[Kadesh]

 What are some other differences?

[rave phillaphia]

brain size doens't matter its brain capacity. A human brain capacity is inbetween the range of 1500-1550 and the neanderthals actually were much higher of 1600-1650. A homo sapiens sapiens brain is smaller in size weight and capacity. The problem with the Neanderthals is that one theory because they had such bigger heads that it was harder to reproduce offspring as quickly as homo sapiens sapiens (the mother and child would die). I know its a stupid reason for the neanderthals to go extinct but that is one reason.

back to the topic with dinosaurs though. Dinosaurs were not stupid creatures. I mean they live three times as long as humans have been around its just bad things happend. The metorite hit the earth starting with mass destruction in the nothern american continent and then that sprung events across the world by first blocking out the sun making it extremly cold killing off the plants which killed plant eaters and then killed carnivors. Mammals and other animals survived only because they were able to substain in those environmental conditions (look at Darwin's law of natral selection). I mean we have seen that people have problems like this if you want to think contemporary. Like the Roanoke village (first colonies) or the mayans or even easter day island. They eventually depleated natural sources and had to leave because there was no food!!! Just because Dinosaurs died off doesn't make them stupid it just means that they were not adapted to the radical changes in the environment.

[Regina Terra]

I saw a documentary that said that the smartest dinosaur was as intelligent as the modern day domesticated chicken, which made it a genius in comparison to other dinos.

Any truth to that rave?

I saw a documentary that said that the smartest dinosaur was as intelligent as the modern day domesticated chicken, which made it a genius in comparison to other dinos.

Any truth to that rave?

I know the question wasn't directed at me, but...
Quite a few dinosaurs, especially therapods, were incredibly intelligent. The dinosaur you're referring to, the Troodon, was the size of a chicken. It had a very large brain relative to it's body size, and was probably capable of being very intelligent, perhaps as much as a primate.

Regarding what you said, Rave, you are partially correct. Brain size doesn't always have a connection with mental capacity. BUT...A larger brain has more space to store information. This is especially evident in extinct hominids. Many early hominds picked up a primarily meat diet, and the fat they absorbed from eating carrion and eventually hunted animals went to the brain, thus increasing the brain size over many generations.

[Regina Terra]

Nope Kreepy, they were actually talking about a velociraptor. & they only think they are the smartest cuz of the evidence of it hunting in packs.

Nope Kreepy, they were actually talking about a velociraptor. & they only think they are the smartest cuz of the evidence of it hunting in packs.

The velociraptor was smart, definitely, and did hunt in packs, but there is quite a bit of evidence to show that the family Dromaeosauridae, which contains velociraptors, was by no means the smartest of all the families of dinosaurs that existed. Plenty of other therapods were extremely intelligent, some even as much as certain primates.
if I may ask, where did you get this information, and how up-to-date is it?

[TheTerror]

Thank you Kreepy you beat me to it. If a dino was as smart as a chicken ...
* They wouldnt hunt in packs.
* They wouldnt be able to defend themselves.
* Etc.

[Kadesh]

 A dino being as smart as a chicken isn't saying much. Especially when you stop to think that chickens will pick undigested food out of their own poo. I hope some of the human race can be so advanced someday..

[rave phillaphia]

ok if we are comparing animals to humans then yes it may be but you have to consider that human smartness is different than reptile smartness (i hate using this word). Dogs eat their own crap too so its not just chickens that do that. But you also have to consider that the chicken may be how it is now only because it was bred that way. There is a particular dinosaur that was found in the chinese area and was about 9 feet tall and kind of looked like a giant chicken with teeth. They looked at the mDNA and there is a 99.8% identical. This is the same amount of humans compaired to our closest relatives such as chimpanzees and bonoboos. Like i said earlier intellegence is based off of brain capacity NOT size. Like for example mice have high brain capacity but little brains. In the case of chickens it is because they were breeded in the past 10,000 years to be the way they are now. they once were not like that. Same thing with dogs. They are now mans best friend but that is because we breeded them. Wolves are hard to breed because they are not diverse like other types of dogs so you can't obtain those certain qualities in an animal. I like to call this process 'short term' selection (a joke to natural selection) because it is relatively short in comparision to the long process of evolution (having certain traits that live while other traits die out, mutation only is there not throughout a whole but only to individuals who pass that trait kind of like eye color or hair color).

 If we look today we can see that chickens may be the dumbest birds out there but that is because we breeded them that way. But we also have to compare other birds (the only dinosaurs that went extinct were land dinosaurs not the avian ones which do NOT say that water reptiles ex: pleistosaurus or Avian reptiles or Pterosaurs ex: pterodactyls are dinosaurs because they are EXTREMELY NOT DINOSAURS they are different in many ways. Just because they are large doesn't mean anything a lot of animals were big during the triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods due to a lot of oxygen and it being very warm in that part of the Earths time). Hawks for example are one of the smartest animals out there. Yes some characteristics of birds have been manipulated like carrier pidgeons and Hawks can deliver messages but overall they are extremly smart and can obtain food fairly easily.

The problem is that people are using the law of uniformitarianism which works a lot of the time but is not always correct. We try to compare what happens now to the past. We do have to consider that the time was different because of different climatic conditions. More oxygen warmer temeratures continental collisions (one major continent) makes diversity very different.

We should not try to compare todays chicken, after many innovations by people that occured upon them, to its ancestors because we influenced them differently to act that way. If we could see how chickens were before people trained them and adapted them to our use than we would have more of a basic comparision to even consider the ancestors intellegence. If you want to think about it in a more simpler way think of berries. When we manipulate the offspring to get certain characterists they are going to be entirely different than wild berries so different in fact that it may even be different in texture size color and taste. 

[Kadesh]

 How, exactly, do you breed something to eat it's own shyt? A few dogs do it because.. well, they're dogs. They scavange at times. Same reason they dig in the trash and chew on your underware. But I've never seen a chicken run up in my bedroom to snatch one of my thongs and run around chewing on it. Intelligence is the correct word for 'smartness'... and bred not breeded. And the comment about humans... that was sarcasm.. a joke. Chuckle, chuckle, ya'll.

[Regina Terra]

Dogs only eat their shyt cuz of their Egyptian ancestors. The Wild Painted Dogs, who can only be found in Africa. They eat their own poo on the hunt so predators can't track them to their den & eat their pups.

Ugh, my bad y'all.   Anyways, I saw it on a documentary.

[Kadesh]

 No. There's no way that's true. All dogs aren't related. You think they all came from one origional pair of dogs?? That's the ONLY way that theory works.

Dogs only eat their shyt cuz of their Egyptian ancestors. The Wild Painted Dogs, who can only be found in Africa.

All breeds of domesticated dogs are part of the Canis Lupus Familiaris subspecies of Canis Lupus, the Grey Wolf. No exceptions. Please, do your research.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog
it's in the FIRST LINE, with a source link at the end of the paragraph. There is no excuse for spreading false information when you can easily find accurate information.

They eat their own poo on the hunt so predators can't track them to their den & eat their pups.

Can you site a source?

Anyway, I vote this thread be locked. It has surpassed any point it might have once had and has strayed so far off the subject that I think locking it might be best.

[Kadesh]

 Locking this thread is a good idea. It hasn't been on the actual topic for a couple pages now.



 Consider it done.