Re: The Lizard of Oz

[Marilyn Wegweiser <mdwegweiser@bsuvc.bsu.edu>]

Behaviors are polyphyletic.

At 3:21 PM -0600 3/27/01, christopher robert noto wrote:
> ah, but if they could find a faster way down from the branch to the
> ground...perhaps a little bugger in the past jumped from branches.


Or fell. While pouncing. Oops. Missed! Just missed and dropped like a 
stone. Who says organisms are inherently graceful?

>   just
> because it isn't done today doesn't mean that it was never done in the
> past.

Things fall out of trees all the time today.Depending on the 
cohesivenss of the landing point, the splatter mark could make a 
lovely trace fossil. ;^)

>  just more fanciful thoughts...take it with a couple grains of NaCl.

Or KCl. In a Sylvite kinda mood. ;^)

> chris
>
> On Tue, 27 Mar 2001, David Marjanovic wrote:
>
> >  > The little hunter doesn't require highly-specialized perching or gliding
> >  > capabilities - just the ability to climb trees and "sit and wait" in the
> >  > tree-tops.  Well done, Frilled lizard!
> >  >
> >  > I would be surprised if this behavior has never evolved in any other group
> >  > of small predators.  Even better, if these predators could evolve
> >  > drag-creating structures of some kind to slow down their descents and
> >  > provide extra maneuverability while in the air...
> >
> >  If I have correctly understood, these lizards don't jump down from their
> >  trees (unlike cats...) but run down the trunk, which makes the evolution of
> >  anything involved with aerodynamics rather improbable.