An Important Petition

[melbournebudgies 0]

My other halfs not keen on it Derek but I'm quite fond of a good bit of roo. I have also eaten Wallaby, crocodile, feral goat and camel No cats but only because we didn't catch one, had we managed to get our hands on one the bloke we were with was going to cook it up.

[the pie 0]

The reds are better imo

If you were closer I could supply you with all sorts of game meats to try in your recipes, the other half spotted your sig the other night and had to have a look- loves his camp ovens, even kicked me off here!!!

A mate does smoked rootail, joints it and pickled/smokes them quite nice.

[Boris' Slave 0]

If there is one thing we're not short of thats kangaroo! A number of the smaller wallabies are doing it tough.

Massive land clearing? Cut it by half and it'd still be too much! How many thousands of tonnes of food is just dug back into the soil every year! How many species of animals have lost their homes when all the tree's have been cleared. Hooded Parrots, Golden Shouldered Parrots endangered to name but 2.

 

LOL how off topic have we gotten here?!?!!

[melbournebudgies 0]

I know BC but we are having a fun little chat

[Caheao 0]

My other halfs not keen on it Derek but I'm quite fond of a good bit of roo. I have also eaten Wallaby, crocodile, feral goat and camel No cats but only because we didn't catch one, had we managed to get our hands on one the bloke we were with was going to cook it up.

 

My parents didn't think too much of roo (too gamey apparently) but my brother and I loved it! We should eat more kangaroo, especially seeing as there are so many of them. Don't know whats wrong with the media and the world...its not like roos are whales!

[melbournebudgies 0]

Roos aren't endangered that's the difference

[Caheao 0]

Roos aren't endangered that's the difference

 

Hence we should eat them, and promote eating them. They're pretty good for you too - nice and lean.

 

Though in this topic we have sort of gone from protecting native species, to eating native species!

[melbournebudgies 0]

And there is another reason not to do zoology On the kangaroo island field trip in third year they disect wallabies and then they have them for dinner!

[Caheao 0]

And there is another reason not to do zoology On the kangaroo island field trip in third year they disect wallabies and then they have them for dinner!

 

Eww! I don't mind eating them but not dissecting them first.

[Chrysocome 0]

Ugh. You sure that's hygienic?

 

Sure glad I never have to eat my dissections

 

Although all the big fat salmon we had to post mortem were mighty tempting.

Edited June 18, 2008 by Chrysocome

[Caheao 0]

Ugh. You sure that's hygienic?

 

Sure glad I never to eat my dissections

 

Yeah, thats what I was thinking - once something has been dissected it is contaminated! At least thats how my mind works.

[melbournebudgies 0]

Well it was done on tarps! I believe they removed the food portions fairly early on in the process, I wasn't at KI so I didn't do it, I went to Heron Island and caught sharks with my bare hands instead

[the pie 0]

Lol @ contaminated. Bet the wallabies were cleaner after the desection than the beef/lamb from the abbatoirs! It definately would have been fresher than the meat at the shop.

Most of my meat comes from the bush/station, shot, cleaned and cut-up by myself. Some people would cringe at how its done but all very healthy

[melbournebudgies 0]

Hey guys got some interesting info from one of the guys at work here who is the government 'cat control' person, he deals with feral cats as well as new imports like these guys. Apparently despite what the aussie Savannah cat breeders say the Savannah is one of a group of recent hybrids including the Ashira which they are trying to ban from import. The Savannah cat breeders are on a good thing at the moment but it sounds like the government is making tracks to pull the rug out from under them by banning new imports.

[Sailorwolf 0]

Wow I should have started on this topic earlier. I have a few things to say:

Desexing and returning a feral cat to the environment is better than killing a feral cat. By returning the desexed cat to its territory no new cat will take over, that means also that there will be less available food for any fertile cats and thus if the population is full in a certain area no new fertile cats will move in. If you kill the cat, a new cat will move in, most likely a young fertile animal just left the mother. This animal is able to breed. So no matter what you do you will always have an animal filling the spot. IT is better to have desexed ones filling that spot than fertile ones.

