174-175: Got milk?

[Diodri]

I have no photoshop skills, but a Beryl-shocked-face version of the old school Got Milk? ads would be perfect.

Nor do I, but what I do have, is 20 years experience in MS Paint. Here is my edit. I do hope you enjoy.

[orion1836]

Ha!

[RockB]

^--- (2 up) OMG priceless! *LOL*

Ahem... In general, milk is an emulsion of fat in water, plus some traces of minerals and other stuff. The fat can also come from plants, by heart I could name soy milk, almond milk and cocoa milk. Not sure whether anyone would want some plant based milk in their coffee or tea... I just hope that Alex, the Guardian of the Garden, remembers to mention that when the awkwardness ensues (Also, there is margarine as a replacement for butter and there is tofu.)

[Voitan]

If Alex doesn't get nicknamed Milkman I'm going to be wholeheartedly disappointed.

Or teased for having the appetites of a child.

[gaerzi]

Losing the ability to digest lactose in adulthood seems like a pretty random "adaptation." I would be curious to know whether this is common in other mammals as well... but I would be surprised if there is a lot of data on this.

A quick search suggests that both dogs and cats can also be lactose intolerant as adults, so it may be that there's a specific advantage to losing this ability, or perhaps it's just a common quirk to mammalian biochemistry.

It's more a question of whether it's worth keeping around the capacity to digest stuff that you're never eating anymore.

From what I've heard, it's safe to give cats milk if you've given them milk since they were kitten and you've never stopped. Otherwise, it gets them sick.

[Sweforce]

Milk in Coffey are used to soften the taste and it is in this context Alex ask for milk. It is entirely possible that some loroi also prefer to soften the taste of their "coffey" but is just isn't milk. But for now the situation is hilarious and once he is handed whatever they use instead they still laugh at the barbaric human that use milk for this purpose.

[Krulle]

From what I understood, in some mammals the development of lactose intolerancy is a direct consequence of weaning. Because you've stopped drinking milk, the body starts to,recognize "milk" as foreign to your body.

There must've been a gigantic evolutionary pressure on especially Europeans to continue the milk compatibility (hence asians have far more problems with milk than us westerners do).

Anyway, this is something I heard years ago, I don't know what current papers say...


And while thereis soy milk (by now many European coffeeshops use it, less hygiene problems in their machines), Almond milk (perfect as replacement for milk in baked goods, e.g. pancakes, cakes), oat milk (good for some mueslis), and a few more, they are not "milk", but something made to look and feel similar to milk. (my oldest has a milk protein allergy, lactose itself seems to be fine if not extracted from milk - hence my experience) Oh, but do buy better brands, cheap brands are... meh. Gigantic taste differences in these products...

[bunnyboy]

Due for the votes of loroi milkmaid have been surprisingly even (0 for everyone), I decide that winner would be

SpoilerShow

"Gopher" alias "Shoegirl", as it is clearly her duty to bring out whatever is asked.

Warning: Do not look at the image you are insulted by seminudity or bad art!

[folti]

The fat can also come from plants, by heart I could name soy milk, almond milk and cocoa milk. Not sure whether anyone would want some plant based milk in their coffee or tea...

Well, I personally switched to them for anything from coffee to oatmeals, because I have been diagnosed with insulin resistance/early stages of type 2 diabetes, and the high glycemic index of normal milk means I should avoid it.

Otherwise there are people with lactose intolerance, or allergies to other milk components, for whom normal milk is not recommended. Like we had enough of them at work, that they were able to push through an initiative that our kitchen should stock almond and cocoa milk alongside with normal and lactose free ones.

[Voitan]

Milk in Coffey are used to soften the taste and it is in this context Alex ask for milk. It is entirely possible that some loroi also prefer to soften the taste of their "coffey" but is just isn't milk. But for now the situation is hilarious and once he is handed whatever they use instead they still laugh at the barbaric human that use milk for this purpose.

