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more on pouches
::Are you talking about the scientific understanding of evolution of a backward facing pouch? I have never seen an evolutionary argument that says the wombat's pouch did a 180 degree rotation from front facing to backwards facing over a long period of time, rather that koalas and wombats are more closely related, and developed pouches that face backward, while other marsupials developed pouches that faced forward. It is not necessary to start from the position of a fully formed pouch: take monotremes: platypuses don't have a pouch, and an echidna has a temporary pouch. For live births with very small young, a pouch confers benefits. The direction would be less important.[[User:Myrtle|Myrtle]] 08:20, 24 July 2007 (EDT)
::Are you talking about the scientific understanding of evolution of a backward facing pouch? I have never seen an evolutionary argument that says the wombat's pouch did a 180 degree rotation from front facing to backwards facing over a long period of time, rather that koalas and wombats are more closely related, and developed pouches that face backward, while other marsupials developed pouches that faced forward. It is not necessary to start from the position of a fully formed pouch: take monotremes: platypuses don't have a pouch, and an echidna has a temporary pouch. For live births with very small young, a pouch confers benefits. The direction would be less important.[[User:Myrtle|Myrtle]] 08:20, 24 July 2007 (EDT)
:::Perhaps you could tell us what the evolutionary understanding is? Proposing that pouches evolved separately twice is just making the evolutionary story even more incredible. Have you ever seen a pouch that is incomplete (not fully-formed/fully-evolved)? I'd suggest that such a thing is more evolutionary story-telling. [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 08:34, 24 July 2007 (EDT)
:::Perhaps you could tell us what the evolutionary understanding is? Proposing that pouches evolved separately twice is just making the evolutionary story even more incredible. Have you ever seen a pouch that is incomplete (not fully-formed/fully-evolved)? I'd suggest that such a thing is more evolutionary story-telling. [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 08:34, 24 July 2007 (EDT)
::::The echidna has a not-fully-formed pouch. I have seen it.<br>
:::: As far as the evolutionary view goes, I understand that there are great variations in individuals. The heritable variations, over lots of time, end up resulting in huge differences. Genome analysis provides evidence of this.<br>
::::Pouches are almost essential to marsupials, since the young are born so underdeveloped, and so it wouldn't really be a surprise if the pouch were found to have evolved multiple times.
::::The marsupials with backward facing pouches all use four legs to move (on two legs, a backwards facing pouch wouldn't work too well). These animals are: koala, wombat, marsupial mole, and the thylacine. The thylacine (tassie tiger) is the odd one out in this list, since it isn't (wasn't) heavily built like the other three. As for convergent evolution (similar features evolving more than once), even the eye is thought to have evolved more than once: <ref>http://www.genome.org/cgi/content/abstract/14/8/1555</ref>. Apparently, the octopus design is slightly better than ours.<br><br>
::::Evolution describes the mechanics of how things came to be, not who did it or why. What you and I think about evolution is nowhere near as important as ensuring that conservapedia is trustworthy. I don't see how evolution is necessarily non-Christian, as the denominations of the majority of Christians accept evolution. As Pope Benedict says: "Truth does not speak against truth". Taking the line that most Christians follow would seem to be the conservative way to go, I think, unless by conservative you mean YE Creationist.[[User:Myrtle|Myrtle]] 21:52, 24 July 2007 (EDT)