Oolite Bulletins

Wildeblood wrote:

Evolution? Please explain?

Evolution is the process by which species change over generations into new species. The changes can be caused by random mutation, environmental influences and luck.
In America, a specific set of circumstances and factors led a pre-Roadrunner species to evolve into the Roadrunner. These circumstances did not occur in Australia. Specifically there were fewer roads, and no predators (Coyotes) to spur the development path that led to the Roadrunner. Australian pre-Roadrunners encountered different influencing factors, where being much bigger and having a long neck were definite advantages, so in Australia, the proto-roadrunner evolved into the Emu.
I thought everybody knew that!

Actually, road runners are cuckoos. Geococcyx = ground cuckoo.

Beware the perils of evolution:

Lets see, we have feral camels, feral cats,feral dogs,feral rabbits, feral canetoads, feral horses (brumbies) ,feral birds (starlings,common myna,eurasian skylarks even the common sparrow!) feral goats,feral water buffalo,feral fox and i forgot feral pigs.....

https://www.environment.gov.au/biodiver ... -australia

not a great track record for introduced species.... still we avoided Rabies til Johnny Depp smuggled his dogs past quarantine.... lol

Goats. I drove from Adelaide to Sydney once and it was just goats the whole way. Every hundred metres or so there was a group of them by the roadside watching the passing traffic, and it went on like that for hundreds of kilometres. Never saw a single kangaroo, but no end of goats.

spud42 wrote:

Lets see, we have feral camels, feral cats,feral dogs,feral rabbits, feral canetoads, feral horses (brumbies) ,feral birds (starlings,common myna,eurasian skylarks even the common sparrow!) feral goats,feral water buffalo,feral fox and i forgot feral pigs.....

It's the rest of the World's revenge for all those back-packers

You forgot feral ants.

Disembodied wrote:

Thanks for that, I done tweeted it.

phkb wrote:

You forgot feral ants.

forgot the Lantana bug, brought over 15 years ago to stop the rapid spread of lantana... it only lives on lantana he said.... well i rang the dickhead from the university of QLD and reported direct to him that i had thousands of them all over my ex wifes prize garden. killed many different plant species. we lived 50m from the interstate line to NSW. little buggers were hitchhiking on the trains.
BTW. there were none on the ornamental lantana we had in pots!!!

OTOH, introducing African dung beetles has been a great success. But as a general rule, the smaller a species the more it should be avoided, simply because they're so much harder to remove if we change our minds.

Might I remind you all that roadrunners are chook-sized and cute, and nothing like lantana, lantana bugs or fire ants.

Wildeblood wrote:

Might I remind you all that roadrunners are chook-sized

OTOH, cane toads are damn-near chook-sized too!

1. Could any of you geococcyxophobic nay-sayers summarize your reservations in 140 or fewer characters, please?
#renounceGCP

2. Is that you with the cane toad, Dizzy? Is that photo tweetable?

<chuckles>

Just yanking your chain, mate..

Yeah, but can I use the photo?

No, it's not me.. and I have no idea about the photo.. I found it by doing a google image search for "massive cane toad".