Milk always makes my coffee taste like liquid burnt toast.

There must've been a gigantic evolutionary pressure on especially Europeans to continue the milk compatibility (hence asians have far more problems with milk than us westerners do).

Mongols drink milk, it's food on the go. Great for the nomadic life.

[SaintofM]

The first dary usage as far as science can tell was probably cheese as up until humans had been around dairy products long enough, this was the best method of having it go in your system (the cheese making process breaks down the lactose somewhat.) This is why there are so many different types of cheeses around the world.

After a long time coexisting with these domestic animals the lactose intolerance for groups that have a strong cattle raising culture tend to drop, whereas other groups didn't develop it nearly as well if at all.

If the blue space babes didn't develop this kind of animal husbandry then at best this would be pretty alien to them (excuse the expression), and make them sick at worse.

[Ithekro]

One wonders if any of their planets even have a species of cattle.

[Arioch]

I drink tea completely without cream or sugar (I think this is a by-product of spending so much time in Asian-cuisine restaurants), but I can't do the same with coffee... it's just too acrid. But I do use that liquid CoffeeMate stuff that hasn't got any actual milk or sugar in it.

Milk in Coffey are used to soften the taste and it is in this context Alex ask for milk. It is entirely possible that some loroi also prefer to soften the taste of their "coffey" but is just isn't milk. But for now the situation is hilarious and once he is handed whatever they use instead they still laugh at the barbaric human that use milk for this purpose.

Milk always makes my coffee taste like liquid burnt toast.

There must've been a gigantic evolutionary pressure on especially Europeans to continue the milk compatibility (hence asians have far more problems with milk than us westerners do).

Mongols drink milk, it's food on the go. Great for the nomadic life.

That's the ironic thing: lactose intolerance is much higher in Asian populations than among Europeans; as much as 95% of the Mongol population is lactose intolerant. I believe the answer to this is that the nomadic steppes cultures actually don't drink fresh milk; instead, they make yogurt and cheese and fermented milk drinks that artificially break down the lactose.

So it seems that Lactase Persistence is actually an adaptation of sedentary cattle farmers rather than nomadic peoples, and it would appear to be that this is because they actually did drink fresh milk.

I think the exception to this is the Maasai, who unusually among Africans are not lactose intolerant, and this is presumably because they actually do drink fresh milk (or rather, a mixture of milk and cattle blood).

It seems odd that mammals should evolve a baby food that appears to be so problematic to digest, but I'm sure there's some logical biochemical rationale for why the system works.

One wonders if any of their planets even have a species of cattle.

Derro has an animal analogous to a goat which the Neridi use to make a sort of cheese from, but they don't drink the milk.

I think most of the large herbivores are more likely to be more like dinosaurs than cattle. The position of relatively sophisticated mammals in the niche of large herbivores on Earth may only be due to mass extinction that wiped out all the large egg-laying herbivores, which were probably more efficient.

[dragoongfa]

Derro has an animal analogous to a goat which the Neridi use to make a sort of cheese from, but they don't drink the milk.

I think most of the large herbivores are more likely to be more like dinosaurs than cattle. The position of relatively sophisticated mammals in the niche of large herbivores on Earth may only be due to mass extinction that wiped out all the large egg-laying herbivores, which were probably more efficient.

That's probable; although it's extremely complex even with hindsight. Modern day birds are the direct descendants of the extinct dinosaurs; they dominated the world and grew to extreme sizes which forced the early mammals, which first evolved when the dinosaurs 'ruled' the earth, to remain small and rodent like.
Things changed when the 'reset' button was hit which left both the warm blooded egg layers and the mammals on even odds in terms of size and overall abilities. In the end, when all things were equal, mammals became the dominant terrestrial forms while the dinosaur remnants took almost exclusively to the skies.
Mammals grew in size that was unprecedented for them before; not in the same way the dinosaurs were that's true but there were several key differences, for one oxygen levels became higher after the dinosaurs went extinct. Mammals require greater concentration of oxygen in order to carry the embryo to term while egg layers don't have the same constraint.
Mammals also tend to be less of a burden to their parent in their infant stages ; mammals tend to grow quicker than birds and become re productively viable far sooner (when one compares species of equal sizes).

