Rare 'goat-sheep' born on Irish farm • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by dang » Sat, Apr 05, 2014, 8:28 AM UTC

eps wrote: post #90

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.

1. Emailing is not a viable option. I simply don't have email setup on all but one device that I use to browse HN. 2. You can nitpick on technicalities, but it doesn't matter to lacero if he was hell-banned or ip-blacklisted. All that matters is that his comments go in trash can and that's what I was trying to rectify. PS. A proper way to support these cases is to add "flag for mod review" option to dead comments and…

It would be more appropriate to say that a comment is dead, because you can tell that by looking at it, than that an account is banned, because you can't tell that by looking at it, and when you get that wrong, it's misleading. I definitely should have communicated this more clearly above; I'm sorry I didn't.

It's not just nitpicking. We've gotten many emails from distressed users asking why they were banned because they believed this misinformation. Usually it's nothing more than a duplicate comment that got killed, or something nearly as innocuous.

Edit: I thought about this overnight and I do think there's some merit to your proposal. (I don't buy the thing about email not being accessible enough, but that's separate.) It would need some careful design thinking—something I haven't had a minute for all week—so don't expect anything right away.

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

#92

Post by demallien » Sat, Apr 05, 2014, 9:05 AM UTC

tlg wrote: post #87

Houshalter wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see why it's that implausible. You are descended from almost every single human being alive 1,000 years ago. Can you find any significant amount of DNA contributed from only a single one of your ancestors? What he is suggesting is that a single hybrid made it's way back into the hominid population. It had children with other hominids, and those children would have had half as much pig DNA. They had children w…

"You are descended from almost every single human being alive 1,000 years ago." If a generation is about 30 years then you will have close to 33 ancestors lines in your family tree over those 1000 years. That makes 2^33 ancestors or 10 billion, that's impressive (well there is probably a large overlap)

That overlap is more than large, it's actually the most important factor in the calculation. You only need to go back about 6 generations (200 years), and there is practically no interchange between geographically separated groups, which means that I probably don't have any genes from some random asian living 1000 years ago (although we both almost certainly share genes that we inherited from some far more ancient common ancestor).

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

#93

Post by maccard » Sat, Apr 05, 2014, 9:09 AM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #18

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

I would be surprised to see a hybrid of horses and cats but it would certainly be the ideal gift kitten AND a pony! Wondering if they pronounce 'geep' as "gee eep" or "jeep".

well, is it a goat or a joat?

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

#94

Post by pcrh » Sat, Apr 05, 2014, 9:51 AM UTC

Houshalter wrote: post #74

Steuard wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't see why it's that implausible. You are descended from almost every single human being alive 1,000 years ago. Can you find any significant amount of DNA contributed from only a single one of your ancestors? What he is suggesting is that a single hybrid made it's way back into the hominid population. It had children with other hominids, and those children would have had half as much pig DNA. They had children w…

"You are descended from almost every single human being alive 1,000 years ago."

Not exactly 1,000 years, but more like 120-135,000 years for the male line [1], and 200,000 years for the female line [2].

[1] "Sequencing Y Chromosomes Resolves Discrepancy in Time to Common Ancestor of Males Versus Females " dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1237619

[2] https://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Mitoch...

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

#95

Post by repsilat » Sat, Apr 05, 2014, 9:57 AM UTC

eropple wrote: post #81

jnbiche wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost certainly sterile. Look at what happens to mules, and horses and donkeys appear to have diverged closer in time than goats and sheep.

While mules are overwhelmingly sterile, I thought it was neat to learn that there are instances of fertile female mules, though no male ones are on record as having been fertile.

With fertile female individuals I'm amazed (would be amazed if?) people haven't made an effort to breed and maintain animals right along the spectrum (or at least one half of it.)

