Amazing new research: nautilus embryology and development

[DWhatley]

Tintenfisch,
I wonder if imperfect regeneration is not more the norm than the oddity, particularly if there is any kind of venom involved. Our dog was bitten by either a snake or a spider (vet could not determine but felt it was probably a brown recluse since there was only one puncture wound). After sluffing off the contaminated tissue, not only did the leg regenerate somewhat oddly, the dog developed odd growths in other areas of the leg. The growths and the now misshapen leg have not caused the dog problems and she has already lived a "normal" lifespan for the breed but her body went into overdrive trying to heal the wound and seemed to over produce the replacement parts.

 

[erich orser]

This is a return to one of Tintenfisch's lighter mentions, but personally, I always knew that the two of you were female. In your case, Kat, I think I already knew that (seen your photo on the website. Hard to mistake that). In Tiger's case, I just assumed. Not that this means a darn thing, but just thought I ought to mention. 'Cause I'm housesitting (catsitting) for Sorseress and am bored. I hope to contribute soon. I sorta suck, but I'm writing fictional stuff. Got zero extra time. Especially with second drafts. Wanna make the money, yo.

 

[monty]

This is a return to one of Tintenfisch's lighter mentions, but personally, I always knew that the two of you were female. In your case, Kat, I think I already knew that (seen your photo on the website. Hard to mistake that). In Tiger's case, I just assumed. Not that this means a darn thing, but just thought I ought to mention. 'Cause I'm housesitting (catsitting) for Sorseress and am bored. I hope to contribute soon. I sorta suck, but I'm writing fictional stuff. Got zero extra time. Especially with second drafts. Wanna make the money, yo.

I wonder what cues people use to guess gender from internet posts... whatever they are, I'm pretty sure I'm not as good at picking them up as a lot of people, but that may be a good thing... I was rather horrified that some study showed that there was an anti-female-name bias in academic peer review, where the same paper submitted as "J. Doe" or "John Doe" did better than "Jane Doe." I'm glad the main Computer Graphics conference does anonymous peer review so that's not an issue, but it's still weird and very disturbing. This study (PDF)
suggests that there was not evidence of bias in 2001 for some unspecified journals, but that there are reasons to be concerned about this kind of stuff.

 

[Nancy]

It's not so hard to guess gender and age. Because of the advice I give to would-be ceph keepers, I've become very good at watching for clues. For instance, a person might refer to "my girlfriend" or "my mom". There are clues in the writing styles and vocabulary and sometimes the choice of avatar which can hint at age and gender. Interesting that some people also show up on other websites where their profile gives a lot more information than there. Not that such things matter very much, but it's nice to know your audience as well as possible.

Nancy

 

[monty]

Yeah, I notice the age cues pretty readily, but I don't get the gender ones too often... for example, I don't think I've seen any reason to assign a gender to Robyn in the public TONMO posts (although when I was googling for info on her woods hole project I figured it out, but that was after she'd been posting for months.) I may well have missed cues, and insofar as I'd thought about it I suspect she might be female (although, also, why I should need/want to know is another question; I'm not planning on ask her on a date). I think in the case of Tigerkatze, I think I unconsciously associate "Tiger" and "German" with "people who like talking about WW2 tanks" who appear to be predominantly male for some reason That probably shows a silly bias on my part, so mea culpa lest "Tank Girl" show up to teach me a lesson (and anyway, a lot of my friends are women who are flattered to be compared to Ripley in Alien.)

 

[robyn]

heh! Monty I'm heartbroken!

I am actually very bad at picking who's what online. I'm also always so surprised by people's photos - no one ever looks how I imagine they do!

 

[monty]

heh! Monty I'm heartbroken!

I am actually very bad at picking who's what online. I'm also always so surprised by people's photos - no one ever looks how I imagine they do!

Well, I'm not ruling it out on principle, I'm just not expecting to be looking any time soon... of course, I do appreciate the ego reinforcement but my point was mostly that I tend to value platonic friendships and professional relationships and not want to mess them up by all emotional mess of romantic possibilities... I certainly didn't mean to single you out for heartbreak

edit: I realized after this late-night post that another thing I didn't say explicitly is that it's interesting that I have a strong desire to find out who people are online; I wonder if that's a an evolutionary social thing, and we all want to know more about who we're interacting with, so that we can be more effective at relating to them, know if they're potential mates, and so forth.

 

[Cairnos]

Tintenfisch,
I wonder if imperfect regeneration is not more the norm than the oddity, .

I seem to recall once hearing a theory that this is why more 'highly evolved' [yes I know it's a stupid concept, dont' all jump on me at once ] and longer lived species such as mammals tend to have far less regenerative capability than short lived 'simple' creatures.

The idea being that with a lifespan of about a year and a whole bunch of back up limbs it doesn't matter so much to an octopus if a limb regeneration goes awry. It just has to make it to the end of the year to reproduce. Whereas for a human having a wound trigger some kind of runaway growth could prove a significant problem for quite some time to come, and seriously reduce your chance of successfully reproducing ("When I said my date was all hands, I was NOT using a metaphor!").

Especially relevant when you consider that cancer is basically uncontrolled growth of this sort, again: "Excellent news Mr Octopus it's cancer and will kill you in eight months, so no worries" vs "I'm sorry Mr Sapiens, it's cancer and will kill you in eight months, doesn't life suck".

So when I see articles about people reseraching animal regeneration in hopes of applying it to humans Tintenfisch's mutated tentacle picture is going to stick in my mind.

 

[Tintenfisch]

I think I read/heard somewhere recently that the ability to regenerate lost limbs in vertebrates was controlled by a single on/off genetic switch... (a quick search revealed a discussion of this here ; was the discussion I'm thinking of somewhere else on TONMO maybe? ) It talked about lizards regrowing tails, and mentioned that in embryonic chickens in the lab, where this genetic switch had been flipped, severed wings would regrow. (Shudder - sometimes I'm very glad I study dead things!)

 

[DWhatley]

Interesting article Tintenfisch. I wish they had mentioned if they tried turning OFF the Wnt AFTER cancer developed.