Re: Speciation - how do you know?

Stephen Barnard (steve@megafauna.com)
Sat, 19 Oct 1996 16:30:28 -0800

Paul Crowley wrote:
>
> In article <3268FA74.36C5@megafauna.com>
> steve@megafauna.com "Stephen Barnard" writes:
>
> > Wait a minute. Since when are shellfish an abrasive diet? I generally
> > shell my oysters, clams, mussels, etc. before I eat them. So do, for
> > example, sea otters. Do you think early hominids just munched them up
> > whole?
>
> If you had to detach them from rocks, using nothing but your
> own hands and crude stones, and then break them open (again
> with crude stones) and eat them raw, you'd be bound to find a
> certain number of very hard shell splinters in your mouth.
> If it was your regular diet, your teeth and gums would suffer
> damage over time.
>
> And how would you eat cockles without a pin? (These are like
> small snails; they're a favourite food around London - you
> know the song "Cockles and mussels, alive, alive, O". Or
> is that Dublin and sweet Molly Malone? I've forgotten.)
>

This is really grasping at straws. I can think of few diets *less*
abrasive than shellfish.

Steve Barnard