In short, I think that mammals are superior to egg layers and if they both have equal room to grow then mammals will always end up being dominant.

[Arioch]

In short, I think that mammals are superior to egg layers and if they both have equal room to grow then mammals will always end up being dominant.

Well, it's easy to say that mammals are "superior" because they are more complex in evolutionary terms, but mammals coexisted with dinosaurs for more than 100 million years, and in all that time they never got any bigger than rodents. The mammals didn't displace or push the large dinosaurs to extinction; they took over the empty ecological niches left after the large dinosaurs were already wiped out. If that extinction event hadn't happened, there still might not be any large mammals today, so I'm not sure that one can say that mammals will always become dominant.

It is curious that none of the small non-avian theropod dinosaurs survived the extinction event, even though some were very similar to the early mammals: small, eating similar things, and presumably feathered and at least semi-warm-blooded. One would think that having a less expensive metabolism would make them better able to survive the poor availability of food... but apparently not. I wonder whether they had some characteristic that made them unable to cope with the new environment, or whether the mammals really did out-compete the survivors. I don't think the fossil record is clear on this issue; as far as I know, the disappearance of all of the non-avian dinosaurs was very abrupt.

Birds arose before the extinction event, not after; they probably survived because flight made them better able to find food and migrate to less damaged areas. There were no flighted mammals to directly compete with birds, so there's not really a comparison there.

Mammals also tend to be less of a burden to their parent in their infant stages ; mammals tend to grow quicker than birds and become re productively viable far sooner (when one compares species of equal sizes).

I don't think it's clear to what extent most dinosaurs were involved in parenting, if at all. I think it makes sense that some of the theropod carnivores may have been very bird-like in their behavior, but I think that the large herbivorous dinosaurs probably had to be born ready to graze and feed themselves. Even for species that appear to have lived in herds, I don't know of any evidence for parental feeding, and I can't really imagine what form that would take, anyway. Today's surviving herbivorous reptiles (like iguanas and some turtles) don't do any parenting at all.

[RockB]

The fat can also come from plants, by heart I could name soy milk, almond milk and cocoa milk. Not sure whether anyone would want some plant based milk in their coffee or tea...

Well, I personally switched to them for anything from coffee to oatmeals,

Oatmeals, yes... I don't drink coffee at all and like my tea pure so I didn't know.

..., and the high glycemic index of normal milk means I should avoid it.

Didn't know that, too

Otherwise there are people with lactose intolerance, or allergies to other milk components, for whom normal milk is not recommended. Like we had enough of them at work, that they were able to push through an initiative that our kitchen should stock almond and cocoa milk alongside with normal and lactose free ones.

Cool! Here it's only cow milk.

... The mammals didn't displace or push the large dinosaurs to extinction; they took over the empty ecological niches left after the large dinosaurs were already wiped out. If that extinction event hadn't happened, there still might not be any large mammals today, so I'm not sure that one can say that mammals will always become dominant.

That's a thing I find quite interesting: The dinosaurs "ruled the earth for much longer than the humans, but they didn't develop the intelligence that was necessary to develop into the homo sapiens. What were the conditions to get that going? The dinosaurs must have had their chances, it was a rich world, suitable for all kinds of creatures, small and big, and they hat much more time, but they didn't develop any kind of society and didn't build, at least not to the best of my knowledge.

It is curious that none of the small non-avian theropod dinosaurs survived the extinction event, even though some were very similar to the early mammals: small, eating similar things, and presumably feathered and at least semi-warm-blooded. One would think that having a less expensive metabolism would make them better able to survive the poor availability of food... but apparently not.

