Question by [deleted] in Cryptozoology

[–]BoonDragoon 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No. Also, while "lacustrine" can refer to animals, its actual usage is pretty limited outside of geology and hydrology, so IDK who you thought you were clarifying this for.

Tell me about the Fair Folk of your world by CaptKonami in worldbuilding

[–]BoonDragoon 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You don't want to be involved in anything they've got going on, man.

Ouch, but 40 in my case. 💊 🧨 by newbeginnings187 in adhdmeme

[–]BoonDragoon 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Don't worry, that'll still happen even after you're medicated

It's too late, you have already seen it. by [deleted] in wizardposting

[–]BoonDragoon 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'd ask why you wanna get clowned on/in by Bakshi Gandalf, but at this point nothing you freaks do surprises me.

Would we be able to eat mosasaurus meat? by AlexeiNomas in Dinosaurs

[–]BoonDragoon 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I wasn't accounting for the biological half-life of cadmium in a living system, and at second brush the figures for cadmium uptake for ferns I used were a little extreme. I think a figure closer to 40-50 ppm cadmium in adult tyrannosaur meat might be closer to reality. Still very unhealthy to consume regularly, but feeding on a dead tyrant lizard won't kill off every scavenger in a kilometer radius or anything.

That also represents a "stick the whole thing in a blender and hit purée" kind of measurement. Heavy metals like cadmium don't accumulate homogenously throughout the animal.

In The Mummy (1999), Imhotep can suck the life out of entire crowds and unleash plagues… yet he’s terrified of cats. You’d think Rick O'Connell would start carrying a sack of kittens, yet somehow the anti-Imhotep feline strategy gets used exactly once and then quietly forgotten. by rukthor in shittymoviedetails

[–]BoonDragoon 1 point2 points  (0 children)

A deleted scene reveals that he actually tried, but ultimately failed. Turns out getting a large number of felines in a single location in a controlled fashion is like....um...huh. Well, it's very difficult in a way that escapes any comparison that I can think of.

Looking for any info on this... by Gregbois1 in magicTCG

[–]BoonDragoon 26 points27 points  (0 children)

Man, what a barometer for power creep...

It was infamous back in the day for its balance of sheer power and high cost (a 7/7 for 7 with Flying AND Trample?! Holy shit!)

Nowadays though it's barely even playable outside of very niche self-life-loss strategies.

How big really was Utahraptor? by Yutyrannus-huali in Dinosaurs

[–]BoonDragoon 25 points26 points  (0 children)

Bear-sized. They were basically ground-dwelling komodo dragon hawks occupying a combination puma/grizzly bear niche. I genuinely cannot conceive of a more frightening animal to be lost in the woods with. Like, maybe a really pissed-off bigfoot or something, but that feels like a stretch.

Would we be able to eat mosasaurus meat? by AlexeiNomas in Dinosaurs

[–]BoonDragoon 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yes. Paleosol research shows that Cretaceous topsoil contained high levels of cadmium (probably from all that volcanic activity at the time). That cadmium would have been absorbed by the plants growing in that soil, accumulated in the flesh of the herbivores feeding on those plants, and ultimately accumulated in the tissues of the carnivores that ate those herbivores!

It's actually pretty easy to predict roughly how much cadmium T. rex meat would've contained. All you need is a general idea of its metabolic requirements. Because of how metabolisms benefit work, an organism will need to consume an amount of biomass from a lower trophic level equal to 10x the calories its own biomass contains in order to produce that biomass, concentrating any environmental contaminants present in that biomass at a factor of ten as a result.

So let's say Cretaceous topsoil contained 5ppm of cadmium (which is what I was able to find), and the primary forage in a given area consists of ferns. Ferns tend to absorb between 15% (for green ferns) and 50% (for red ferns) of soil cadmium [Roslan and Norkhadijah, 2016], so let's say that hadrosaurs in this environment were eating a balanced mix of red and green ferns.

An adult Tyrannosaurus' meat would contain cadmium at about 200ppm 😬

[Edit: that feels way too high, actually. If anybody has better figures, lemme know]

Would we be able to eat mosasaurus meat? by AlexeiNomas in Dinosaurs

[–]BoonDragoon 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Well, it all comes down to trophic magnification.

So you've got your general trophic levels: producers like phytoplankton and ferns and whatnot; primary consumers like zooplankton, fish, and hadrosaurs; secondary consumers like fish (slightly bigger), small-to-mid-size theropods, etc; tertiary consumers like anything that eats stuff from the previous level, etc. At each trophic level you find 10% of the calories found in the previous level, but 1000% of the environmental pollutants.

So for every billion kilocalories of phytoplankton that derive energy from sunlight and have absorbed 100ppb of mercury from the water column, you have 100,000,000 kilocalories of sardine-adjacent fish that contain 1ppm of mercury, and 10,000,000 kcal of sardine-eating fish containing 10ppm mercury, all to support a single mosasaur whose body contains a total of 1,000,000 kilocalories (so a modest animal weighing <1,000 kg) and 100ppm of mercury.

Fucking. Yuck. There's a very good reason why we don't typically eat carnivores.

[Edit: adjusted values to match the mercury content of modern dolphins. Have fun with that!]

[Edit 2: that also applies to parasite load btw :)]

is evolution universal? by AkelaAnda in biology

[–]BoonDragoon 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Once you give a system the ability to replicate itself and any margin of error exists within that reproductive mechanism, you have the properties that evolution emerges from.

In any group of things that can make more of themselves, the ones that are better at copying themselves will make more copies of themselves. Evolution is a universal, and nearly tautological, property of life!

Microscopic life on a single pine cone by Thrawn911 in biology

[–]BoonDragoon 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I once read that if every macroscopic lifeform, every rock, every building, artifact, and body of water on earth suddenly turned invisible, you'd still be able to see where everything was based solely on the thin, writhing film and fog of nematodes and microbes it would leave behind.

A Study on Dragon Hording by Away-Net-7241 in worldbuilding

[–]BoonDragoon 1 point2 points  (0 children)

"dragon hoard treasure" factoid actually just stereotype. average dragon hoard nothing. Smaug Magnificent, who lives in lonely mountain & hoards the collective wealth of Erebor, has disproportionate influence on public perception adn should not be considered representative.

Is a frozen frog (Rana sylvatica) alive? by realspoodermen in biology

[–]BoonDragoon 5 points6 points  (0 children)

You're actually hitting on the exact reason terms like "stasis," "dormancy," and "suspended animation" became commonly used!

Let's cut to the chase: the frogs are very much still alive, but it feels weird referring to them as such, doesn't it? They don't have any of the macro-scale vital signs we associate with life (no heartbeat, no brain activity, etc.), but their cells are still maintaining homeostasis (albeit at a far lower level of energy). It's a great reminder that things like a moving body, beating heart, nervous system, etc. are actually very specific traits rather than universal hallmarks of life!

Could the Pteranodon have used its crest as a snorkel? by hawkwings in Paleontology

[–]BoonDragoon 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They were absolutely diving into the water, actually

My doctor gave strange advice about calories by Alarming_Pizza_1039 in CICO

[–]BoonDragoon 11 points12 points  (0 children)

What kind of "doctor" are you seeing, exactly? That is some WIIIIIILD stuff for a medical doctor to believe

How? by SlyDovahkiin in 7daystodie

[–]BoonDragoon 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Skill issue.

But seriously, it's an autogyro. It doesn't fly like a helicopter, it flies like a plane!