@SDGundamX

Everything that humans do that isn't provided directly thru our biology is a cultural system.

Science and Religion are both results of cultural evolution.

Before scientific journals and 150 page papers on nucleotides came about, peer review was this:
"Hey man! I discovered this new way to get girls to show up at our parties! Gin rummy & Pinochle!"

'WTF dude, I know for a fact that the only girls that play pinochle are 65 year old ladies. That method will never work'

You are a scientist from birth. Science therefore is essential.
You are not religious from birth. Religion therefore is not.
~~~

To clarify, I said religion & science are geared toward "understanding the universe".
I never said "understanding the physical world".

That was your straw-man so you could talk about some metaphysical gobbledygook I guess.

But you're in even worse footing there because metaphysical things can't be proven.

Religion is useless gobbledygook and serves no purpose in a society that has advanced beyond the need for it.
~~~
Here, I'll use the example how your diet evolved to provide more support for this position.

Humans are carnivorous because early hominids found animal protein - meat - beneficial because it promoted brain & muscle growth.

Eating meat was essential because without it, early human population would have been to weak & stupid to survive.

In 2011, there is absolutely need to consume meat.

We have discovered numerous combinations of plants - like rice & beans - that provided complete proteins and some that provide all essential amino acids outright, like soybeans.

Eating meat nowadays involves massive amounts of resources - land, water, crops - not to mention all the harmful effects like - deforestation, infectious outbreaks, & increased chronic or "lifestyle" diseases like grease encrusted heart muscles.

Consuming meat - like practicing religion - is unnecessary and destructive to our environment.
You only continue to engage in it because of ignorance, propaganda and emotional attachment.
~~~

Sooo, you can keep flappin' your gums.
But until you submit some evidence and not just personal feelings..

This sift talk will continue to head nowhere very quickly

>> ^ponceleon:

WHAT THE FUCK??
Seriously, what on earth happened there?? And what the fuck is up with that part of the world?? The be producing some scary shit down there...


I know first Lord of the Rings and now THIS! My vacation plans will never include NZ

Your video, Carnivorous Snail Attack, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Recent Top 15 sifts are not being marked as Top 15.

http://videosift.com/video/Ron-Paul-Barney-Frank-Introduce-Law-to-Legalize-Marijuana
http://videosift.com/video/Visual-Multiplication
http://videosift.com/video/Carnivorous-Snail-Attack

Just a heads-up.

in YOUR endo

*downunder

>> ^ChairfaceChippendale:

<Insert Innuendo>

The gaps are fundemental..here are some more quotes:

"Given the fact of evolution, one would expect the fossils to document a gradual steady change from ancestral forms to the descendants. But this is not what the paleontologist finds. Instead, he or she finds gaps in just about every phyletic series." (Ernst Mayr-Professor Emeritus, Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, What Evolution Is, 2001, p.14.)

"All paleontologists know that the fossil record contains precious little in the way of intermediate forms; transitions between major groups are characteristically abrupt. Gradualists usually extract themselves from this dilemma by invoking the extreme imperfection of the fossil record." (Gould, Stephen J. The Panda’s Thumb, 1980, p. 189.)

"What is missing are the many intermediate forms hypothesized by Darwin, and the continual divergence of major lineages into the morphospace between distinct adaptive types." (Carroll, Robert L., "Towards a new evolutionary synthesis," in Trends in Evolution and Ecology 15(1):27-32, 2000, p. 27.)

"Given that evolution, according to Darwin, was in a continual state of motion ...it followed logically that the fossil record should be rife with examples of transitional forms leading from the less to more evolved. ...Instead of filling the gaps in the fossil record with so-called missing links, most paleontologists found themselves facing a situation in which there were only gaps in the fossil record, with no evidence of transformational evolutionary intermediates between documented fossil species." (Schwartz, Jeffrey H., Sudden Origins, 1999, p. 89.)

