Re: On predation.

H. M. Hubey (hubey@pegasus.montclair.edu)
28 Oct 1995 17:24:40 -0400

David Froehlich <eohippus@moe.cc.utexas.edu> writes:

>On 27 Oct 1995, H. M. Hubey wrote:

>> >> With rivers and lakes drying up and restarting up many times
>> >> over millions of years, they'd have to be reinfested everytime.

>Actually I was pointing out that you do not know anything about geology
>and your statement was incredibly ignorant. The distribution of surface

You're no longer funny David. If rivers and lakes are drying up
and it does happen, it doesn't matter how or why they dried up
if we are discussing reinfestation with crocs from hundreds of
miles away.

>water is controlled by two factors, local or regional precipitation and
>the movement of water underground (I am summarizing for non geologists,
>it is actually somewhat more complicated).

No kidding, Sherlock.

>produce runoff in places where it has not existed recently then that
>water will flow downhill to base level (sea level in most places).

Ahh, I thought water flowed upwards towards mountains.

>This just demonstrates your ingnorance. Sure there could have been

Here we go again. It's you who is demonstrating ignorance and
stupidity.

>rivers there (in fact, as you point out, there is empirical evidence of
>such). The question you fail to ask is "where is this water going". In

I know where it's going. Like everyone else I knew it around
1st grade.

It has already been noted that
>crocodiles will travel in the open ocean.

So what? With this kind of logic, the crocs would have taken
over the world, and adjusted for the cold weather too.

Are you claiming that crocs infested the world via the
oceans waterways?

My guess is that given such a
>situation you envision, crocodiles would probably colonize this nice new
>environment in a few short years (100's to 1000's of years).

These days they wouldn't infest it at all. Millions of years ago
who knows how long it would have taken. They'd need to be able
to find sources of food as they kept making their ways along the
shore line all the way from where ever they get their start.

It's like saying the whole world is the croc's niche instead of
giving them their own niches within some reasonable habitats.

-- 





				Regards, Mark

				http://www.smns.montclair.edu/~hubey