Corvids in general are among the smartest of birds, aren't they? Their memory for stored food, use of tools and social interaction make them pretty damned impressive.

Hummingbirds are amazing fliers. I've read that they can reverse directions - at full speed - in a fifth of a second. Blows my mind.

(May 26, 2014 at 12:13 pm)whateverist Wrote: Corvids in general are among the smartest of birds, aren't they? Their memory for stored food, use of tools and social interaction make them pretty damned impressive.

Hummingbirds are amazing fliers. I've read that they can reverse directions - at full speed - in a fifth of a second. Blows my mind.

Sort of wondered how the humming bird wing evolved. The crows brain is not too hard, but the humming bird is a mystery.

I don't think any other bird's wing delivers thrust on both the up and down stroke. It does make you wonder what led to that. Of course other birds can hover and some there are that are as completely dependent on flight as are hummers. Swifts likewise have ridiculously small feet which make them only fit for standing on .. no hopping or stepping. Swifts are among the birds that can sleep in flight. Huh, just looked them up and found that swifts are the only bird classed with hummers. One would have expected swifts to be more closely related to swallows.

(May 26, 2014 at 5:20 pm)whateverist Wrote: I don't think any other bird's wing delivers thrust on both the up and down stroke. It does make you wonder what led to that. Of course other birds can hover and some there are that are as completely dependent on flight as are hummers. Swifts likewise have ridiculously small feet which make them only fit for standing on .. no hopping or stepping. Swifts are among the birds that can sleep in flight. Huh, just looked them up and found that swifts are the only bird classed with hummers. One would have expected swifts to be more closely related to swallows.

Yeah, this is true. I have always knew that swifts and humming birds only use their feet for perching. Maybe there might have been an animal that only hovered once in a while but would fly like a normal bird other times. But this is only my hypothesis.

(May 26, 2014 at 7:25 pm)whateverist Wrote: Just came across this. http://oltw.blogspot.com.au/2011/12/1200...beech.html Apparently the Bristlecone Pine is not the oldest living pllant (organism?) on the planet. Had never heard of antartic beech before. Apparently all the trees in the area are clones of one individual. Perhaps there is no one tree that is as old as bristlecone but each of these clones is the ongoing life of an individual which has periodically cloned itself vegetatively.

Perhaps every asexual creature still alive is as old as life itself by that standard.

How can a plant be older than the earth? Isn't the earth 6,000 years old.

(May 27, 2014 at 6:07 pm)ThePaleolithicFreethinker Wrote:

(May 26, 2014 at 7:25 pm)whateverist Wrote: Just came across this. http://oltw.blogspot.com.au/2011/12/1200...beech.html Apparently the Bristlecone Pine is not the oldest living pllant (organism?) on the planet. Had never heard of antartic beech before. Apparently all the trees in the area are clones of one individual. Perhaps there is no one tree that is as old as bristlecone but each of these clones is the ongoing life of an individual which has periodically cloned itself vegetatively.

Perhaps every asexual creature still alive is as old as life itself by that standard.

How can a plant be older than the earth? Isn't the earth 6,000 years old.

Oh no, that's controversial. Most scientists who studied somewhere other than a bible college actually think the earth is more than six orders of magnitude older than that.

(May 28, 2014 at 9:24 am)whateverist Wrote:

(May 27, 2014 at 6:07 pm)ThePaleolithicFreethinker Wrote: How can a plant be older than the earth? Isn't the earth 6,000 years old.

Oh no, that's controversial. Most scientists who studied somewhere other than a bible college actually think the earth is more than six orders of magnitude older than that.