doghouse

Would you be convinced if someone were able to point to a related species where the males don't have horns and yet still engage in head butting as a test of dominance during the mating season?

Jet Black

no, it was not suggested that shoving caused the antlers to start forming.

Oolon Colluphid

We all agree that that is ridiculous.

It's beyond me why you think that's what we're saying.

Once again, for the hard of thinking: head-butting did not cause antlers to form. It was the selection pressure which meant that a proto-deer with incipient antlers would do better at head-butting, and so would leave more descendants.
Take that mirror away from the side of your screen when you type, please.
No.
You hope correctly.

You build straw men rather well too.

No. They are bony extensions, and we call the base part pedicles, because that’s where they break off at when, by poor design, they are annually shed.
Okay, they were designed. By an idiot.
Yep, there it stands, with its wasteful antlers; its lousy lungs; its laryngeal nerve looped under its aorta; its red-green colourblind eyes; its backward retina; its lack of enzymes to digest the main component of its food, cellulose (has to have a vat of bacteria in its gut to do that); its external testicles; doubtless a genome loaded with satellite DNA...

And I'll see your deer and raise you a horned gopher:



Epigaulus (Miocene rodent)

kingzfan2000

Of course it was only a matter of time. When all else fails, cry bad design and claim what an idiot the designer must have been because something isnt designed the way you think it should be. Nothing is ever good enough for an evolutionist. Everything is an example of bad design. Having noticed this, creationist place little credence in evolutionist claims of bad design. Oh eyes are so badly designed, God must be an idiot!!! Im sure if you woke up tomorrow blind you wouldnt think that eyes were so badly designed. You claim that headbutting didnt cause antlers to form (which is obvious) but a protodeer that had protoantlers found that it was more successful at headbutting. You base this off what? Nothing but your predisposition that evolution is true. its amazing how authoritatively speculation gets presented, but we see with the example of notions of dino to bird evolution, that speculation often amounts to nothing. I know what youll say: "Dr. Feduccias' claims are against the consensus of evolutionary scientist." Well what was that consenses built upon in the first place? If it turns out that the doctor is right and current notions of dino to bird evolution are incorrect, obviously people will question why the notion was able to achieve the consensus view in the first place. Your notion that a protodeer inexplicably (im assuming a mutation that caused that deers skull to protrude symmetrically on both sides of its head) developed protoantlers and subsequently found himself better adapted to head-butting is completely baseless.

kingzfan2000

Well when the discussion is about the origin of antlers, (I did ask what caused antlers to form in the first place) and someone says: "maybe the deer shoved with their heads, and the antlers started as bumps", what am I supposed to think but that the person is saying that shoving heads may have caused the antlers to start as bumps?

kingzfan2000

I certainly would. However, animals with other means of protection do not count. Im familiar with hornless buffalo that headbutt each other at speeds of up to 30mph, but they have extra thick armor-plated-like skulls to absorbs the impacts. If there were a creature with a regular skull that regularly participated in headbutting rituals, I would be convinced that maybe deer behaved likewise before they acquired their antlers.

premjan

Basically you want to catch evolution in action for (male) deer. Antlers have probably existed for a long time (I seem to remember that the common ancestor of sheep/goats/antelopes was a small-horned animal still found in Korea) and it may be possible to examine evidence for when they first developed, why some species developed them and others didn't (possibly the animals who don't butt heads / antlers simply use different mating strategies, or simply cannot produce enough Ca to generate antlers.

Sven

Of course it was only a matter of time. When all else fails, cry that the others only cry bad design and ignore everything else what was said. Also fail to address the bad design. Consider yourself the winner.

Umm, it's rather: If there's a god, he certainly left no hint of his designs in nature.

And this "predisposition" is based on 150 years of evidence. IOW, some libraries full of it. Your point?

It's based on the fact that this is obviously "microevolution", as creationists like to call it, and creationists accept that microevolution happens, in case you forgot. It's also based on a number of other lines of evidence, which have been explained in detail in this thread, but which you conveniently ignore.
See the start of this post. *shrug*

Oolon Colluphid

What, you mean you are going to answer the points I raised? :thumbs:
... ignore the question and hope it’ll go away? Yeah, I’d noticed that.
It’s one of my favourite cries, I'll admit that. I assume you will address the points, though, yeah?
Well he doesn't know that the shortest route between two points is a straight line. He forgot to give cetaceans gills. Sounds pretty dumb to me, but perhaps you can explain why these things are not poor designs.
If you think these things are fine as they are, you throw out your basis for seeing good design too.

So shut up about design, or tell us why these things are not badly designed.
I'd settle for some sort of answers, at least.
Bzzzt! Wrong. I hereby state that bird lungs are a good design. It's bats who drew the short straw on that one.
Is that a euphemism for 'totally fail to address it'?
Nope. Cephalopods have pretty good eyes. (In their case, it's their gills that are screwy.)
No. You miss the point.

Vertebrate eyes are very effective. But they are very good despite a fundamental flaw in their design: a retina with a blind spot that requires supplementary systems to correct, and which is more prone to becoming detached.

It's a thought experiment, to see if it is plausible. Understand it and get over it.

(A less kind person than I would suggest that you try experimenting with thought too. :Cheeky: )
Based on overwhelming evidence for evolution in general, which leads us to look for a plausible evolutionary route first, at least, rather than giving up straight away and shouting 'designer!'
Please provide enough rope to hang yours- ... erm, please expand on that one.

Nope. The experts in this area will say that he's misinterpreting stuff, and so is plain wrong.
Evidence.

If you would like to discuss dinobirds further, I'll start a fresh thread for it.
Yes, because any other explanation will have to explain the sheer weight of synapomorphies involved in the dinobird version. New thread time?
You have fairly symmetrical eyebrow ridges, I assume?

I neither know nor care how the very first bit of antlerism got started precisely, but its bilateral symmetry is the least of any problems with it.
It's a plausible thought experiment. :huh:

Perhaps you should email the Discovery Institute. No need to keep flogging the dead horses of mousetraps and flagella: you've hit upon the best example of an irreducibly complex structure: antlers.

Wow.

Now, please address the points about suboptimality...

Doubting Didymus

Actually, it's not that odd that a mutation should cause a symmetrical phenotype alteration. Symmetry is already programmed into the development of animals in such a way that any mutation that caused a change on one side of the animal would automatically engender the same change on the other side. You would not need individual mutations to tell each of the new bumps where to manifest.