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Re: T.Rex Feather Skepticism

The cute tyrant looks like a good prey item for a hungry Upper Cretaceous mammal to me. Interesting that almost all domesticated barnyard birds are fluffy and cute from the egg. I wonder if artificial selection by man had anything to do with that or just an adaptation for surviving for cold roosts. (Of course that theory goes out the window regarding turkeys!) Of course lot of other birds are born naked and "ugly" but do pen feather up pretty quickly. Nothing is more homely than a baby parrot in pin feathers. I agree that we anthropoids do tend to prefer baby creatures as cute. Something about the mammalian survival benefit of cuteness ingrained into our collective wishful thinking. Would an ugly tyrant baby sell prints? Would puppies endear themselves so readily if they looked like the animals at http://www.dogsinthenews.com/issues/0207/articles/020704a.htm I doubt that other predators said, "look a cute baby, don't step on it."
Frank (Rooster) Bliss
MS Biostratigraphy
Weston, Wyoming
On Sep 14, 2005, at 7:13 PM, Jaime A. Headden wrote:

  I believe the truth lies in my companions eyes...

http://dino.lm.com/images/display.php?id=912

  So I will propose to you fellows a variation of Pascal's Wager:

1. Baby tyrants with fluff are cute;
2. Baby tyrants without fluff aren't cute (or at least as cute as this
fellow);
3. Cuteness brings more appeasing affirmation in our lives than uncuteness;
4. Thus, there is a better benefit in being cute if you're as cute as H.
Kyoht
Luterman's fluffy tyrant (Mike Skrepnick also did a glorious tribute to
this idea), than if you weren't, and therefore we should favor cuteness
(i.e., glorious white fluffy downy fluffiness) than uncuteness (bare
naked,
scaly, dry, ugly skin ;)).

  Let there be fluff!!

  Cheers,

Jaime A. Headden

"Innocent, unbiased observation is a myth." --- P.B. Medawar (1969)

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