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Darwin "turning in his grave" again.

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Ophiuchus:


I just saw this article about a snake in China that had a claw-like appendage growing out of its side. I say had because the woman that was woken by it immediately killed it, making it hard to check her claim that it was clawing its way across her ceiling.

Naturally, scientists were "shocked" (although I believe they are normally "baffled" or "confounded" in the broadsheets and "Gobsmacked!" in the British tabloids) but the sentence in the article that irritated me was the one that stated that Darwin would be "turning in his grave"; as if, on seeing the photo of the hapless creature, he would have struck his forehead and said "Doh!... I must have got the whole thing wrong. Guess I'll try out for the priesthood again."

The article also states that the snake will now be studied; thankfully by scientists at West Normal University and not by practitioners of traditional chinese medicine, or soon there would have been a new, very expensive and very rare, male potency drug on the market.

http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/snake_born_with_hand_shocks_scientists

Skeptress:
Is that the picture?  This is from China?  I say fake story, fake photo.  Is it possible for a snake to born with a hand/claw.  Yeah I think so since they still have vestigial evidence of limbs along their spines.  Then again it could a growth that just looks like a hand/claw to humans who have to compare everything to ourselves. 

Chew:

--- Quote from: Skeptress on Apr 26, 2012, 09:11:08 PM ---Is it possible for a snake to born with a hand/claw.  Yeah I think so since they still have vestigial evidence of limbs along their spines.

--- End quote ---

IIRC, things like this snake's claw (and hens' teeth and human tails) was one of Darwin's arguments for common descent.

Calinthalus:
I've seen snakes with tiny legs they use in reproduction.  It wouldn't be that surprising to find a mutant whose semi-vestigal limb was oversized.

jaypee:

--- Quote from: Chew on Apr 26, 2012, 09:18:39 PM ---
--- Quote from: Skeptress on Apr 26, 2012, 09:11:08 PM ---Is it possible for a snake to born with a hand/claw.  Yeah I think so since they still have vestigial evidence of limbs along their spines.

--- End quote ---

IIRC, things like this snake's claw (and hens' teeth and human tails) was one of Darwin's arguments for common descent.

--- End quote ---

Charles Darwin was familiar with the concept of vestigial structures, though the term for them did not yet exist. He listed a number of them in The Descent of Man, including the muscles of the ear, wisdom teeth, the appendix, the tail bone, body hair, and the semilunar fold in the corner of the eye. Darwin also noted, in On the Origin of Species, that a vestigial structure could be useless for its primary function, but still retain secondary anatomical roles: "An organ serving for two purposes, may become rudimentary or utterly aborted for one, even the more important purpose, and remain perfectly efficient for the other.... [A]n organ may become rudimentary for its proper purpose, and be used for a distinct object."[6]

In the first edition of On the Origin of Species, Darwin briefly mentioned inheritance of acquired characters under the heading "Effects of Use and Disuse", expressing little doubt that use "strengthens and enlarges certain parts, and disuse diminishes them; and that such modifications are inherited".[7] In later editions he expanded his thoughts on this,[8] and in the final chapter of the 6th edition concluded that species have been modified "chiefly through the natural selection of numerous successive, slight, favourable variations; aided in an important manner by the inherited effects of the use and disuse of parts".[9]

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