Now we know;

At least whales don't kill each other over the practice of religion and
build nukes...

In Mother Natures name.

My bet is they are seriously scared by the idiocy of the human race, yet
powerless to address it.

Even at that, they would fucking stab Nisarel.

Gandhi would strangle the punk.


*****************

http://www.sci-tech-today.com/story....d=130007CJRS2K

The four-chambered heart of the humpback whale can weigh more than 400
pounds, but this week, it's the humpback's brain that's making news.
Researchers Patrick Hof and Estel Van der Gucht of the Mount Sinai School of
Medicine have found that brains of great whales, a group that includes
humpbacks and fin whales, have a rare form of neuron that appears in the
same parts of the brain as it does in humans and great apes.

Known as spindle neurons, the cells are believed to help with a wide range
of cognitive functions, from complex emotional states to perfect pitch.

Case of Convergence?

The fact that spindle cells occur so rarely -- prior to Hof's and Van der
Gucht's find, researchers believed they occurred only in hominids -- lends
them tremendous importance in the story of human intelligence, because they
control skills so vital to man's evolution.

But the new findings show that "spindle neurons may have evolved at
different points in mammalian evolution," said Hof, meaning that different
species, often far apart by evolution's yardstick, might have evolved
similar features at different times. Researchers call this "convergence."

Hof noted that great whales are known -- or at least suspected -- to have a
certain degree of social intelligence, including the capacity to form
coalitions and create joint hunting strategies. That clearly echoes the
brain power of higher primates, including great apes and humans, leading Hof
to conclude that "it begins to make some sense that, at some level, a
certain degree of convergence in brain processing of information may have
occurred."

Humans Play Catch-Up?

But there's more. According to Hof, great whales use strategies and rely on
brain structures that he calls "radically different" from humans and other
hominids, on account of evolutionary history. "But in the end," he said,
"some of the capacities that they have are certainly comparable."

Because both great whales and humans have spindle cells, it begs a question
of timing. "If these cells were present in the common ancestors of the
humans and the whales, then the whales were first," said Hof. "That's the
big thing."

How big? A full 15 million years big. Spindle cells "were present, at best,
in the common ancestor of hominids or great apes, and that is maybe 13
million years ago," said Hof. But they might have appeared in the brains of
great whale ancestors even 15 million years before that. "So it evolved a
second time in humans, and much later."

Hof noted that it's possible that spindle cells in great whales evolved as
early as 10 to 12 million years ago, but their presence in sperm whales, a
much older species of toothed whale, makes it more likely that spindle-cell
evolution is far older.

Next up in his group's research? The search for spindle cells in elephants,
another large-brained, large-bodied social animal. Hof and his colleagues
hypothesize that elephants, too, will have spindle cells, and if so, his
team will have found a third instance of parallel evolution.

rec.scuba's resident pussy "Scott" <pugetsounddiver@gmail.com> whined:

> Even at that, they would fucking stab Nisarel.

Scotty's obsession keeps showing.

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