Curious indeed! Was it maybe just a big heap of lucky conditions that some species developed an "expensive" brain that helped them to survive better than their competitors?

as far as I know, the disappearance of all of the non-avian dinosaurs was very abrupt.

I'm subscribed to the meteor theory.

Birds arose before the extinction event, not after; they probably survived because flight made them better able to find food and migrate to less damaged areas. There were no flighted mammals to directly compete with birds, so there's not really a comparison there.

Huh, I thought that the birds are the main descendants of the dinosaurs. And the crocodiles.

Mammals also tend to be less of a burden to their parent in their infant stages ; mammals tend to grow quicker than birds and become re productively viable far sooner (when one compares species of equal sizes).

I'm totally not sure of that, or at least it depends on the species. It's probably true for small mammals like mice, but the mammals with the big brain have a rather long infant stage, about 15-20 years. It's just that now there are no birds or any other species left that would compete with us.

[dragoongfa]

Mammals also tend to be less of a burden to their parent in their infant stages ; mammals tend to grow quicker than birds and become re productively viable far sooner (when one compares species of equal sizes).

I'm totally not sure of that, or at least it depends on the species. It's probably true for small mammals like mice, but the mammals with the big brain have a rather long infant stage, about 15-20 years. It's just that now there are no birds or any other species left that would compete with us.

As far as maturity goes the rule of thumb is that the more 'expensive' the brain the longer it takes for maturity, with size coming second. Elephants take around 20 years to fully mature and they are massive herbivores with an impressive intelligence. Humans have roughly the same maturation period with a significantly smaller frame but a vastly superior brain. Apes, our closest evolutionary relatives, mature (depending on species) betweem 12 to 18 years.
Few birds come anywhere near the intelligence of apes and humans; the closest contender would be certain parrots and the smart ones mature between 3 to 5 years of age. The young are taken care of for a period of 3 to 4 months while they remain attached to the flock for the remainder of the growth period. Compared to other species of birds this is a long 'growth' period. The largest eagles have a comparable growth period and those are significantly larger than even the largest parrot breeds.
Cats, which are the closest analogues in terms of size and intelligence, reach maturity in a single year and are sexually viable sooner than that.
All things being relative I don't see how an egg layer with a similar brain and size to ours would be able to fully mature sooner than us humans.

It is curious that none of the small non-avian theropod dinosaurs survived the extinction event, even though some were very similar to the early mammals: small, eating similar things, and presumably feathered and at least semi-warm-blooded. One would think that having a less expensive metabolism would make them better able to survive the poor availability of food... but apparently not. I wonder whether they had some characteristic that made them unable to cope with the new environment, or whether the mammals really did out-compete the survivors. I don't think the fossil record is clear on this issue; as far as I know, the disappearance of all of the non-avian dinosaurs was very abrupt.

Birds arose before the extinction event, not after; they probably survived because flight made them better able to find food and migrate to less damaged areas. There were no flighted mammals to directly compete with birds, so there's not really a comparison there.

Considering the cut throat characteristics of the time period after the collapse of the ecosystem I find it far more probable that the small mammals simply out competed and annihilated the smaller breeds of dinosaurs. As I said above, when size and intelligence are similar then mammals are both the faster breeders and have a shorter maturation period (when taking the closest dinosaur analogue we have into consideration).

Mammals also tend to be less of a burden to their parent in their infant stages ; mammals tend to grow quicker than birds and become re productively viable far sooner (when one compares species of equal sizes).

I don't think it's clear to what extent most dinosaurs were involved in parenting, if at all. I think it makes sense that some of the theropod carnivores may have been very bird-like in their behavior, but I think that the large herbivorous dinosaurs probably had to be born ready to graze and feed themselves. Even for species that appear to have lived in herds, I don't know of any evidence for parental feeding, and I can't really imagine what form that would take, anyway. Today's surviving herbivorous reptiles (like iguanas and some turtles) don't do any parenting at all.