"He [Darwin] prophesied that future generations of paleontologists would fill in these gaps by diligent search....It has become abundantly clear that the fossil record will not confirm this part of Darwin's predictions. Nor is the problem a miserably poor record. The fossil record simply shows that this prediction was wrong." (Eldridge, Niles, The Myths of Human Evolution, 1984, pp.45-46.)

"There is no need to apologize any longer for the poverty of the fossil record. In some ways it has become almost unmanageably rich, and discovery is out-pacing integration...The fossil record nevertheless continues to be composed mainly of gaps." (George, T. Neville, "Fossils in Evolutionary Perspective," Science Progress, vol. 48 January 1960, pp. 1-3.)

"Despite the bright promise - that paleontology provides a means of ‘seeing’ evolution, it has presented some nasty difficulties for evolutionists the most notorious of which is the presence of 'gaps' in the fossil record. Evolution requires intermediate forms between species and paleontology does not provide them. The gaps must therefore be a contingent feature of the record." (Kitts, David B., "Paleontology and Evolutionary Theory," Evolution, vol. 28, 1974, p. 467.)

"It is interesting that all the cases of gradual evolution that we know about from the fossil record seem to involve smooth changes without the appearance of novel structures and functions." (Wills, C., Genetic Variability, 1989, p. 94-96.)

"So the creationist prediction of systematic gaps in the fossil record has no value in validating the creationist model, since the evolution theory makes precisely the same prediction." (Weinberg, S., Reviews of Thirty-one Creationist Books, 1984, p.

"We seem to have no choice but to invoke the rapid divergence of populations too small to leave legible fossil records." (Stanley, S.M., The New Evolutionary Timetable: Fossils, Genes, and the Origin of Species, 1981, p. 99.)

"For over a hundred years paleontologists have recognized the large number of gaps in the fossil record. Creationists make it seem like gaps are a deep, dark secret of paleontology..." (Cracraft, in Awbrey & Thwaites, Evolutionists Confront Creationists", 1984.)

"Instead of finding the gradual unfolding of life, what geologists of Darwin’s time, and geologists of the present day actually find is a highly uneven or jerky record; that is, species appear in the sequence very suddenly, show little or no change during their existence in the record, then abruptly go out of the record. and it is not always clear, in fact it’s rarely clear, that the descendants were actually better adapted than their predecessors. In other words, biological improvement is hard to find." (Raup, David M., "Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology," Bulletin, Field Museum of Natural History, vol. 50, 1979, p. 23.)

Chicago Field Museum, Prof. of Geology, Univ. of Chicago, "A large number of well-trained scientists outside of evolutionary biology and paleontology have unfortunately gotten the idea that the fossil record is far more Darwinian than it is. This probably comes from the oversimplification inevitable in secondary sources: low-level textbooks, semi-popular articles, and so on. Also, there is probably some wishful thinking involved. In the years after Darwin, his advocates hoped to find predictable progressions. In general, these have not been found yet the optimism has died hard, and some pure fantasy has crept into textbooks...One of the ironies of the creation evolution debate is that the creationists have accepted the mistaken notion that the fossil record shows a detailed and orderly progression and they have gone to great lengths to accommodate this 'fact' in their Flood (Raup, David, "Geology" New Scientist, Vol. 90, p.832, 1981.)

"As we shall see when we take up the creationist position, there are all sorts of gaps: absence of graduationally intermediate ‘transitional’ forms between species, but also between larger groups -- between say, families of carnivores, or the orders of mammals. In fact, the higher up the Linnaean hierarchy you look, the fewer transitional forms there seem to be." (Eldredge, Niles, The Monkey Business: A Scientist Looks at Creationism, 1982, p. 65-66.)

"Transitions between major groups of organisms . . . are difficult to establish in the fossil record." (Padian, K., The Origin of Turtles: One Fewer Problem for Creationists, 1991, p. 18.)

"A persistent problem in evolutionary biology has been the absence of intermediate forms in the fossil record. Long term gradual transformations of single lineages are rare and generally involve simple size increase or trivial phenotypic effects. Typically, the record consists of successive ancestor-descendant lineages, morphologically invariant through time and unconnected by intermediates." (Williamson, P.G., Palaeontological Documentation of Speciation in Cenozoic Molluscs from Turkana Basin, 1982, p. 163.)

