A Story From When I Worked As A Zoo Keeper.

[dd5]

A long long time ago in a zoo far far away I was the zoo keeper for the bug exhibit. Bugs you see are very interesting animals as the older and more privative they are the more complex their husbandry can get. How you may ask?

Well lets have a look at giant centipedes, pretty animals that can be extremely powerful, but poorly adapted to life on land. They still have the respiratory system that served them well in the ancient oceans and have barely modified themselves since. The system is a thin tube that runs along the thin body and because it's so thin distributes oxygen around the body without any lungs. Insects have a similar system but insects can close off the openings to the tube. The problem is that although this may have worked underwater quite well it drys them out on land, as such centipedes need constant moisture around their bodies or they dry and die. Same thing with larger spiders that have larger book lungs that will dry out very quickly if the humidity isn't right. Sounds like easy information to pass on to customers during a presentation right?

 

Well I was giving the usual presentation on centipedes and explaining how easily they die from humidity problems due to their privative respiratory system not being able to maintain moisture. Suddenly a man in the audience with his family, big burly guy with one of those scruffy beards abruptly says "That's because god never ment for those damn things to leave the rain forest, ain't no evolution in that". I pause and simply say thats a good observation sir but they're found in the desert here as well, silently he gets up and takes his kids.

Same thing happened when I attempted to give a presentation on a rare type of trap door spider. This spider still has a segmented abdomen and what from afar appears to be a hairless body and of course a privative respiratory system similar to that of horseshoe crabs (actually the damn thing still looks like a crustacean). I explained how the spider's trip wire webs are believed to have evolved into the intricate patterns we see spiders make today for prey catching purposes. I also explained that many scientists believe the reason that the webs today are so complex in the first place is because small invertebrates like spiders can have multiple generations in a small time frame.

A lady in her 30s in the audience asks me quite nicely to,”Make sure you let the kids know this is a theory though it and it may be wrong”I of course fearing my job position oblige and say that it's a theory but then again so is modern chemistry for the most part. No one has actually seen an atom, the lady didn't say much and the really young kids looked puzzled but I could tell she wasn't amused. Sure enough she had filed a compliant at the administration building. I quit 2 weeks later for a combination of reasons, one of them being a memo I got to cut the evolution talk out of presentations.

 

To clear something up as well, "no one has seen an atom" refers to actually you know seeing it. Memories of scanning electron microscope and xray lectures came back to haunt me for a second there

[Ouroboros]

Those people sound like one of my brothers. He would make comments like that. And my other brothers ex-wife, same thing, she would protest and file a complaint. This attitude by people will in the end leave the kids uneducated and dumb. Not good for the country.

[Taphophilia]

If it's any consolation to you, I wish I would have taken my kids there. They would have asked you tons of questions about how the insects evolved and would have been extremely interested.

 

Taph

[scitsofreaky]

I quit 2 weeks later for a combination of reasons, one of them being a memo I got to cut the evolution talk out of presentations.

What zoo was this? It's a zoo, which should be a good place to see real life biology.

I agree with Tap, except I don't have kids, I personally would have enjoyed it.

[dd5]

I quit 2 weeks later for a combination of reasons, one of them being a memo I got to cut the evolution talk out of presentations.

What zoo was this? It's a zoo, which should be a good place to see real life biology.

I agree with Tap, except I don't have kids, I personally would have enjoyed it.

 

The Philadelphia Zoo "The nations first zoo". Most of their problems come from the fact angry parents try to sue them all the time

[scitsofreaky]

The Philadelphia Zoo "The nations first zoo". Most of their problems come from the fact angry parents try to sue them all the time

I hate people.

[dd5]

The Philadelphia Zoo "The nations first zoo". Most of their problems come from the fact angry parents try to sue them all the time

I hate people.

 

Oh I hate people too

We got some of the most retarded complaints in the world such as "Animal noise too loud, will hurt childrens ears please place animals behind glass to dampen noise" or "I DONT WANT MY SON TOUCHING THAT THING, ITS DISGUSTING AND NOT OF THE HOLY ANIMALS IN THE LAND" (lady was referring to a hissing roach)

Bugs are great because they provide (in my opinion as an ex-zookeeper and bio major) one of the strongest living cases for evolution. Either that or god got a bit drunk on the ol plam oil and accidentally made an entire in (dr dinos words) "kind" of animal that was "accidentally" internally adapted to marine life. I loved it when kids sat there for hours facinated as to why those big scary bugs are so fragile and why they're so weird. Cute little buggers.

