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Rare 'goat-sheep' born on Irish farm

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Rare 'goat-sheep' born on Irish farm

#51

Post by watsitbang »

dang wrote: post #49
eps wrote: post #29

@lacero - you are hell-banned

Lacero is not "hell-banned" or any other kind of banned. Lacero's comment came from an IP that had been caught by a spam filter. I just unbanned the IP and unkilled the relevant comments. Please don't claim things on or about Hacker News that you can't possibly know are true. Concerns about dead comments and anything else about HN can be sent to hn@ycombinator.com. Edit: I deleted things that were too harsh.

I guess we've just found out how we're going to be treated by the new moderators.

eps was obviously trying to be helpful to lacero. If lacero was hell-banned, he wouldn't know it to email you, would he? And for his trouble he gets this mean reply from you.

Re: Rare 'goat-sheep' born on Irish farm

#52

Post by tokenadult »

giardini wrote: post #25
grey413 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Goat and sheep lineages diverged approximately five to eight million years ago[1]. For reference, human and gorilla lines diverged roughly six to eight million years ago[2]. Also, different breeds of dogs are considered the same species (and likewise with cats). [1] http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/89/44/91/PDF/hal-008... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolutionary_genetics#Div...

Humans and gorillas? What about our ancestors and those of pigs? I found this hypothesis fascinating: "A chimp-pig hybrid origin for humans?" http://phys.org/news/2013-07-chimp-pig-hybrid-humans.html from the article: " I asked McCarthy if he could give a date estimate for the hybridization event, he said that there are a couple broad possibilities: (1) It might be that hybridization between pigs and apes produced th…

That hypothesis is completely wrong:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/07/02/the-mfap-hypot...

Re: Rare 'goat-sheep' born on Irish farm

#53

Post by thret »

grey413 wrote: post #22
geuis wrote: post #12

How closely related are the two species. Hybrids between species of horses and cats are common. Same for canines. But it didn't occur to me that wheels and goats are that closely related

Goat and sheep lineages diverged approximately five to eight million years ago[1]. For reference, human and gorilla lines diverged roughly six to eight million years ago[2]. Also, different breeds of dogs are considered the same species (and likewise with cats). [1] http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/89/44/91/PDF/hal-008... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolutionary_genetics#Div...

Are you implying that the story "Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family" By H. P. Lovecraft is not in fact so far-fetched at all? That such a thing is possible?

Re: Rare 'goat-sheep' born on Irish farm

#54

Post by dang »

watsitbang wrote: post #51
dang wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lacero is not "hell-banned" or any other kind of banned. Lacero's comment came from an IP that had been caught by a spam filter. I just unbanned the IP and unkilled the relevant comments. Please don't claim things on or about Hacker News that you can't possibly know are true. Concerns about dead comments and anything else about HN can be sent to hn@ycombinator.com. Edit: I deleted things that were too harsh.

I guess we've just found out how we're going to be treated by the new moderators. eps was obviously trying to be helpful to lacero. If lacero was hell-banned, he wouldn't know it to email you, would he? And for his trouble he gets this mean reply from you.

I try hard not to be mean. If you'd care to suggest how to improve my wording, I'd be happy to. It's possible that my frustration after a year and a half of reading such comments as eps's with no ability to reply to them leaked through.

A better way for eps to help lacero, if that's all he or she wanted to do, would have been to email and ask us to check why lacero's comment was dead. We would have replied with a thank-you note saying what the reason was and that we had restored all the comments in question. But it doesn't feel to me like helping others is the only agenda going on with comments like eps's, which as you may know are something of a cottage industry on HN.

How you're "going to be treated by the new moderators" is with as much fairness and clarity as we can possibly muster, and willingness to correct our mistakes.

Re: Rare 'goat-sheep' born on Irish farm

#56

Post by upquark »

riffraff wrote: post #41
grey413 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Goat and sheep lineages diverged approximately five to eight million years ago[1]. For reference, human and gorilla lines diverged roughly six to eight million years ago[2]. Also, different breeds of dogs are considered the same species (and likewise with cats). [1] http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/89/44/91/PDF/hal-008... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolutionary_genetics#Div...

I believe GP meant canine (wolves and dogs) and felines (tiger and lion) which interbreed "frequently".