"What one actually found was nothing but discontinuities: All species are separated from each other by bridgeless gaps; intermediates between species are not observed . . . The problem was even more serious at the level of the higher categories." (Mayr, E., Animal Species and Evolution, 1982, p. 524.)

"The known fossil record is not, and never has been, in accord with gradualism. What is remarkable is that, through a variety of historical circumstances, even the history of opposition has been obscured . . . ‘The majority of paleontologists felt their evidence simply contradicted Darwin’s stress on minute, slow, and cumulative changes leading to species transformation.’ . . . their story has been suppressed." (Stanley, S.M., The New Evolutionary Timetable, 1981, p. 71.)

"One must acknowledge that there are many, many gaps in the fossil record . . . There is no reason to think that all or most of these gaps will be bridged." (Ruse, "Is There a Limit to Our Knowledge of Evolution," 1984, p.101.)

"We are faced more with a great leap of faith . . . that gradual progressive adaptive change underlies the general pattern of evolutionary change we see in the rocks . . . than any hard evidence." (Eldredge, N. and Tattersall, I., The Myths of Human Evolution, 1982, p. 57.)

"Gaps between families and taxa of even higher rank could not be so easily explained as the mere artifacts of a poor fossil record." (Eldredge, Niles, Macro-Evolutionary Dynamics: Species, Niches, and Adaptive Peaks, 1989, p.22.)

"To explain discontinuities, Simpson relied, in part, upon the classical argument of an imperfect fossil record, but concluded that such an outstanding regularity could not be entirely artificial." (Gould, Stephen J., "The Hardening of the Modern Synthesis," 1983, p. 81.)

"The record jumps, and all the evidence shows that the record is real: the gaps we see reflect real events in life’s history - not the artifact of a poor fossil record." (Eldredge, N. and Tattersall, I., The Myths of Human Evolution, 1982, p. 59.)

"The fossil record flatly fails to substantiate this expectation of finely graded change." (Eldredge, N. and Tattersall, I., The Myths of Human Evolution, 1982, p. 163.)

"Gaps in the fossil record - particularly those parts of it that are most needed for interpreting the course of evolution - are not surprising." (Stebbins, G. L., Darwin to DNA, Molecules to Humanity, 1982, p. 107.)

"The fossil record itself provided no documentation of continuity - of gradual transition from one animal or plant to another of quite different form." (Stanley, S.M., The New Evolutionary Timetable: Fossils, Genes and the Origin of Species, 1981, p. 40.)

"The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution." (Gould, Stephen J., "Is a New and General Theory of Evolution Emerging?," 1982, p. 140.)

"The lack of ancestral or intermediate forms between fossil species is not a bizarre peculiarity of early metazoan history. Gaps are general and prevalent throughout the fossil record." (Raff R.A, and Kaufman, T.C., Embryos, Genes, and Evolution: The Developmental-Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change, 1991, p. 34.)

"Gaps between higher taxonomic levels are general and large." (Raff R.A, and Kaufman, T.C., Embryos, Genes, and Evolution: The Developmental-Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change, 1991, p. 35.)

"We have so many gaps in the evolutionary history of life, gaps in such key areas as the origin of the multicellular organisms, the origin of the vertebrates, not to mention the origins of most invertebrate groups." (McGowan, C., In the Beginning . . . A Scientist Shows Why Creationists are Wrong, 1984, p. 95.)

"If life had evolved into its wondrous profusion of creatures little by little, Dr. Eldredge argues, then one would expect to find fossils of transitional creatures which were a bit like what went before them and a bit like what came after. But no one has yet found any evidence of such transitional creatures. This oddity has been attributed to gaps in the fossil record which gradualists expected to fill when rock strata of the proper age had been found. In the last decade, however, geologists have found rock layers of all divisions of the last 500 million years and no transitional forms were contained in them. If it is not the fossil record which is incomplete then it must be the theory." (The Guardian Weekly, 26 Nov 1978, vol. 119, no 22, p. 1.)