 

So imported budgies don't eat wildlife. But if one were to escape and breed with the native budgies then it would ruin those blood lines, the babies will not be as good at surviving and if they do they will breed with others and eventually the line will become impure and the original species will be lost. This could mean extinction of the species in the wild or just pet like ones in the wild. This hasn't really happened yet as wild budgies are quite rare these days. However it is the reason why we in New Zealand cannot breed and on sell/release our pet kakarikis as they will endanger the bloodlines of the native ones which could end up in unhealthier birds leading to extinction.

 

Ligers and tigons should not be fertile. Mules are not fertile. This is because they are different species and usually have different numbers of chromosomes there fore when they interbreed they have odd numbers of chromosomes. A horse has 64 chromosomes and a donkey has 62 therefore a mule has 63. This interferes with spermatogenesis. Noone is actually sure how the sterility is caused but it happens. Only animals in the same genus can interbreed, hence the reason centaurs do not exist today, or sphinxes, or griffins ( a hippogrif is a cross between a horse and a griffon) or minotaurs.

However when Neanderthals were alive there would have been crosses as they are the same species as us, but a different subspecies we are Homo sapiens sapiens, they are Homo sapiens neanderthalensis. Interesting huh? So perhaps some of your dimwitted or slightly flatter foreheaded "colleages" or bosses at work got more of the neanderthal persuasion in their family line. tee hee :hap:

 

I just like to point out the butterfly effect:

The flap of a butterfly's wing on one side of the world can cause a tornado on the other.

Edited June 19, 2008 by Sailorwolf

[Derek 0]

This hasn't really happened yet as wild budgies are quite rare these days.

 

Are you talking about here or New Zealand. Here there are countless millions of them. Flocks so large they can shut out the sun as they pass overhead.

[Sailorwolf 0]

We don't have native budgies.

I read a reader's digest article about them a couple of years back and it took them several weeks of driving around the outback before they saw a flock and not even a big one. It said that budgies used to be that numerous that they blocked out the sky, but now they are really not very common at all. Sort of passenger pigeonesque, except they are still around, just not in such large numbers.

[Derek 0]

The size of flocks vary from season to season but still heaps here.

[Caheao 0]

Lol @ contaminated. Bet the wallabies were cleaner after the desection than the beef/lamb from the abbatoirs! It definately would have been fresher than the meat at the shop.

Most of my meat comes from the bush/station, shot, cleaned and cut-up by myself. Some people would cringe at how its done but all very healthy

 

Actually, I was refering more to the state of my dissecting kit - it may look clean but its never actually been cleaned after dissections. So I'd imagine there are specks of cockroach, sea star and cane toad guts on it!

 

 

 

"So imported budgies don't eat wildlife. But if one were to escape and breed with the native budgies then it would ruin those blood lines, the babies will not be as good at surviving and if they do they will breed with others and eventually the line will become impure and the original species will be lost. "

This is not true - if pet/show budgies are less able to survive then natural selection will "make sure" they don't ruin the blood lines. At this stage (as in wild australian budgies are classified "least concern"), wild budgies are not at risk in anyway from pet budgies - there are way too many wild budgies.

 

"Ligers and tigons should not be fertile. Mules are not fertile. This is because they are different species and usually have different numbers of chromosomes there fore when they interbreed they have odd numbers of chromosomes. A horse has 64 chromosomes and a donkey has 62 therefore a mule has 63. This interferes with spermatogenesis. Noone is actually sure how the sterility is caused but it happens. Only animals in the same genus can interbreed, hence the reason centaurs do not exist today, or sphinxes, or griffins ( a hippogrif is a cross between a horse and a griffon) or minotaurs.

However when Neanderthals were alive there would have been crosses as they are the same species as us, but a different subspecies we are Homo sapiens sapiens, they are Homo sapiens neanderthalensis. Interesting huh? So perhaps some of your dimwitted or slightly flatter foreheaded "colleages" or bosses at work got more of the neanderthal persuasion in their family line. tee hee "

 

Female ligers and tigons are fertile (can be bred to lions and tigers) but the males are not. Just because mules are infertile doesn't mean every offspring of different species will be infertile - it depends on the species involved.