[scitsofreaky]

LMAO, those are retarded complaints. I get why they would complain about evolution, but animals making noise and hissing roaches?

I've always loved bugs. My new obsession is the Asian Giant Hornet. Big bugs are fun.

[neverclear5]

I know it's irrational bugs actually freak me out a little. I do find it funny when people talk about how disgusting bugs are while they sit around eating lobster and prawns!

[Naughtyhamster]

The Philadelphia Zoo "The nations first zoo". Most of their problems come from the fact angry parents try to sue them all the time.

 

 

I remember several years ago there was some family that sued a zoo as their children were "traumatized" because the apes flung shit at them and their kids got splattered by it. I guess these parents were of the overprotective type who worry about thier kids being "scarred for life" over some little incident which most people would find trivial ( or even funny).

 

One of my friends' sons was in a similar incident, and he thought it was the most funniest thing to get hit by a wad of gorilla crap. My friend even took a photo of him after the incident and put it in thier family photo album.

[scitsofreaky]

I know it's irrational bugs actually freak me out a little. I do find it funny when people talk about how disgusting bugs are while they sit around eating lobster and prawns!

Yeah, I'm a sucker for irony. You should check out the book The Smaller Majority by Piotr Naskrecki. It has the most amazing pictures of insects, spiders (not too many spiders, mind you), frogs and some other related creatures. You may find that something that seems "freaky" from far away are amazing up close, and not the least bit "freaky." One exception is the sun spider, if anything it's freakier up close, but still amazing.

[HuaiDan]

If I ever go on a zoo tour where they speak English, I'll be sure to ask plenty of questions about evolution. They'll probably have to kick me out so they don't get complaints.

 

 

BTW, dd5, do you mean primitive or privative? In my studies I don't recall ever seeing the word privative in reference to biological function, although that's not to say that it isn't. What does it mean exactly? Looking it up in the dictionary didn't shed any light on it.

 

Here's your sun spider, scitso.

[dd5]

If I ever go on a zoo tour where they speak English, I'll be sure to ask plenty of questions about evolution. They'll probably have to kick me out so they don't get complaints.

 

 

BTW, dd5, do you mean primitive or privative? In my studies I don't recall ever seeing the word privative in reference to biological function, although that's not to say that it isn't. What does it mean exactly? Looking it up in the dictionary didn't shed any light on it.

 

Here's your sun spider, scitso.

 

 

Heh you're right it was a typo. This thread was back from April 2006 and someone used a "Resurrect Jesus" on it.

 

Oh and as an interesting note I will perhaps do some research on solving the age old mystery of solifugae (sun scorpions) very soon. See in the wild they survive for a decade or so yet in captivity simulating the exact conditions of the wild they live only 3-6 months. The rumored key to this seems to be a hibernation period where temperatures drop lower than normal in desert environments making them basically shut down for a few months then reactivate when the temperature is better.

[Casey]

The Philadelphia Zoo "The nations first zoo". Most of their problems come from the fact angry parents try to sue them all the time

 

I thought there was one on Capitol Hill in Washington DC that was even older, the one they call Congress.

Casey

[HuaiDan]

Ha!

[Lightbearer]

Casey wins the thread.

 

I know were your coming from though dd5 (even though this was posted a year ago) i've been made fun of and outcasted for talking about evolution at the work place.

[Evolution_beyond]

Here in Britain nobody would bat an eyelid about a zoo-keeper speaking about evolution. It's fairly common practise in zoos to educate people about that. If someone complained about it (which never seems to happen over here) I'm pretty sure it wouldn't get taken seriously.

 

We do have a habit of copying the US a little too much though so I really do hope that our attitude on evolution doesn't change. Creationists scare me

[chefranden]

Trama, you want shit trama? Be a three year old standing at the south end of the cow watching your cousin milk when Bossy decides to take a dump. Watch your cousin laugh his ass off instead of trying to dig you out.

[Garnet]

Trama, you want shit trama? Be a three year old standing at the south end of the cow watching your cousin milk when Bossy decides to take a dump. Watch your cousin laugh his ass off instead of trying to dig you out.

 

Now..that's trauma.