“People and advertising copywriters tend to see human evolution as a line stretching from apes to man, into which one can fit new-found fossils as easily as links in a chain. Even modern anthropologists fall into this trap . . .[W]e tend to look at those few tips of the bush we know about, connect them with lines, and make them into a linear sequence of ancestors and descendants that never was. But it should now be quite plain that the very idea of the missing link, always shaky, is now completely untenable.” (Gee, Henry, "Face of Yesterday,” The Guardian, Thursday July 11, 2002.)

>> ^Drax:
Shiny, it's kind of like you're saying,
Ok, we have: . -> O
And you say, ah! But there's no transitional species that spans the gap of . and O
Then we find . -> o -> O
And you say, ah! But there's no transitional species that spans the gap of . and o
or o and O
Basically, the more evidence we find.. the stronger your argument gets! <IMG class=smiley src="http://cdn.videosift.com/cdm/emoticon/oh.gif">
ok, that last part's just a joke.. but seriously.. the other parts ARE your stance.
It's either that, or you're looking at o and e and expecting to find æ, which just doesn't happen.

I'm not sure how you see yourself as any less dogmatic than I am..and Im sorry for making you sad. I hope that you haven't wasted too many kleenexs on me, but save them for yourself..you'll need them when you figure out evolution is wrong.

Here is the key portion of your wiki article:

"Ideally, this list would only recursively include 'true' transitionals, fossils representing ancestral specie from which later groups evolved, but most, if not all, of the fossils shown here represent extinct side branches, more or less closely related to the true ancestor"

What we see in the fossil record is that when something new shows up its all at once and is fully formed and then never changes. Ie, no true transitionals have ever been discovered. What has never been witnessed in the fossil record is steady progressive change of one kind of thing into something completely different.

You think this is a gap? It's a super massive black hole, and the vacuum may be in your head if you believe it. Here's some info:

John Bonner, a biologist at Princeton, writes that traditional textbook discussions of ancestral descent are "a festering mass of unsupported assertions." In recent years, paleontologists have retreated from simple connect-the-dot scenarios linking earlier and later species. Instead of ladders, they now talk of bushes. What we see in the fossils, according to this view, are only the twigs, the final end-products of evolution, while the key transitional forms which would give a clue about the origin of major animal groups remain completely hidden.

The blank spots on evolutionary "tree" charts occur at just the points where, according to Darwin's theory, the crucial changes had to take place. The direct ancestors of all the major orders: primates, carnivores, and so forth are completely missing. There is no fossil evidence for a "grandparent" of the monkey, for example. "Modern gorillas, orangutans, and chimpanzees spring out of nowhere," writes paleontologist Donald Johansen. "They are here today; they have no yesterday." The same is true of giraffes, elephants, wolves, and all species; they all simply burst upon the scene de novo [anew], as it were.

I think you're the one who needs to re-evaluate your beliefs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6EiN-3uWak




>> ^Skeeve:
>> ^shinyblurry:
the bar is still incredibly low..one of the best transitional forms out there is based on a whales nostril..i would find that embarassing if i believed in evolution. show me something convincing. also, give me an example of mutation that increases information in a genome while you're at it.
You've said that you aren't ignorant of science, yet you ignore the science that proves these things. You, and people like you, are not really interested in the facts, you are interested in finding all the gaps so you can point and say "aha, there is a god!" I am truly saddened by people like you - it breaks my heart that you can be so smart and so blind at the same time.
But you asked for yet more proof so I am at your service.
A (comparatively) short list of transitional forms: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_transitional_fossils
As for the claim that mutations not increasing information in a genome:
"We have observed the evolution of
increased genetic variety in a population (Lenski 1995; Lenski et al. 1991)
increased genetic material (Alves et al. 2001; Brown et al. 1998; Hughes and Friedman 2003; Lynch and Conery 2000; Ohta 2003)
novel genetic material (Knox et al. 1996; Park et al. 1996)
novel genetically-regulated abilities (Prijambada et al. 1995)
If these do not qualify as information, then nothing about information is relevant to evolution in the first place."
