Are You Man or Mouse? 72
fygment writes "... according to recent studies. It seems were more closely related to rodents than the carnivores i.e. the primates didn't evolve from the noble jungle cats, wolves, etc. Were closer to rats. Of course this has long been suspected in lawyers and SCO execs ..."
Re:Biology I (Score:3, Interesting)
Inquiring minds want to know...
No (Score:5, Interesting)
What is important in a phylogenetic tree is branching order. When the branching order is uncertain or ambiguous, a polytomy is put in place. The placement of the branches in a polytomy are usually arbitrary, or in alphabetical order.
From the tree, you can tell that primates are most closely related to tree shrews, and that the group (primates + tree shrews) in turn is most closely related to bats and colugos.
Species habits (Score:3, Interesting)
At one point, my two female rats were constantly squeeking and making noise at night. No problem, nocturnal animals, they're just more active in the dark. However, I also noticed that oftimes when I turned on the lights, that the rodents were "cleaning each other" in a position often labelled as a number just shy of seventy.
Now, at first I dismissed this, thinking that I was imagining things. However, after talking to several rat owners and a few petshops, I have garnered that this can indeed be more than simply a hygienic practice.
Afterwards, I'd throw things at the cage when they made too much noise to shut them up. At least until one morning after I found they'd dragged in the shirt I'd thrown and perforated it for nesting material. I liked that shirt too.
Now, I've got two new rats. They don't often exhibit the same behavior as the old ones, but sometimes they will. I'm considering breeding one of them (baby rodents being quite cute 'n all), and I wonder if this will change their behavior towards each other after the babies have grown (and one rat has had an encounter of the opposite sex as opposed to the same). And of course, if I got enough rats perhaps I could make some of this [halfbakery.com]