution.

I doubt wether we'd actually be able to do this, since there are so many problems with combining genetic material of two species that are significantly different, but if we somehow could then I guess it would be possible.

Anyone who thinks cross-breeding or selective breeding is wrong should not have dogs, or eat vegetables and fruits, or buy flowers, since they're mostly the results of doing exactly that.

__________________

You who build these altars now

To sacrifice these children

You must not do it anymore