Auburngirl05

All of the reports I've seen have said the specimen was "three feet tall with a brain capacity one third the size of modern humans." My question is: how does their body/brain ratio compare with Homo sapiens?

I'm not sure if there's already a thread on this, I couldn't find one and thought I'd start one to open up some discussion, especially since human evolution has been a recent topic of discussion on here. http://www.nature.com/news/specials/flores/index.html No, they're not excavating Hobbiton. All joking aside, I can't wait to see if there are further discoveries of remains and possible archaeological sites that give further evidence as to their living conditions, etc.

My boss recommends spaying/neutering to all the clients, it's the single best population control method and it prevents health problems like mammary tumors, etc. That type of procedure is completely different from things like declawing, which are for the owner's best interest instead of the animal's. Also, I think it's safe to say that the majority of vets would not perform a debarking (although I know some do). One of the vets in the clinic I work for refuses to crop ears (more because of the liability of puppies messing it up than ethical reasons, though).

That's exactly what happens (I'm a veterinary assistant), a large pair of nail clippers is used to amputate the toes at the first joint. I hate it, especially on kittens.

I know, that's what confuses me about the whole thing...I haven't done much reading on ornithology, but bird biomechanics seem like a fascinating subject.

"Ornithischian" means bird-hipped, the shape of the pelvis and arrangement of the pubic bone/ilium/ischium are "bird-style", as opposed to theropods, it's a case of convergent evolution, kind of ironic that birds ended up stemming from the theropod line, which had drastically different hip structure to start out with.

This is a slightly related question that I've wondered about for a long time: do thoughts burn calories? For example, will you burn more calories sitting still working math problems for an hour than you would if you sat still twiddling your thumbs and staring into space for an hour? I wasn't sure if ATP were consumed in thought processes or not, I always assumed any body functions required energy, but wasn't sure how that calculated into calories when it came to brain function.

I have read that while certain animals (elephants, turtles, etc) live much long lives in terms of years as compared to other animals (rodents, etc), their lifespans are fairly equal in terms of number of heartbeats, with the smaller animals running on faster metabolisms “using up” their ultimate “allotment” of heartbeats faster than the larger animals with slower metabolisms. All of this makes perfect sense to me. My main question is this: I thought that birds have relatively fast metabolisms, with rapid heartbeats. If this is true, though, how do certain types of birds, like the large breeds of parrots and macaws, often live for well over 50 years? How does their metabolic rate compare to that of a small mammal, and if it is similar, why do they not follow the pattern of heart rate being inversely proportional to lifespan? The only thing I could come up with is that maybe you can only make comparisons within classification (mammals, birds, reptiles, etc), for example elephants live longer than dogs which live longer than mice and macaws live longer than sea gulls which life longer than sparrows, etc etc. So I guess the second part of my question is if the heart rate theory is all inclusive in the animal kingdom or if it is relative to each separate classification. I’m sorry if this is a dumb question, it’s not for a school assignment or anything, just my own curiosity/confusion.