 

There is speculation on whether Neanderthals (homo neanderthalensis) cross breed with humans (homo sapiens) but there is no evident for this - it is only theoretical. I'm pretty sure there was none (interbreeding) because they (scientists) would be able to determine this by comparing the dna of modern humans and dna from neanderthal remains. --> In particular, the mitrochondrial DNA! Which is very, very important in determining the ancestry of an animal.

There is also a lot of speculation on the exact descendance of humans because there are so few fossils/skeletal remains of different species possibly leading to modern humans so because of all the gaps in our knowledge the puzzle isn't quite complete! Therefore, different people support/have different theories on exactly how we came about!

Edited June 19, 2008 by Caheao

[melbournebudgies 0]

They can determine relatedness on mitochondrial DNA that far back but that will only trace the maternal line not the fraternal line

[Caheao 0]

They can determine relatedness on mitochondrial DNA that far back but that will only trace the maternal line not the fraternal line

Yeah, I know. But even if you can't trace the fraternal line, doesn't mean interbreeding between neanderthals and humans definitely happened! The neanderthals would have had different behaviours than humans (sapiens) and communication which makes it less likely that interbreeding happened.

 

Isn't the Eastern Rosella a subspecies of another type of Rosella, and in theory can breed to produce fertile, viable offspring - but because of their different courting behaviours they cannot interbreed?

 

The size of flocks vary from season to season but still heaps here.

 

I've read that depending on the time of year and the conditions, wild budgies can either be in giant flocks or really small groups.

Edited June 19, 2008 by Caheao

[melbournebudgies 0]

lot of species here do that because of our strong wet-dry cycles

[Caheao 0]

lot of species here do that because of our strong wet-dry cycles

 

 

Yeah! Thats pretty much what i read but in relation to budgies!

[Sailorwolf 0]

"So imported budgies don't eat wildlife. But if one were to escape and breed with the native budgies then it would ruin those blood lines, the babies will not be as good at surviving and if they do they will breed with others and eventually the line will become impure and the original species will be lost. "

This is not true - if pet/show budgies are less able to survive then natural selection will "make sure" they don't ruin the blood lines. At this stage (as in wild australian budgies are classified "least concern"), wild budgies are not at risk in anyway from pet budgies - there are way too many wild budgies.

 

Just because they are less able to survive doesn't mean they can't or won't, (that's why you have bad genes in the first place). Pet budgies are more inbred than wildbudgies. It would not be good for the wild population to get these bad mutations which may be carried in the pet budgie. Hence the reason why we cannot release our pet kakarikis. We chose who to breed them too, thus if any bad genes show up, we have caused them to do so through inbreeding and thus weaken the wild state. I understand now, that there are huge numbers of budgies left in Australia, I was under the impression there wasn't. But this still applies to other species especially the kakariki.

 

"Ligers and tigons should not be fertile. Mules are not fertile. This is because they are different species and usually have different numbers of chromosomes there fore when they interbreed they have odd numbers of chromosomes. A horse has 64 chromosomes and a donkey has 62 therefore a mule has 63. This interferes with spermatogenesis. Noone is actually sure how the sterility is caused but it happens. Only animals in the same genus can interbreed, hence the reason centaurs do not exist today, or sphinxes, or griffins ( a hippogrif is a cross between a horse and a griffon) or minotaurs.

However when Neanderthals were alive there would have been crosses as they are the same species as us, but a different subspecies we are Homo sapiens sapiens, they are Homo sapiens neanderthalensis. Interesting huh? So perhaps some of your dimwitted or slightly flatter foreheaded "colleages" or bosses at work got more of the neanderthal persuasion in their family line. tee hee "

 

Female ligers and tigons are fertile (can be bred to lions and tigers) but the males are not. Just because mules are infertile doesn't mean every offspring of different species will be infertile - it depends on the species involved.