Wolves and dogs are the same species too, AFAIK

Re: Rare 'goat-sheep' born on Irish farm

#57

Post by pbhjpbhj »

watsitbang wrote: post #51
dang wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lacero is not "hell-banned" or any other kind of banned. Lacero's comment came from an IP that had been caught by a spam filter. I just unbanned the IP and unkilled the relevant comments. Please don't claim things on or about Hacker News that you can't possibly know are true. Concerns about dead comments and anything else about HN can be sent to hn@ycombinator.com. Edit: I deleted things that were too harsh.

I guess we've just found out how we're going to be treated by the new moderators. eps was obviously trying to be helpful to lacero. If lacero was hell-banned, he wouldn't know it to email you, would he? And for his trouble he gets this mean reply from you.

Agreed. eps's comment is as much a product of the opaque nature of moderation here as anything else. Unless users get notified of bans - be they temporary or otherwise - how are they expected to know to modify their behaviour.

Yes I understand there needs to be a balance to avoid an arms race with spammers and the like.

Re: Rare 'goat-sheep' born on Irish farm

#58

Post by cwal37 »

geuis wrote: post #12

How closely related are the two species. Hybrids between species of horses and cats are common. Same for canines. But it didn't occur to me that wheels and goats are that closely related

Dogs are one species. Their variation is a result of long-term purposeful breeding and a "slippery" genome.

Similar deal (not so much the slippery genome) for horses and housecats. I think you're confusing breeds with species.

Re: Rare 'goat-sheep' born on Irish farm

#59

Post by supersystem »

dang wrote: post #54
watsitbang wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess we've just found out how we're going to be treated by the new moderators. eps was obviously trying to be helpful to lacero. If lacero was hell-banned, he wouldn't know it to email you, would he? And for his trouble he gets this mean reply from you.

I try hard not to be mean. If you'd care to suggest how to improve my wording, I'd be happy to. It's possible that my frustration after a year and a half of reading such comments as eps's with no ability to reply to them leaked through. A better way for eps to help lacero, if that's all he or she wanted to do, would have been to email and ask us to check why lacero's comment was dead. We would have replied with a tha…

"with as much fairness and clarity as we can possibly muster"

When it comes to exercising authority less is more. If you've ever been "forced" to smile at lame jokes from bouncers when going in to a club you probably know what I mean. Your comments reads like passive aggressive lectures rather than "fair and clear" moderation.

Re: Rare 'goat-sheep' born on Irish farm

#60

Post by Steuard »

grey413 wrote: post #42
Steuard wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's one of the most ridiculous things I've ever read. We've done genetic studies on humans and apes, and we share some huge fraction of our genome with them (99%+, right?). It's quite telling that in this era of abundant genetic data, this guy bases all of his arguments on anatomical similarities and says nothing about genetics. It's all but impossible that a link like what he's suggesting would have been overlook…

The champion of the theory attributes the lack of genomic similarity to repeated back-crossing to one of the parent populations. To put it in other words, the droplet of initial hybridization got diluted in the larger gene pool, but the novel genes (and thus traits) remained and underwent selection. That being said, diluted gene contribution is not the same thing as no gene contribution. To even begin accepting such…

I saw that claim in the article, yes. I'll admit that I don't know enough about genetics to make strong claims here, but it doesn't sound remotely plausible to me. He wants to simultaneously claim that 1) hominids got so much porcine DNA that they have lots of substantial, recognizable anatomical features as a result, and 2) hominids have so little porcine DNA that it's all but invisible in our genetic code.

I'm not going to say that's impossible, but it sounds like one heck of a stretch. Even just sitting here thinking about it, most genetic inheritance happens one full chromosome at a time. We clearly don't have any full pig chromosomes, so to make this theory work you'd have to have a whole lot of lucky recombination events (chromosomal crossover, etc.) that preserved only the precise genes involved in all these "distinctive pig traits" and got rid of the rest. So what's the selective effect that selects extraordinarily strongly for this random selection of pig-like anatomical traits but against all of the other pig genes that would have usually been linked to them?

In short, this is a very extraordinary claim, and it requires equally extraordinary evidence, especially given how remarkably consistent the known genetic evidence has proven to be.

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