You can look up those scholarly articles if you actually don't want to remain ignorant. They are listed here: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB102.html

Then the evil herbivores came and feasted upon their leafy flesh. The tree's leafy revenge came from the carnivores. The carnivore helps protect the most peaceful of this worlds creation fight off its most evil foe.

I have to completely disagree with the formation of your argument. Unfortunately, you have presented a very shallow, 1 dimensional view of violence; most would refer to it as a scarecrow. I wish to state before I go further that I wish I lived in this world you imagine. I long for a world where violence isn't an answer. Let us take on your examples one at a time, then go into the thrust of the issue.

As far as terrorism goes, it is hard to even understand what terrorism is. It isn't very rigidly defined. Is it terrorism to force people to pay taxes, or is it only when you blow them up when they aren't expecting it? Terrorism is more of a red herring word used to justify actions rather a "thing" itself. that is a dodge of the issue, but then again, so was this word all along. So lets move into some of your better examples.

Was the objective of Vietnam and Korea to stop Communism? If so, then the success rate is 50%. As far as things go in the world, those aren't terrible odds. South Korea still exists as a democracy, violence won out in that case over rivaling violence.

The world war 2 example is a curious example to use. It actually shows a different picture then I think you would like to present. In the end, Germany ended up with a ruined country, as you say. But, that is only because it met up against resistance/violence. In the end, Germany was BOMBED into submitting, not talked into it. A greater force of violence stopped the lesser source of it. It was the rule of the jungle carried out in its most prime. Countless attempts by Brittan and France to talk Germany out of taking over its neighbors had no effect, only when the grind of blood and bullets was too much for her to bear did Germany relent. Indeed, WW2 is a horrible example for you to use...probably the worst I can think of.

Instead you should of used people like Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther, and Martin Luther King Jr. These people were truly non-violent and changed the world. However, they are the conspicuous examples. The reason they stand out in history is because all to often, non-retaliation results in certain defeat. Look at the plight of the native Americans. While history tells the tail of all the tribes that fought, many did not. Many made deals with the White man. The history of these arrangements is grim indeed. For the White man would constantly renig the terms and send into exile the native Americans. Even the great Jefferson, the champion of democracy, sent the native Americans further and further down the trail of tears. They did not fight. The suffered...and suffered. Perhaps, if they fought, they would off been completely eradicated, so, instead, they choose exile and decimation. Which is better, I am not one to say. But surely, their non-violence did not result in one could consider a victory.

You need to remember your fathers. And I don't mean the founders of the USA. I mean 2 billion years of evolution on this planet. Humans are not some sanctimonious super being. We are composed of the same shit, sweat, and tears as everything else. The history of all animals is almost wholly violent. The lion doesn't solve his mating deputes with a rival by any other means than brutality. Your immune system doesn't win out by being less virulent than the infection it sees to mend. Your food won't survive long enough to reap if you don't stop the insects and vermin from eating it. Washing your hands is akin to mass murder of bacteria. Anti-bacterial soap is akin to genocide. But we resolve ourselves of these sins almost constantly so that we can be naive in the construction of our morality when dealing with each other. In this world, it is life for life. Nothing alive doesn't take life as well, spare most planets. Plants are only noble creation along with some fungi. Most every animal on the planet exploits unto pain through violence some other organism. herbivorous being the most foul violator eating the only noble life on the plant. Carnivores are their penitence.

This world is a cycle of pain, and its root is violence. Violence is what drives evolution forward. One of the expatiations of the Cambrian Explosion is the arrival of carnivores. And billions of years later, you stand on the top of the tradition of exploitation. And you won't be rid of it be ignoring it inside you. You might construct a society that can slowly cope and perhaps even bread out billions of years of evolution. And in perhaps 10 thousand years, you can look back and see that you reduced human violence by 20%. And that would be a great accomplishment. Only to then be wiped out by a asteroid ending all human life to be replaced by the new slug overlords. The great comedy of life is to think you can make a difference in the 80 years we have vs the billions that the history of life has been with us. Unless you are talking about complete genetic experimentation to change the face of what it means to be human, I don't see anything working. Maybe you make a government system that handles the nature of man better, but the nature of man...the 2 billion year old murder animal, is still set before you.

