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Zulily Zoetrope posted:There are only two mammals that have figured out sweating This isn't accurate. All primates sweat. Hippos sweat (when not in water). Even dogs and cats sweat through their paws a little. Why am I talking about this in the OOTS thread I don't know. yeah, but all of primates still do use sweating as the primary cooling mechanism, which is more than two mammals VVVVVV Nenonen fucked around with this message at 19:56 on May 23, 2021 |
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May 23, 2021 19:44
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The difference is that horses and humans use sweating as a primary means of cooling while most other mammals pant. Sweating is actually a pretty suboptimal way to reduce heat because it dehydrates you, uses up salts, and is weather-dependent, but since it’s over the entire body it’s extremely effective at getting rid of lots of heat very quickly.
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May 23, 2021 19:49
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Nenonen posted:yeah, but all of primates still do use sweating as the primary cooling mechanism, which is more than two mammals Nenonen posted:Why am I talking about this in the OOTS thread I don't know.
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May 23, 2021 20:12
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We can discuss goblins if you like.
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May 23, 2021 20:27
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As long as we're talking about human endurance, I suggest anyone curious to look up Cliff Young, an Australian guy who won a 960 kilometer marathon because he didn't bother to stop and sleep, he just ran for five days straight. Also he was a sixty-one year old potato farmer.
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May 23, 2021 20:38
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A.o.D. posted:We can discuss goblins if you like. There's actually already a thread for that.
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May 23, 2021 20:41
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A.o.D. posted:We can discuss goblins if you like. Do you think goblins sweat?
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May 23, 2021 20:52
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While we're derailing anyway, I've been thinking a lot recently about how Patriot from the mobile game Arknights is sort of a more sympathetic take on Redcloak, in that he is an antagonist who fights for an oppressed group and is motivated almost solely by the sunk cost fallacy ("I can't stop fighting, or else all their deaths will have been in vain"). The basic thrust of his character is that he's a living legend, an ancient general from a long-lived race (he's ~200 years old), but with every battle he's won he's lost more and more soldiers and loved ones, until all he has left to fight for is the fight itself, which he is determined to win at any cost. And he no longer trusts anyone else to accomplish anything because he's seen too many young people die for nothing, including his own children. Which is what puts him in conflict with the protagonists. He also has a sort of similar thing going on where he is working with another antagonist whose motives are much less sympathetic, and he plans to get as much use out of her as he can before killing her himself. Although it's more tragic since she was sort of a daughter to him until she jumped off the deep end, but the fact that he's willing to kill her anyway just shows how brutally determined he is to sacrifice everything in order to justify all the previous sacrifices. I get the impression that there isn't much overlap in the fandoms for these works, so I'm not expecting much of a conversation to emerge from this, but I thought they were an interesting comparison. Clarste fucked around with this message at 22:09 on May 23, 2021 |
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May 23, 2021 22:04
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ultrafilter posted:Do you think goblins sweat? More importantly, has anyone done the chemical analysis to determine how a hypothetical goblins sweat would taste
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May 23, 2021 23:11
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ybwnii-ZYB4&t=526s
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May 23, 2021 23:23
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Captain Oblivious posted:More importantly, has anyone done the chemical analysis to determine how a hypothetical goblins sweat would taste I am so disappointed that MatPat's 3rd channel wasn't Comic Theory. He totally would do that. Edit: wondering now if it could pass for a Food Theory episode...
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May 24, 2021 19:24
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Captain Oblivious posted:More importantly, has anyone done the chemical analysis to determine how a hypothetical goblins sweat would taste I understood this reference! Unfortunately.
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May 24, 2021 20:37
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Like cheese. Where did you think they got the Gouda?
