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Voth: How did they evolve?
grandnaguszek1
Member Posts: 2,188 Arc User
So we all know that the Voth evolved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasaurolophus (sorry, I can't paste links in one word). Somehow the voth eventually managed to get a big enough brain to sencient, but from the way I understand it, doesn't brain growth require protein from eating meats? But the Voth evolved from a herbivore. So how did they do it?
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The same way vegans get protein. Legumes.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
no time for that..... Jurassic World is coming
What's needed to spur brain growth is an environment in which the added energy cost of developing a brain is offset by the evolutionary advantage it grants. Our ancestors had to eat a more highly varied diet in order to pay the energy budget the brain required; however, the ability to fashion tools and weapons gave them an evolutionary advantage over their less-intelligent cousins when dealing with predators and weather changes.
The Voth may well have become omnivorous - I don't recall their current diet being mentioned. However, the idea of an herbivore becoming intelligent isn't that "out there" - see, for instance, Larry Niven's puppeteers (although the kzin Speaker-to-Animals mocked Nessus' intelligence: "How much intellect is required to sneak up on a leaf?"). The environment described on their homeworld in the novel Ringworld implies that at one point, it did indeed require intellect to "sneak up on a leaf" - there's a mention of a hedge that Our Heroes pass through, with tendrils that seem to make a half-hearted grab at Louis Wu, and puppeteers seem nervous around the giant black butterfly-like insectoids fluttering about the park. (Of course, with sensible puppeteer caution, they've long since rendered their predators either docile or extinct...)
I'm actually much more concerned about this recent trend of paleontologists ascribing feathers - wing and tail feathers -to every theropod they can lay their dirty hands on. Even T. rex.
I can see a downy coat on juveniles, which the fossil evidence seems to support, but WING FEATERS?!? Where's the evolutionary advantage to THAT!?!? Its arms are too short for it to even PICK ITS NOSE!!! Behold the ridiculousness.
/rant /hijack.
Anyway, Voth, yeah, meat not needed for brain make big. First half of Jon's post pretty much sums it up.
...Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you / Oh, I can hear it callin 'me / I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?...
- Anne Bredon
After all, they've had ~70 million years (give or take an hour) to evolve... Compared to the time they have spend in the universe, we are not even at the "glimpse in the eye of the father" stage.
system Lord Baal is dead
BOTH WAYS!
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Chances are, they ate every kind of meat they came across...
Hunting for a T-Rex, like all predators, would be dangerous, so a carcass of a recently deceased animal would be a quick source of food... And considering that the T-Rex seems to have not only excellent eyesight and smell, it's unreasonable to assume that it would not hunt.
We know from fossils that T-Rexes must have been in all sorts of fights from the damage to their bones, but we also know that Some T-Rexes have, what seems to be, marks from being eaten by other T-Rexes, so chances are that cannibalism wasn't out of the question either.
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But i decided to go down the rabbit whole anyway: An intermediate species started to be an omnivore...those things happen in evolutionary "short" times. Maybe they started out with insects and eggs...those things have been observed in nature even in the relative short period humans study and observe nature. There are finks that started to drink blood instead of eating seeds, for an example.
Running fast is only required if your prey runs fast too... Looking at creatures like the Triceratops... Well... i don't think that ran very fast either TBH, and in that case, the T-Rex would require strong legs over fast legs.
Also... There are plenty of birds that don't have grappling arms, yet are still predators, who base their eating habits on what they can come down on and kill quickly.
Considering that most agree that Dinos turned into Birds just futher supports, that T-Rexes may have been very effective hunters.
Truth right here... IF earth was hit by a large meteorite, as the theory suggests, food would have been very limited, and as such, surviving creatures could/would have learned to find other sources for food, such as, as mentioned, Insects and eggs, potentially turning into other eating habits...
Here is an example: How hungry and desperate must the first person to eat oysters have been? They look like snot, they smell like snot, and I imagine they feel like snot when you eat them (havn't tasted them... I've never been that desperate for food).
i'd say it boggles your mind because you don't have access to the intellectual tools to understand modern science. Although i have to say that you have access to the internet, which is sometimes already enough to battle one's own ignorance.
That the earth was a sphere was known already to ancient greek mathematicians. They even calculated the diameter of earth with astonishing precission.
Bleeding was never a cure for anything...it was a last resourt when the doctors of that era had no clue of what illness afflicted a person. And it actually helped in certain cases of poisoning. It is even performed today in an advanced form, only that today doctors will resubstitute your own blood with a blood donation.
That the earth was flat was something made up by religious elites to keep the masses dumb.
Anyway, i smell TROLL, so nevermind.
-Leonard Nimoy, RIP
Legally? How?
Because the law in Dino-Alambama states we have to.
-Leonard Nimoy, RIP
I don't think I've had enough coffee for this conversation... Sorry...
It was a joke about how the state of Alabama passed a law stating that teaching evolution in school must also require teaching creationism as well. Hence the Rator Jesus pic. Voth are dinosaurs. Raptor Jesus? Get it?
-Leonard Nimoy, RIP
Ah... That makes sense... Well not the passing of the law that requires fiction to be taught in schools, but the reference.
Just my star trek head canon.