Like I said, I don't like this world. I would rather live in your fantasy world. A world of reason, of peace, of progress. We don't have that world. We have a world of brutal, violence. It's only true self is that of conflict and competition that is all to often violent. It the a 2 billion year old rule that we didn't make up but have had to better realize, lest make poorly designed strategy to deal with the beast that is man.

>> ^SDGundamX:

>> ^BoneRemake:
UPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP

VOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTEEEEEEEEEEE

"violence doesnt solve anything "
and yet we go to war, explain that mrs former cop.

By the way, you forgot to quote her whole comment, which in its entirety goes:
"My message to the young people out there is that violence does not solve anything. It can get you into more trouble than what it's going to solve. [If you are being bullied] don't suffer in silence: find a trusted a adult and let them know what's going on."
So first off, your question about wars was completely off-topic. But I'll take a shot at answering it anyway.
She didn't say people were smart. She didn't say people don't ever get violent. She instead pointed out violence doesn't solve any problems. Did we solve the terrorist threat with the Iraq and Afganistan wars? Did we stop Communism with the Vietnam and Korean wars? Part of the reason Germany went to war in World War 2 was because their economy was in the crapper after World War 1 and they owed money in reparations. Did they solve that problem by getting their country bombed to rubble?
Nations go to war for many reasons. There's the ostensible reasons like "spreading freedom" that the population is forced to buy and there are the actual reasons like securing resources or the sheer madness of the country's leadership. My question for you is, at the end of the day, can you really think of a war that "solved" a problem in a way that couldn't have been solved peacefully?

3 more comments have been lost in the ether at this killed duplicate.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'simpsons, bart' to 'simpsons, bart, homer simpson, salad, vegetarian, carnivore' - edited by gwiz665

I didn't have enough information when I initially commented on this video (because the video didn't provide it), and I jumped to conclusions - my bad!! In any event, it would definitely have been helpful if the video had indicated if the otter was a sea otter, river otter, or ...

Here's some fun and interesting information about otters from the World Famous San Diego Zoo web site:
Class: Mammalia (Mammals)
Order: Carnivora
Family: Mustelidae
Genera: 6
Species: 13
Length: largest—giant otter Pteronura brasiliensis, up to 7.8 feet (2.4 meters); smallest—Asian small-clawed otter Amblonyx cinereus, up to 3 feet (0.9 meters)
Weight: largest—sea otter Enhydra lutris, males up to 95 pounds (43 kilograms); smallest—Asian small-clawed otter, up to 11 pounds (5 kilograms)
Life span: 15 to 20 years
Gestation: from 2 months for smaller species to 5 months for sea otters
Number of young at birth: 1 to 5, usually 2
Size at birth: 4.5 ounces (128 grams) for smaller species to 5 pounds (2.3 kilograms) for sea otters
Age of maturity: 2 to 5 years
Conservation status: four species, including the sea otter, are endangered; three otter species are vulnerable.
Fun facts
• You can tell otter species apart by the shape and amount of fur on their noses.
• Unlike other marine mammals, sea otters do not have a layer of blubber to keep them warm; they rely on warm air trapped in their fur. Sea otters have the densest fur of any mammal, with about 100,000 hairs in a space about the size of a postage stamp!
• Most otter species capture prey with their mouths, but Asian small-clawed otters and sea otters have flexible fingers and grab with their hands.
• North American and European river otters have been known to share dens with beavers—but the beavers do all the building!

Mammals: Otter
Range: Africa, Asia, and parts of North America, Central America, and South America
Habitat: sea otters are found in the Pacific Ocean and along the coastline, but most otter species live in rivers, lakes, and marshes

Champion swimmers
Otters are the only serious swimmers in the weasel family. They spend most of their lives in the water, and they are made for it! Their sleek, streamlined bodies are perfect for diving and swimming. Otters also have long, slightly flattened tails that move sideways to propel them through the water while their back feet act like rudders to steer.