It's extremely difficult to find evidence about parental feeding from such far back; the only circumstantial evidence we have is by observing the closest analogues we have today. Birds universally take care of their young until they become able to fend for themselves while carnivorous reptiles are extremely capable mothers (Crocodiles). Herbivorous reptiles on the other hand don't do parenting but instead they lay out a very large number of eggs, thus hedging their bets.
The largest known herbivore dinosaur (the Diplodocus) is known to have laid relatively small eggs (the same size as Ostrich eggs) that hatched late. It's unknown if they took care of their young or if they hedged their bets like turtles and laid an obscene amount of eggs in multiple locations.

[bunnyboy]

Huh, I thought that the birds are the main descendants of the dinosaurs. And the crocodiles.

Big image:

SpoilerShow

[orion1836]

Cool! Here it's only cow milk.

I would be careful before switching to another form of milk, especially if you drink a great deal of it. There are risks associated with soy milk though it shouldn't be a problem if that is your only source of soy. Unfortunately, like corn syrup, soy is used freaking everywhere in the West, especially in the US. I don't know that we have enough data to quantify the health risks of the large amount of cumulative soy in the western diet, and to me it seems prudent to avoid overloading on it.

I personally use almond milk if I need an alternative to dairy.

[Arioch]

Birds arose before the extinction event, not after; they probably survived because flight made them better able to find food and migrate to less damaged areas. There were no flighted mammals to directly compete with birds, so there's not really a comparison there.

Huh, I thought that the birds are the main descendants of the dinosaurs.

Yes, birds are descended from one group of dinosaurs; according to current classification, they are dinosaurs. (As bunnyboy's helpful diagram above illustrates.) But my point is that birds appeared 85 million years before the extinction, not after. Birds and pterosaurs and other dinosaurs coexisted for almost the whole dinosaur period.

That was something that I found surprising as a youth: I had thought of flight as an advanced feature that must have appeared very late in the dinosaur period, but actually it's a basic feature that appeared fairly early, in the Jurassic, and evolved separately in two different groups, as pterosaurs and birds are not closely related, and have different adaptations for flight.

as far as I know, the disappearance of all of the non-avian dinosaurs was very abrupt.

I'm subscribed to the meteor theory.

I don't think there's any question that the meteor was involved; there is a distinctive ash layer at the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary, above which there are no non-avian dinosaur fossils at all. So it appears that the dinosaurs died very quickly, rather than lingering on and being out-competed by the mammals.

(There's no argument that the meteor event didn't happen, but some researchers point to intense volcanic activity at the time and suggest that this was a more important factor in the extinction. However, it seems obvious to me that the vulcanism was caused by the meteor impact, as the epicenter of the volcanic activity was exactly where you'd expect it to be, on the exact opposite side of the Earth in the spot where the shock waves from the impact would have converged.)

That's a thing I find quite interesting: The dinosaurs "ruled the earth for much longer than the humans, but they didn't develop the intelligence that was necessary to develop into the homo sapiens. What were the conditions to get that going? The dinosaurs must have had their chances, it was a rich world, suitable for all kinds of creatures, small and big, and they hat much more time, but they didn't develop any kind of society and didn't build, at least not to the best of my knowledge.

It's possible that dinosaurs (and birds) of the period lacked brain features necessary to develop human-style sentience, and some theorize that sentient dinosaurs would eventually have arisen given enough time. There are birds today that are pretty smart, so I think it's certainly possible.

But I think that sentience is not an inevitable end-product of evolution, and it probably requires a very specific (and probably unlikely) set of circumstances. There have been complex life forms with brains on Earth for roughly 500 million years, but sentience has arisen only once in a single group of species (genus homo). Large brains are very expensive metabolically, and present all kinds of additional challenges (fewer offspring that take longer to develop, longer and more difficult live births, greater requirement for learning vs. instinct, etc.). Intelligence is not always the best survival strategy.