Tommyknocker

Thanks for the link, looks like a good place to start. How long has that thing been going?

I'm thinking of making a website (best case scenario) or wikipedia article on the changing biodiversity since the ice age, due to intervention of humans. Obviously it is quite difficult to speculate why some of the earlier species dissapeared, for example the megafauna in North America and Australia. However the most common theories directly or indirectly point to the arrival of man. I'm sure articles could be found contradicting this, then more articles countering those.. but that's natural history for you. What can be certain is in the last 2,000 or 3,000 years, many hundreds of thousands of species have become extinct or had their range greatly reduced due to hunting/persecution, habitat destruction, introduction of foreign species and some other human-related factors. It would take an immense amount of time to mention all these, which is why I would be focusing on: a) Vertabrates, or perhaps some large and in some way significant invertabrates. b) More so mammals. c) When in comes to a living species (which range has been greatly reduced), those which people can relate to the most and their is sufficient data to perhaps produce a map of the distribution change. Eg. gray wolf, tiger. They will be organised according to continent and habitat, and will basically take the scenario of "If humans never existed, this is what there would be here". It should be completely scientific in approach but at the same time accessible to people which know little on the matter. Here's the thing- I have no idea how to create a website, and am very trial and error when it comes to wikipedia. So someone which has knowledge in these areas would be most wlecome Also needed is research and perhaps someone who could create nice looking maps. My attempts on wikipedia shown below are accurate from what I can tell, but not very pretty. Not to mention they took hours and hours to even get to that state. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Original_distribution_of_wolf_subspecies.GIF http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Present_distribution_of_wolf_subspecies.gif Please respond here, or pm if you think you can help!

I think the one thing that definately separates eukaryotes and prokaryotes is the existance of a nucleus... as like someone said, that's what these names imply. prokaryote- before nucleus eukaryote- something nucleus (I forget lol, but it's something along the lines of 'has a necleus' )

You forget viruses... a hell of a lot smaller than cells.

Well what is an E. Coli exactly? If it is a single celled organism, it is a prokaryote. Only eukaryotes have mitochondria (which some believe are prokaryotes in their own right) if that helps.

I totally agree with your theory, the fact that their anatomy is so similar to other instects is total coincidence. .. .. <ends sarcasm>

Well it would only be alive if the brain was still functioning (so therefore the head appearing 'active')... if your talking about its body moving around that's just the nervous system.

Frogs don't have teeth . The differences include: - Frogs have well developed back legs for jumping, while toads just crawl (or maybe manage little hops). - Frogs spend about half their life in water, and need to keep their skin moist at all times, toads on the other hand are poor swimmers, and only go in water to breed. They have dry pebbly skin. - Most toads excrete an irritant or smelly substance from poors in their skin when attacked by predators. Very few frogs do this (an exception is poison dart frog which excretes poison which can kill in minutes). Hope this helps .

Okay, I didn't get a chance to read this again yesterday so didn't see your reply in time, but I put because animal cells don't have a cell wall. I suppose this answer is correct then, I knew it must be something to do with the rest of the cell peeling away from it. Thanks anyway .

Hi everyone, I'm new here, and look forward to partaking in some interesting discussions. To be honest though it is this stupid question that drove me to find a forum so I could ask what the answer should be... it doesn't really make sense. "Why don't animal cells suffer from plasmolysis?" Now I know plasmolysis is when a plant cell loses water to its surroundings due to osmosis, but doesn't this happen to animal cells too?