Almost all otters have webbed feet, some more webbed than others, and they can close off their ears and noses as they swim underwater. They can stay submerged for about five minutes, because their heart rate slows and they use less oxygen. They’re also good at floating on the water’s surface, because air trapped in their fur makes them more buoyant. Have you ever noticed that when an otter comes out of the water, its outer fur sticks together in wet spikes, while the underneath still seems dry? That’s because they have two layers of fur: a dense undercoat that traps air; and a topcoat of long, waterproof guard hairs. Keeping their fur in good condition is important, so otters spend a lot of time grooming. In fact, if their fur becomes matted with something like oil, it can damage their ability to hunt for food and stay warm.

Party animals
Otters are very energetic and playful. You might say they love to party! They are intelligent and curious, and they are usually busy hunting, investigating, or playing with something. They like to throw and bounce things, wrestle, twirl, and chase their tails. They also play games of "tag" and chase each other, both in the water and on the ground. River otters seem to like sliding down mud banks or in the snow—they’ll do it over and over again! Otters also make lots of different sounds, from whistles, growls, and screams to barks, chirps, and coos. All this activity is part of the otters’ courtship, social bonding, and communication, and since otter pups need practice, they tend to be even more playful than the adults.

Life as a pup
Most otters are born in a den, helpless and with their eyes closed. The mother takes care of them, often chasing the father away after their birth, although in some species the dad may come back after a couple of weeks to help raise them. The babies, called pups, open their eyes and start exploring the den at about one month, start swimming at two months, and stay with their mother and siblings until they are about one year old, when they head off on their own.

For sea otters in their ocean habitat it’s a little different—the pups are born with their eyes open, and they have a special coat of hair so they can float, even though they can’t swim yet. They are carried on their mother’s stomach until they are about two months old, when they start swimming and diving on their own.

For most otters, social groups are made up of a mother, her older offspring, and her newest pups; the males spend most of their time alone or with a few other males. During breeding time or where there’s lots of food, though, larger groups of otters may gather, especially among sea otters in kelp beds.

The seafood diet
Otter food may not all come from the ocean, but it is definitely fishy! River otters eat mostly fish, frogs, crayfish, crabs, and mollusks, with an occasional small mammal or bird. Sea otters eat many of the same things, but mostly sea urchins, abalone, crabs, mussels, and clams, which they crack open against rocks they hold on their stomachs. Otters have long, sensitive whiskers that help them find prey, even in murky water. Some species, like the Asian small-clawed otter Amblonyx cinereus, also use their hands to probe into mud or under rocks to find a tasty meal that might be hiding there. River otters use lots of energy and digest their food very fast, so they eat several times a day. Sea otters need to eat 20 to 25 percent of their body weight each day. That’s a lot of abalone!
The otters at the San Diego Zoo are fed carnivore diet, carrots, and either squid or trout. They also get small amounts of "treats" for enrichment, like crayfish, worms, potatoes, or yams.

>> ^residue:

ok so the crocs don't bother the adult hippo because it's huge and powerful, but I really don't understand why they wouldn't go after the baby.. It's not even particularly close to the mom


I suspect the crocs would not come out on the winning end of a fight with the hippos. Hippos may not be carnivorous, but that won't stop them from fucking you up.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'phillipines, mouse, carnivorous, plant, pitcher plant' to 'philippines, mouse, carnivorous, plant, pitcher plant' - edited by calvados

In reply to this comment by jan:
Yes, absolutely.

The picture as I understand it involves not only the farms but the financial profits reap from them.
There has been some conflict of interest reported as government officials have investments in these farms.

The logging of BC forests also impacts the accessibility up creeks and rivers to spawning beds.
Forest companys have guidelines, but some get broken.

Some farmed fish are fed fish pellets that have been produced from other countries fish stock. So they take fish stock from sometimes poor countries to feed fish in farms.
Last year I heard a biology student talking about feeding the farmed fish canola pellets, imagine carnivorous fish eating canola pellets.

Other issues involve the antibiotics they have to give the fish in order to help them survive in the pen. Too many fish locked in one space.
The larger than normal amounts of sea lice is do to the fish being confined. The fry swim past these farms and pick up the lice in lethal amounts.

I could go on.