Wednesday, July 13, 2005
Make Sense Of This!
It's an article about salamanders in the Missouri with deformities. Let's start with the wonder of a statement:
Now check these out:
I'm betting the "environmental change" really is close to what I said above. This is happening in a relatively small area. I bet it likely there is just a small group of really unhealthy kids around. Environmental contaminants producing this level of genetic damage in an adult is virtually unknown - no make that completely unknown, it's sci-fi stuff. This might happen in babaies getating when their moms are exposed to high levels of something, but that would be a birth defect.
"Everybody says, 'How ugly,'" Briggler said. "But they are so ugly that they almost become beautiful in your mind when you see one."Sorry guy, ugly is ugly, I think he is riding his salamander down a river in Egypt.
Now check these out:
Jeff Ettling, a curator of reptiles at the St. Louis Zoo, said the deformities have been found on adult hellbenders -- and are not birth defects.Followed later in the article by:
Ettling, the reptile curator, said amphibians are often the first to show ill effects from environmental change.They want to make a case that these deformities result from environmental change, but unless the environmental change is a guy with a hatchet cutting off salamander legs, the problems have to be genetic -- which means "birth defect." I think they are trying to say the the deformities present in adulthood.
"If it is affecting them, it's probably going to affect other organisms, all the way up to humans,'' he said. "It's kind of a wake-up call."
I'm betting the "environmental change" really is close to what I said above. This is happening in a relatively small area. I bet it likely there is just a small group of really unhealthy kids around. Environmental contaminants producing this level of genetic damage in an adult is virtually unknown - no make that completely unknown, it's sci-fi stuff. This might happen in babaies getating when their moms are exposed to high levels of something, but that would be a birth defect.