 

I did not say that. I was using mules as an example, because they are a very well known hybrid. I personally have never heard that female ligers and tigons are fertile, but I have never done any research in that area. I haven't heard of any 2nd generation ligers and tigons. But the thing is that the definition of a species is a population of animals that can interbreed and produce fertile offspring.

It is the general thought that species cannot interbreed because they have different chromosome numbers, (there is some evidence against this though).

There is speculation on whether Neanderthals (homo neanderthalensis) cross breed with humans (homo sapiens) but there is no evident for this - it is only theoretical. I'm pretty sure there was none (interbreeding) because they (scientists) would be able to determine this by comparing the dna of modern humans and dna from neanderthal remains. --> In particular, the mitrochondrial DNA! Which is very, very important in determining the ancestry of an animal.

There is also a lot of speculation on the exact descendance of humans because there are so few fossils/skeletal remains of different species possibly leading to modern humans so because of all the gaps in our knowledge the puzzle isn't quite complete! Therefore, different people support/have different theories on exactly how we came about!

 

There is also no evidence against it either. If humans lived alongside Neanderthals then it is most likely that interbreeding did occur. DNA is a very fragile molecule, it breaks down very easily, thus I would be surprised if they have any reliable DNA from over 25000 years ago. Remember chimpanzees share 98.5% of our DNA. So 1.5% makes us different from them. Neanderthals are even closer than that, so the gap would be even smaller. And one must also remember that in 25000 years our DNA would have changed significantly too. So Neanderthal DNA would be more different to our DNA today than it would have been 25000 years ago. So if humans were to interbreed with a Neanderthal their offspring would have a genetical difference to humans of half the gap between its parents. If the gap was this small it would be very difficult to tell what was human and what was not, especially when our species varies so greatly already. Perhaps if they survived they would now be considered a different species.

Fossil evidence is sketchy for all animals. Fossilisation is a rare process. Think of how many different species there are which could have all been different versions of the same species, a youngster for example or even a different sex. I use the eclectus parrot here as an example. The only evidence you have is bones, dust and the occasional preserved skin or print.

One has to remember that we are the only species in our genus, even our family. We would have had other very similar species and subspecies, that budded off of our phylogenetic tree, but never made it to current day, or were never fossilised. It is quite likely interbreeding happened there.

 

Scientists can't do everything. As a vet student I am learning that there is a lot out there that we don't yet know or are waiting for technology to develop significantly to test and allow us to discover things. For instance we still can't effectively kill viruses.

 

Yeah, I know. wink.gif But even if you can't trace the fraternal line, doesn't mean interbreeding between neanderthals and humans definitely happened! The neanderthals would have had different behaviours than humans (sapiens) and communication which makes it less likely that interbreeding happened.

That doesn't mean much , not to men fighting and killing for territory and raping and pillaging. This didn't stop the Romans (and we all know how frisky they were back then!) and it doesn't stop the people that love their pets or animals just a little too much either. The interbreeding process didn't necessarily have to be loving for it to be successful.

Behaviours and communication also didn't stop the galah and cockateil from producing a baby (it's on a post here somewhere)

Who's to say neanderthals were dumb they may have been smarter than us (a lot of people wouldn't and don't like this idea, for some reason humans always have to be the best???? Too bad, dolphins are way smarter than us lol, they know not to even bother with work and stress, just play your whole life), but it is the theory that we killed them all, we may have had equal intelligence but we would have been more dangerous or ferocious than them. Apparently Neanderthals were very peaceful.

Aaagh! I better get off this topic, I keep coming back with more to say. As you can tell, I am very interested in this subject

Edited June 19, 2008 by Sailorwolf

[melbournebudgies 0]

There are also many highly successful captive breeding programs. Just because an animal is captive it isn't automatically inferior to it's wild counterparts. One of the other major reasons captive birds shouldn't be released is the spread of disease. This is especially true for restricted species which may not have many individuals remaining, a disease from cative birds could wipe out the entire population