[HuaiDan]

Now I see why Chef has such an aversion to bullshit.

[R. S. Martin]

dd5, if you're still around, I would really like to know more about evolution and how it relates to bugs--or how bugs prove anything about evolution. Your stories always ended with the parents up and leaving. I've got NO science education and my brain is not wired for it, either. So I would need a really simple explanation like you were giving. Not sure where or how to find it...

[dd5]

Off the top of my head I'll give you a few things that are really hard to disprove for evolution. I'll start off with the largest land invertebrates.

 

Currently largest spider is

That's about the max size they get. Around 13 inches.

 

Next lets look at the largest centipede on earth. Scolopendra gigantea.

12-14 inches long and 1-2 inches wide.

 

Largest roach Macropanesthia rhinoceros.

About 3-4 inches in size.

 

Largest scorpion 5-8 inches popular in the pet hobby. Emperors.

 

 

I could go on, but are you noticing a pattern here?. Back millions of years ago some invertebrates could reach very large sizes Meganeuropsis permiana was a dragonfly with a ~2 foot wingspan from the permian. It debated that some of the arachnid ancestors ranged from 4-6 feet in size.

 

Nowadays we have this "Upper limit" that stops at around 1 foot. The reason is in breathing methods found in these animals. The largest spider needs constant humidity because her lungs are book lungs. Book lungs are passive plates of air filters that are layered like book pages similar to gills found in fish that they keep internally and just let air diffuse in and out of without moving it, all spiders have it. For a spider that size it will constantly dry out if not kept moist as like gills they need to be wet. The scorpion shares this feature. The centipede uses a spiracle tube system that's a bit more primitive than that found in modern insects as it never adapted to close the system from outside environment to prevent moisture loss. Thus why you always find them under old logs and things. These animals are just about all tropical where the oxygen is rich.

 

The roach is not and consequentially you can see it's much smaller. I didn't include crustaceans here but the coconut crab is the largest land invertebrate and the group also holds the title for largest aquatic invertebrate with the spider crab I believe. The reason is that if you notice most of the largest crustaceans live in areas where the water is very cold, cold water dissolves more oxygen in it so they can receive large amounts of air. The land ones have a reinforced exoskeleton and a rather novel way of breathing most of the time if they're land crustaceans, some have a specialized breathing organ for more efficient oxygen extraction, or, like in hermit crabs a shell to keep the gills moist and at the same time extract oxygen from the air.

 

Drilling gas samples from the poles have more or less shown that the periods where you found a few of these megafuana of invertebrates

directly correlated to the amount of oxygen and humidity available in the air. Almost all invertebrates outside of insects have trouble extracting oxygen from the air if certain conditions are not met. Due to this largest of the largest bugs need really high amounts of oxygen for evolution to benefit their size. If for example spiders had evolved in North America to a size larger than 1 foot recently they would have suffocated from the lack of oxygen. I'll also tack on that in spiders the largest spider can just barely support its weight from the relatively thin exoskeleton it has. Consequentially for most spiders that size a fall of 6-8 inches is often fatal.

 

Creationists often never mention what we in biology call the "physical limit" of evolution, the same force responsible for almost all sea creatures having fins and things like that. Creatures no matter where they are must obey certain physical laws to survive.

[dd5]

directly correlated to the amount of oxygen and humidity available in the air. Almost all invertebrates outside of insects have trouble extracting oxygen from the air if certain conditions are not met. Due to this largest of the largest bugs need really high amounts of oxygen for natural selection to benefit their size.

 

Since I can't edit my post oh and as an extra side note plant fossils and their abundancy was also used to estimate the amount of oxygen present in previous periods.

[scitsofreaky]

Nowadays we have this "Upper limit" that stops at around 1 foot.

For all invertebrates (not just insects) you can't forget about the robber crab, aka the coconut crab which has a maximum leg span of about 3 ft, and maximum weight of about 9 lbs. Just being picky.

[dd5]

Nowadays we have this "Upper limit" that stops at around 1 foot.

For all invertebrates (not just insects) you can't forget about the robber crab, aka the coconut crab which has a maximum leg span of about 3 ft, and maximum weight of about 9 lbs. Just being picky.

 

 

I explained those in my post they have a few novel tricks up their sleeve with the way they breathe and the fact their exoskeleton is reinforced.