Why are snails so slow? Roberto Nespolo and Paulina Artacho of the Southern University of Chile may have the answer: turns out, evolution favors slower snails because they are more energy efficient.
Testing the biological hypothesis of the “energetic definition of fitness,” which purports that the less energy an animal spends, the more it will have for survival and reproduction, the researchers measured the size and standard metabolic rate (the amount of energy required for maintenance) of nearly 100 garden snails. After seven months, the researchers found that surviving snails had a metabolic rate 20 percent lower than that of the dead snails—and no correlation between snail size and rate of survival.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by philosophile.
Comments (1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8slEPV9LyS0
What I find funnier is the thought of what the guy that walked up was thinking as he approached a bunch of yahoos in boats.
We know what a flood is. If you are shown in a boat, we'll assume there's no way for you to stand anywhere. If you show us images of a burning tank in Lybia filmed under 10 different angles, we're gonna assume a sh*tload of tanks are burning.
To me, all these "illustrative" inclusions in news reports are, if not lies, manipulations.
Oh also, stop asking everybody in the street their opinion on stuff they're clueless about.
Or they may be referring to how deep it was last night. Which is still misleading.
Or they may have been lying.