Caheao

Or they were super-organised and didn't realise they would have them ready that early. Seems unusual that a university would be that organised... :bluebudgie:

Congrats! :bluebudgie: I also got my results early Saturday morning (really early...just past 12am!) instead of Monday, and I passed everything which is great.

Go Fish. Do you have three different species of pets or more?

Aww...they are so cute! The picture of Laverne is adorable!

Wow, my budgies must be on to a winner - the gum leaves I give them smell strongly without snapping them! Actually, your hands smell after touching them too... lucky I love the smell of eucalyptus.

You might want to make sure that eucalyptus leaves for decoration aren't covered in something to make them last longer/look nicer that could be toxic to budgies! Also, there are some types of eucalyptus that grow outside of Australia, so you might be able to find one growing near you or get a whole tree - you might be able to buy something from a plant nursery.

Aw, poor thing! I hope you (and the vet) work out what is wrong with him and hope he gets better soon!

Aww...they are so cute!

Wow, looks great!

Thats exactly what I first thought! I still think the bottom one is a girl.

They are great pictures! (and very cute budgies )

Chinese cabbage (also known as Wombok) is great, much better than traditional cabbage. Don't know if it is "good" for budgies but what Libby says sounds logical.

Yeah, I agree 100%!

I love the thought of a webcam - if it gives you peace of mind (even if you don't really need it) then go for it!

Arr! No...lets just end it here. When you're talking about wild budgies - anything can happen!

Well it isn't really different.

My hair is a sneaky recessive gene . Wild budgies do have "sneaky recessive genes" already but because it is often better in nature to not stand out from the crowd, the genes stay fairly well hidden. With pet budgies escaping, I'd be more worried about any disease they may introduce to the wild population. Though, escaped pet budgies would probably get eaten by the feral cat population before they got that far. Of course, where I live there is no wild budgie population and many pet and feral cats that would love to snack on an escaped budgie. "Yes... but captive breeding takes into account the effects of inbreeding deprression and genetic drift so they try to renew from the wild population if they can. When they can't they worry heaps about it. Budgies have been selected on physical traits not survival traits for years and years moving them towards homozygosity. The decreased variation can be disastrous in a small population." Hence why if all humans on earth were to suddenly drop dead without disadvantaging wild animals, all pet/show budgies would die out pretty quickly (even if they managed to escape their cages/avaries).

Only female ligers and tigons are fertile, so they have to be bred with lions or tigers hence the "2nd generation" liger or tigon would not be 2nd generation liger/tigon, but possibly li-liger or ti-tigon. A bit like when they bred domestic cats with a different species of cat then bred the offspring back to a domestic cat. The similarities between neanderthals and us could just be the similarities we have in common with our common ancester, just like we share a lot of DNA with chimpanzees. Neanderthals were a different species from us (at least thats my taking on it). Just because similar species coexist does not mean they interbred. There would have been many buddings off! Like Homo floresiensis. "For instance we still can't effectively kill viruses." Well, it would be hard to kill them seeing as they are techniquely not living! Problem with humans is that we are so human-centric. We'll probably never know exactly how smart neanderthals were, I suppose people assume that because we survived, then we must be smarter. In fact, we probably out competed all the other species of "humans". "Too bad, dolphins are way smarter than us lol, they know not to even bother with work and stress, just play your whole life" Um...I highly doubt dolphins "play" all their lives...they would have died out by now if so. And stress is very important, without stress you can't survive. If you don't feel at least a bit stressed when you're being hunted then you're going to get eaten! It is a very interesting topic though we'll probably never know the "truth".

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

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? 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.

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!

Gosh...I learnt all that in year 10 science! (and possibly a bit in year 12 biology) But I suppose most people don't listen to it as much as I did at that age because I found it really interesting. More-or-less, sex-linked conditions are dependant on sex and non-sex-linked conditions are not dependant on sex if that simplifies things a little.

its so sad! Especially when they've had to put animals down without any apparent reason.