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The impossible predicament of the death newts

crookedtimber.org

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Re: The impossible predicament of the death newts

#141

Post by mattigames »

mr_toad wrote: post #139
mattigames wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is categorically false, we know evolving bigger brains required us to reduce our muscle mass compared to other primates, for the energy budget required to create such brains.

Do we know that? I thought that the evidence suggested that early hominids lost muscle mass, especially in our arms, as they came down from the trees. We also switched from stronger muscle fibres to high endurance muscles. You’re right that there was an energy trade-off, but it was being able to run faster and longer that was more important than strength for our ancestors, who still had quite small brains (the brain…

The diminished muscles in our jaws are one of the direct causes we have bigger brains, source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn4817-early-humans-swa...

Humans evolved Wesker muscles to gain brain mass, source: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/140527-br...

Re: The impossible predicament of the death newts

#142

Post by odyssey7 »

mattigames wrote: post #140
odyssey7 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That cost and benefit trade-off emerged as an opportunity only through luck and it survived only through luck, even if the odds were in its favor.

That's a very broad definition of the word luck, like saying I landed a job by having luck that some company was offering that role, therefore everything is luck, and communication wise would make the word almost useless.

You’re comparing the intelligent design of your job search to evolution.

Re: The impossible predicament of the death newts

#143

Post by steve_adams_86 »

dado3212 wrote: post #15
steve_adams_86 wrote: post #8

Christ, I handled these as a kid quite a bit. Add that to the list of reasons I will wonder how I survived past age 10. I used to keep native snakes and lizards (and inadvertently breed them!), and couldn’t keep newts because I wasn’t sophisticated enough to create the right environments for them. This is one species I kept (and killed, unfortunately). I’ve learned to do it far better since then, but haven’t tried ke…

I also handled these all the time as a kid in northern Oregon, literally hundreds in a day because they would hang out in a series of lakes nearby. Is there a non-poisonous rough-skinned newt variant? I find it impossible to believe that as a young kid I wouldn’t have licked my fingers after years of doing this.

Maybe we’re already in the afterlife. How would we know any different, really? Bested by newts

Re: The impossible predicament of the death newts

#145

Post by the_af »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #37
calebkaiser wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the preceding sentence in that paragraph answers it. Important context here is that garter snakes tend to swallow prey whole. tldr: a strongly poisoned newt survives consumption attempts. > And it explains why the newts keep evolving to be more toxic: the snake may want to eat newts generally, but if an individual newt packs enough of a wallop, the snake may just retch it up and go after a different one. Newt…

> Snakes with less resistance? Have trouble finding newts they can choke down, and don’t get to steal their poison. That's got to be an extremely weak effect. No snake gets an individual benefit from eating the newts. They get a collective benefit, that predators recognize the species as poisonous, in which all snakes, poisonous and delicious alike, share equally. The problem is large enough that actually-poisonous a…

Interesting.

Let me see if I follow: once the snake population has the warning coloration, and predators know not to eat them, then individual snakes being successful at eating poisonous newts is unrelated to the snakes living long enough to pass their genes (i. e. being successful in terms of natural selection). So a snake which has the right colors will be successful, regardless of its diet.

I wonder, is there a point where mimicry can fail? Can predators at some point start to eat the mimics?

Re: The impossible predicament of the death newts

#146

Post by the_af »

ednite wrote: post #7

Love the title, and great article. This might be a total tangent, but every time I see “newts”, I think about how Karel Capek actually coined the word robot in his 1920 play R.U.R., and then later gave us War with the Newts...really smart amphibians. Thanks for sharing.

The War with the Newts is fascinating. An indictment of mankind told with dark humor...

Re: The impossible predicament of the death newts

#147

Post by mattigames »

odyssey7 wrote: post #142
mattigames wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very broad definition of the word luck, like saying I landed a job by having luck that some company was offering that role, therefore everything is luck, and communication wise would make the word almost useless.

You’re comparing the intelligent design of your job search to evolution.

Luck is defined as something happening that was unlikely to happen, so having that in mind that evolution kept happening that is no luck, happens on every living organism (last specimens before extension being the exceptions), that the smarter apes got to reproduce is not luck, it is predictable, that they had to use less muscles if they are smarter is also predictable, that muscles are something primates can give up easier than e.g. liver function it is fairly predictable, that you would prefer to take better care of your smarter offspring is also fairly predictable (not saying it's morally justifiable), and so there are so many aligned factors and feedback loops at play that calling it luck would be a disservice, yes evolution has a slight "brute-force" approach to it that arguably involves "luck" but that it's just a small part of it

Re: The impossible predicament of the death newts

#148

Post by rufus_foreman »

They're cute. They're pretty much harmless in my experience.

They swarm all over the PNW, in season. Don't step on them if you can help it. They're not death newts. I'd be a dead commenter if they were death newts.

They swarm all over the trails in spring, and then they're gone for the rest of the season. That's my recollection of it.

I don't live there anymore, maybe they have evolved into these dangerous death newts. One can hope.

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