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May 24, 2021 22:39
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Captain Oblivious posted:More importantly, has anyone done the chemical analysis to determine how a hypothetical goblins sweat would taste The same as every other aspect of goblins, "like poo poo"
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May 24, 2021 23:41
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Taciturn Tactician posted:Koalas are the one of very few creatures that can even kind of eat eucalyptus though, so they have zero competetion for food. There's a reason that koalas aren't endangered. Even if they have a weird lovely food source, they can live long enough off it to keep the species going and no one's gonna fight them for it. Koalas are pretty much entirely "built around"* eating eucalyptus, yes. Setting aside that, as Johnny Aztec described, they don't actually do it well because it will still literally kill them eventually, a lot of the other "flaws" they have are basically optimizations resulting from their food source. Including their astounding lack of intelligence even for marsupials (which already have less "advanced" brains than placental mammals, if I recall correctly); thinking actually uses a lot of energy, something eucalyptus does not provide much of. Since "evolve the ability to subsist on other things again" would require quite a few more steps, koalas went with the other option: Think less. They have one of the smallest brain-to-body mass ratios of living mammals, and their brains are, yes, quite literally smooth for the most part. They also have lower body temperatures and metabolic rates than most mammals because, once again, their diet does not provide them enough energy to do things like, well, "doing things"; they also sleep like twenty hours a day, since they don't have the energy to stay awake most of the time. Most of the time they are awake has to be dedicated to eating, too. The koala is my favorite example how "survival of the fittest" does not remotely mean what most people think it does. Despite everything said here about them, koalas are actually extremely fit, at least for one thing, and that thing is subsisting on eucalyptus leaves. I'd say they're almost perfectly fit for it even, if it weren't for that issue of it eventually destroying their teeth and leaving them unable to eat anymore, but since that affects them well after they've likely reproduces already I suppose it's not actually a problem. Heck, growing better, longer-lasting teeth or having teeth that grow constantly like some other mammals would require more energy and resource investment, and as we've established that would be incompatible with eating nothing but loving eucalyptus. Clearly teeth that aren't eucalyptus-resistant were the correct choice in perfectly optimizing the koala for their particular niche. Which is to say, eating nutritionless poison, because eucalyptus did just about everything in its power to be inedible and koalas apparently took that as a challenge. *Disclaimer: I am aware that natural selection is not an intentional or guided process (as opposed to artificial selection, which isn't the subject here), it's just easier and funnier to use terms like these to describe things. Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 01:52 on May 25, 2021 |
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May 25, 2021 01:49
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Koalas are easy to dunk on, but just for some clarification, many small mammals have smooth brains, including rabbits, squirrel monkeys, rats, and opossums. Koalas aren't noticeably more or less intelligent than any other critter that sits in trees and eats leafs all day. Also eating a plant none of the other herbivores bother with is an important ecological niche because it reintroduces those nutrients to the ecosystem.
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May 25, 2021 02:20
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YggiDee posted:Koalas are easy to dunk on, but just for some clarification, many small mammals have smooth brains, including rabbits, squirrel monkeys, rats, and opossums. Koalas aren't noticeably more or less intelligent than any other critter that sits in trees and eats leafs all day. Also eating a plant none of the other herbivores bother with is an important ecological niche because it reintroduces those nutrients to the ecosystem. Sloths aren't particularly stupid, at least, not compared to animals they're related to that aren't tree dwelling leaf eaters. Yes, they've made a lot of the same adaptations that koalas have, but exceptional lack of intelligence isn't one of them.
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May 25, 2021 12:00
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YggiDee posted:Koalas are easy to dunk on, but just for some clarification, many small mammals have smooth brains, including rabbits, squirrel monkeys, rats, and opossums. This is more of an indication that you can't measure intelligence by how smooth the brain is. Rats at least are plenty intelligent, because you need to be to be an omnivore who has to adapt to changing food circumstances.
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May 25, 2021 13:47
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Roland Jones posted:Koalas are pretty much entirely "built around"* eating eucalyptus, yes. Setting aside that, as Johnny Aztec described, they don't actually do it well because it will still literally kill them eventually, a lot of the other "flaws" they have are basically optimizations resulting from their food source. Including their astounding lack of intelligence even for marsupials (which already have less "advanced" brains than placental mammals, if I recall correctly); thinking actually uses a lot of energy, something eucalyptus does not provide much of. Since "evolve the ability to subsist on other things again" would require quite a few more steps, koalas went with the other option: Think less. They have one of the smallest brain-to-body mass ratios of living mammals, and their brains are, yes, quite literally smooth for the most part. They also have lower body temperatures and metabolic rates than most mammals because, once again, their diet does not provide them enough energy to do things like, well, "doing things"; they also sleep like twenty hours a day, since they don't have the energy to stay awake most of the time. Most of the time they are awake has to be dedicated to eating, too. On the other hand, Koalas sleep all day and lazily eat until they die, while humans spend our time stressing ourselves out over meaningless tasks and then also die. So which species is really the smart one?
