Does Ringo and Paul know about this?

Beetles Vs. leaf-squirters. That sounds like a better movie than Underworld.

"Among the strategies devised by the plants has been a bizarre capacity to squirt high-pressure streams of toxic liquid when their leaf veins are punctured."

hehe, sounds like something else....

is that anything like the Autobots vs. the Decepticons, if not who gives a poop

Definitely a quagmire. What can stop this cycle of violence?

Plants 2
Beetles 3

The only thing more brutal than the beatles are the two leaf squirters who will take them down.

Alright, we'll call it a draw.

the renowned poison-arrow beetle of the !Kung San of South Central Africa

I have GOT to get me some of these!

*have waged war for 112 million years*

So have the Palestinians and Israelis. Who Cares?!

Any news about some Beetles suicide bombers?

Can't we all just *sniff* get along?

independent time-calibrated evolutionary trees

Band name?

Maybe it's not a war at all. Maybe it's just 112 million years of leaf-beetle bukkake.

Ok, I'm done.

If this interests you, see the movie Adaptation.

You know what they need? RUBBER BULLETS


// chris rock show

I'm stupid this morning... rubber rocks it should be.

I thought the earth was only 30 thousand years old?

Those beatles must be from another planet


/obvious athiest sarcasm

... and for 112 years the world has stood by and watched this senseless violence take place. are the beetles and leaf-squirters any less human than us, really? just because the war they wage is not for oil or land or boobies ... how can we continue to let this happen? the UN must intervene.

/i have a dream

As I thought ... there really is no hope for peace in the Middle East

OMG! Leaf-squirter rush!!!!1!!1!!

yeah yeah yeah

When can we stop calling it "Violence in the Mideast" and start calling it "Mideast Culture"?

Steven Wright: %42.7 of all statistics are made up on the spot.

Belief systems are highly over-rated. Would you like to study mine in detail?

Barbara20
Absolutely fascinating! We need more articles like this one!

Hear Hear! That was a nifty little link. Flame fodder is all well and good and quite entertaining in its own primal way, but this kind of thing makes my noggin tick. I propose that an ideal mix of links would be 100% Boobies, but the next best would be 40% flame fodder, 40% this kind of link, let's call it Gee-Whiz for now, 25% Boobies, and 5% Weeners. If you want weener parity, please take the percent equally from flame fodder and gee-whiz.

The only problem with this kind of link is that it doesn't prompt a bunch of comments in its own right. I mean, how much can one really say to "We have found yet another example of predator and prey evolving together," that doesn't amount ot a creationist/intelligence flamewar?

ThatDevGuy
As the number of posts increases in any biology or astronomy discussion, the probability of a religious flamewar, against Christianity in particular, approaches one.
You've noticed that, have you? It's obviously a secularist plot. :-)

I recommend that we name that "Bevets' Law".

Actually, I came in here wondering if I would see the "Summon Bevets" card that someone talented drew up a while back.

Somebody post that thing!

i'll go ahead and draft up an 'Arbor Accord'.
we can hold meetings for delegates in my treehouse in Martha's vineyard, it's neutral ground.

we can't let these societies destroy each other.

Now holding auditions for the part of 'Bevets'.

/clears throat

*imitating Fozzie/Yoda

"Begun the flame war has"

http://home.kc.rr.com/nodwick2/bevetscard.jpg

and I thought the middle east was a long drawn out affair...

ThatDevGuy -

Correct-a-mundo.

Forget religious flamewars. Bring on more science!

/geek

Well, I guess that beats the Israelis and Palestinians...

Anyone find it odd that the woman who studies the beetles has a similar name to the species of beetles?

Many Bursera species have evolved to have remarkable chemical weapons at their disposal. The squirting varieties store chemical resins under high pressure in their stems and leaves and release them in response to damage: "Besides being repellent and toxic, resins solidify when exposed to air and may entomb small insects completely," Becerra said.

the renowned poison-arrow beetle of the !Kung San

Please all witness the birth of my new Fark Login name!

skleenar:
you gotta make that 'click' sound with your tongue and roof of your mouth when you say '!Kung'. keep that in mind.
(that's what the ! means)

When I was young and tragically open-minded, someone could tell me that beetles and leaf squirters had been battling for 112 million years and I would have casually accepted it. But, I am not that nieve young man anymore.

112? Prove it, chump. I bet you dumbasses couldn't prove that a freaking squirter beetle existed over 3000 years ago much less 112 million.

And, what formula do you arrive at 112 with? That's got three sig figs, man. If they just said "around 100 million" that only has one and, honestly, even 70 million is around 100 million. Or 145 million, ya know, it's close. But stating that it's 112 million...dumbasses.

/had a teacher who carbon dated his ham sandwich at 300+ yrs

EasyMidget
Anyone find it odd that the woman who studies the beetles has a similar name to the species of beetles?

I know of a former OBGYN named Harry Beaver, a practicing Urologist last name of Cockburn, and a practicing Dentist named Will B. Hurt. There have got to be a ton of scientists like this, but they don't put their names on plates in lobbies I visit, and they don't have malpractice insurance files to snicker over.

Today, the part of Bevets will be played by...

postwood
112? Prove it, chump. I bet you dumbasses couldn't prove that a freaking squirter beetle existed over 3000 years ago much less 112 million.

If you want ironclad proof, well, science ain't for you. All they do is come up with probabilities. These might approach certainty asymptotically, but they never get there.

What the 112 million years is based on is an estimate of the speed continental drift, projected backward until the land masses that became the Americas on the one hand and Europe and Asia on the other were within a beetle flight of each other at the points where the climate (synchronously projected backward) would support the beetles and plants in question. It may be that they have taken into account the genetic difference between the new and old world members of the plant and beetle families and used those differences to estimate an amount of time it would take for two originally homogenous, isolated populations to develop these differences. That estimate would likely be based on a projected rate of evolution. There are populations (I only know of one specifically, that being squirrels on opposite sides of the Grand Canyon, but, then, I'm an accountant) that have evolved in a recent enough time scale that radioactivity dating of one type or another (carbon14, strontium) would be effective.

If the genetic drift time estimate on the same order as the continental drift/climactic projection, then both estimates become more solid.

Now, you will note that I have used "estimate" and "likely" and "probably" quite a bit. I said up front, in different words, science is not about knowing; it's about educated guesses. If you want to emphasize the guesses over the education, that's your loss. Personally, if find that the guesses become more and more useful over time. No Science is an exact science, but most are plenty close enough. I'm writing this and you are reading this on a computer that is the result of a 1000 years or more of progressively better guesses. We've only been working with continental drift and evolution for a couple of hundreds of years (or less). Give it some time, and, bear in mind that, on the order of 112 million years means that the researcher would be surprised if it were less than 100 or more than 120 million. When you realize that all of human history fits in that gap 4000 times, it brings it into perspective a bit.

The Beetle vs the Leaf-squirter! This sounds like it has the makings of a great cartoon series.

That's almost as long as Bosox versus Yankees fans have been going at it...

but of course, the beetle/leaf-squirter thing isn't quite as one-sided!

But.. the world is only 6,000 years old?

/doing my best to throw another log on the fire...

cartoon series...

They beat, they squirt,
They beet and beat and squirt,
Beet! Beat! Beat!
Squirt! Squirt! Squirt! ...
The Beetle and Squirter shoooow.