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

#96

Post by saalweachter » Sat, Apr 05, 2014, 11:47 AM UTC

marshray wrote: post #71

saalweachter wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically, no. While goats and sheep diverged 8 million years ago, humans/chimps and pigs diverged 80 million years ago . The last time a proto-chimp got with a proto-pig, the T-Rex hadn't evolved yet. While goats and sheep have a difference of 6 chromosomes, chimps and pigs have a difference of 10. McCarthy, despite being a geneticist, makes his absurd claim without even discussing the genetic difficulties. What lit…

I think he's saying relatively modern chimps and pigs may have had a hybridization event. Another argument was that the morphological distance, or genetic differences besides chromosome number, are just too great. Most of us are familiar with the platypus. A paper published in Nature a few years ago demonstrated that the platypus genome contains both bird and mammal chromosomes, and therefore that the vastly differen…

No.

The platypus is not a bird/reptile hybrid. That is a wild misinterpretation of a genome study which happened a few years back.

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/05/10/the-platypus-g...

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

#97

Post by grey413 » Sat, Apr 05, 2014, 1:19 PM UTC

Houshalter wrote: post #74

Steuard wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't see why it's that implausible. You are descended from almost every single human being alive 1,000 years ago. Can you find any significant amount of DNA contributed from only a single one of your ancestors? What he is suggesting is that a single hybrid made it's way back into the hominid population. It had children with other hominids, and those children would have had half as much pig DNA. They had children w…

Evolutionary geneticists don't trace individual lineages that far out, nor would they need to. The hypothesis under question is that the porcine/proto-hominind cross provided a variety of important, wide-acting traits that all humans share. That means that every human has them, and that every chimpanzee doesn't have them. That would show up in a comparative genomic assay.

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

#98

Post by 001sky » Sat, Apr 05, 2014, 1:58 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #91

eps wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Emailing is not a viable option. I simply don't have email setup on all but one device that I use to browse HN. 2. You can nitpick on technicalities, but it doesn't matter to lacero if he was hell-banned or ip-blacklisted. All that matters is that his comments go in trash can and that's what I was trying to rectify. PS. A proper way to support these cases is to add "flag for mod review" option to dead comments and…

It would be more appropriate to say that a comment is dead, because you can tell that by looking at it, than that an account is banned, because you can't tell that by looking at it, and when you get that wrong, it's misleading. I definitely should have communicated this more clearly above; I'm sorry I didn't. It's not just nitpicking. We've gotten many emails from distressed users asking why they were banned because…

@dang can you take a look at this as well.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7537035

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

#99

Post by eropple » Sat, Apr 05, 2014, 2:56 PM UTC

repsilat wrote: post #95

eropple wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While mules are overwhelmingly sterile, I thought it was neat to learn that there are instances of fertile female mules, though no male ones are on record as having been fertile.

With fertile female individuals I'm amazed (would be amazed if?) people haven't made an effort to breed and maintain animals right along the spectrum (or at least one half of it.)

There are only 60 known instances of fertile female mules in the last 500 years, according to Wikipedia, and they don't breed true - their offspring appear phenotypically to be pure donkeys or pure horses.

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

#100

Post by Houshalter » Sat, Apr 05, 2014, 5:07 PM UTC

pcrh wrote: post #94

Houshalter wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see why it's that implausible. You are descended from almost every single human being alive 1,000 years ago. Can you find any significant amount of DNA contributed from only a single one of your ancestors? What he is suggesting is that a single hybrid made it's way back into the hominid population. It had children with other hominids, and those children would have had half as much pig DNA. They had children w…

"You are descended from almost every single human being alive 1,000 years ago." Not exactly 1,000 years, but more like 120-135,000 years for the male line [1], and 200,000 years for the female line [2]. [1] "Sequencing Y Chromosomes Resolves Discrepancy in Time to Common Ancestor of Males Versus Females " dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1237619 [2] https://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Mitoch...

No it's much closer to 1,000 years. Every generation the number of possible ancestors you have doubles. 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great grandparents. Within a few generations back, you have literally millions of ancestors.