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May 25, 2021 13:54
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OOTS 1235: Idle Thoughts
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May 25, 2021 14:13
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Belkar is the best, as usual
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May 25, 2021 14:13
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YggiDee posted:Also eating a plant none of the other herbivores bother with is an important ecological niche because it reintroduces those nutrients to the ecosystem. So far as forest fires go eucalyptus is basically a gasoline tree; those nutrients are going back into the system sooner or later.
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May 25, 2021 14:16
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That title combined with the talk about Koalas is some divine timing. edit: Poor Elan 
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May 25, 2021 14:16
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V complimenting the meal was cute.
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May 25, 2021 14:20
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#1235, Idle Thoughts
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May 25, 2021 14:26
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The 1235th Order of the Stick: Idle Thoughts.
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May 25, 2021 14:27
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Idle Thoughts: 1235th page of the webcomic, Order of the Stick
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May 25, 2021 14:36
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 New comic
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May 25, 2021 14:45
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Hey, was there an update? I saw a bunch of new posts in here.
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May 25, 2021 14:57
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Being doxxed like this sucks.
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May 25, 2021 15:38
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I saw a bunch of new posts, thought more koala tidbits were posted, got a new strip instead :/
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May 25, 2021 16:17
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God, I hope Rich is okay, can't wait for there to be an actual new strip
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May 25, 2021 16:43
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skeleton warrior posted:God, I hope Rich is okay, can't wait for there to be an actual new strip Unironically this, today's really looks like filler.
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May 25, 2021 17:06
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A.o.D. posted:Sloths aren't particularly stupid, at least, not compared to animals they're related to that aren't tree dwelling leaf eaters. Yes, they've made a lot of the same adaptations that koalas have, but exceptional lack of intelligence isn't one of them. They even had a megafauna evolutionary branch back in the day, so there must've been some broader adaptability back in the day. They're really fascinating creatures as opposed to just a slow, fat squirrel that resembles a juvenile bear. They also don't get chlamydia all the time like quallas do.
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May 25, 2021 17:09
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Unironically this, today's really looks like filler. It's weird, it's totally a gag on Elan being an extrovert and doesn't really advance the story or develop any of the characters (which, to be clear, is fine -- the tension needs some time to breathe), I can't remember the last time we had a page like this.
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May 25, 2021 17:23
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I'm guessing the next page is going to be more Big Plot Advancement® but in a totally different context from Roy & Durkon's fantasy theodicy, so it would have been jarring to cut straight from one to the other, especially in book form.
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May 25, 2021 17:34
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SlothfulCobra posted:They even had a megafauna evolutionary branch back in the day, so there must've been some broader adaptability back in the day. They're really fascinating creatures as opposed to just a slow, fat squirrel that resembles a juvenile bear. Megatherium were cool as gently caress. I wish they'd survived long enough as a species to get domesticated.
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May 25, 2021 18:04
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OOTS: Order of the Eucalpytus Stick
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May 25, 2021 19:32
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habeasdorkus posted:Megatherium were cool as gently caress. I wish they'd survived long enough as a species to get domesticated. Even if they'd lived longer, there's no guarantee they'd be domesticable; not all animals are. On the other hand, they did give us avocados.
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May 25, 2021 19:56
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I hope we get out of this soon because this is getting boring.Absurd Alhazred posted:Unironically this, today's really looks like filler. I wonder if he's just doing filler because he's working on a two page scene or something that'll take extra long because I genuinely have no idea what the point is otherwise. 
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May 25, 2021 20:38
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