I read somewhere that a whale's aorta is big enough for a person to crawl through. Also, after reading about Jonah, I wonder if anyone else in history had been swallowed by a whale, or if there have ever been any scientific expeditions to the inside of a whale?
216411
When my boyfriend was in university he helped dissect a whale. So if by expedition you mean "cutting open and getting covered in dead whale parts" yes, there has been. I also don't know where you heard that you could crawl through a whales aorta but you can't. Their hearts are big but not that big.
290586
Come on now...35,000?  450ft long?  75ft wide?  That's a football stadium.  Zippy chance there was a vessel that large and zippy chance 35,000 animals were on it.  It's just a story...as for the fabled crap on the boat, the animals just ate it and the food...makes for a better story.  One more thing.  No way anyone made it to 600+...I mean what eventually kills a guy who has lived 600 years?  Ahh, he probably ate the same crap the animals did.
23053
Have you read "Prey" by Michael Creighton? I read this several years back before the world had heard of nanotechnology. It was enough for me to decide that it scares the beejeezus out of me. Granted.......it was a book. But the thought that these atoms could almost take on a life of their own is a bit disconcerting.
221722
I've seen beavers run across the ground, but I'd call it more of a hurried waddle.  I'd put them in the opossum speed category.  No way in the world could a beaver outrun a wolf anywhere except underwater.
312740
Here's the thing: I'm not an expert on fetal anatomy, but human fetuses do not have gills.  They do have tails for a few weeks, appearing around the 4th week and dispearing around the 8th.  They also have regions that are homolgous to those that develop into gills in aquatic organisms, but will form the throat of the human fetus.\n\nThe gill and tail myth was created by a man named Haeckel.  Now, Haeckel actually (whatever creationists may say) did have some good ideas, but he was a very bad scientist and had an unfortunate tendancy, especially in the later part of his career, to exagerate and even completely fabricate morphological features of embryos.\n\nHOWEVER, there _is_ an association between fetal development and evolutionary lineage.  It's just a bit more subtle than Haeckel claimed.  While embryos don't go through stages that ressemble the adult forms of their ancestors, the is a distinct correlation between the age at which the morphology of embryos of different species diverges and the evolutionary relationship between those species.  For example, human embryos and chimp embryos look really similar for a lot longer than human embryos and snake embryos.  But human and snake embryos look similar to each other long after they have completely diverged from the development of, say, a sea urchin.\n\nYour point about gills and tails isn't very accurate, and the actual connection between evolution and development is not very accesable to the non-scientist, but there is plenty of evidence for evolution that doesn't take a PhD to understand.  Here are a few points that I hope will help you next time you want to defend the theory of evolution:\n\n\n1. Vestigial structures\n\nOne example of a vestigial structure in humans is the appendix. It has no function. Removing it is harmful only in so far as any surgery is associated with certain risks (so I wouldn't have it removed just for fun, but it's because of the surgery not the absence of the appendix). An appendix is found in several mammals. In humans it is small and has no known function. In rabbits and many other herbivores it is large and is used in the digestion of cellulose.\n\nAnother example of a vestigial structure is the hipbones of snakes. Snakes evolved from quadrupeds, and some species still retain not on pelvises, but tiny protrusions of bone in a location that corresponds to the location of the legs in other quadrupeds.\n\n2. Microevolution can be observed in both a controlled laboratory setting and in nature.\n\nCreationists will tell you that microevolution does not prove macroevolution.  This is true.  However, it does provide evidence that macroevolution may be possible. Taken in the context of the other evidence for evolution, microevolution provides a mechanism by which macroevolution could occur. On its own, it doesn't prove that macroevolution occurs, but it does suggest that it is possible.\n\n3. The fossil record.\n\nAlthough the fossil record does not provide a “complete” record as fossils form only under certain conditions, it does show a gradual change in the morphology of species as well as numerous extinct species.  There are a number of methods used to date fossils, and the time period from which a fossil comes can be determined with reasonable accuracy.\n\n4. Imperfect structures (the blind spot of the mammalian eye, for example).\n\nI want to mention the bind-spot of the mammalian eye specifically because creationists often hold up the human eye up as an example of something that is too perfect to occur by "chance" (i.e. as the result of the natural selection of beneficial changes among random mutations).\n\nThere are also numerous examples where the morphology of a species is constrained by similar patterns in its ancestors (quadrupeds, vertebrates, etc.).\n\n5. Developmental biology reflects evolutionary lineage.\n\nCreationists like to bring up a man named Haeckel in response to this argument.
62933
There was a special about this on the Discovery Channel (or maybe it was History, I mix them up all the time) that used the question of the possibility of Jesus's mother Mary conceiving a child while still being a virgin.  They base it on scientific theory of course and not on a belief in procreation by a Divine source.  In the end, they came to a conclusion that it is possible, and has happened at some point in the past, although i can't remember if being a hemaphrodite was a prerequisite or not.
436229
Komodo Dragons, but don't suppose they qualify.  I have seen a unicorn, and you can see him too, his name was Lancelot, when he died they took him to a taxidermist in California.  But you can still see his picture if you google unicorns.  But as you said basically is what I believe.  You can prove something exists but you cannot prove it doesn't.
447336
Hello The agitator.. :)\n\nI pray you had a Blessed Thanksgiving Day.. :)\n\n \nCould Noah's Ark really hold all the animals that were supposed to be preserved from Flood?\n\nA growing number of scientists believe that geological evidence indicates our world has undergone a catastrophic flood. This is causing them to question whether or not the biblical account of Noah's ark could be true. Many people are rereading the Biblical description of the Ark to ascertain the feasibility of such a vessel to fulfill its designated purpose in light of present day knowledge of both zoology and our present day knowledge of shipbuilding.\n \nSize comparison between average size one-story home and Noah's Ark. Illustration from The World that Perished.How big was Noah's Ark?\n"And God said unto Noah… Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt though make in the ark, and thou shalt pitch it within and without with pitch. And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of… the length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits. A window shalt thou make in the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side therof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it." (Gen. 6:14-16)\n \nA cubit is the distance between an adult's elbow and tip of the finger, no less than 18-inches [45.72 centimeters]. (Scene from The World that Perished.)Most Hebrew scholars believe the cubit to have been no less than 18 inches long [45.72 centimeters]. This means that the ark would have been at least 450 feet long [137.16 meters], 75 feet wide [22.86 meters] and 45 feet high [13.716000000000001 meters]. Noah's Ark was said to have been the largest sea-going vessel ever built until the late nineteenth century when giant metal ships were first constructed. Its length to width ratio of six to one provided excellent stability on the high seas. In fact, modern shipbuilders say it would have been almost impossible to turn over. In every way, it was admirably suited for riding out the tremendous storms in the year of the flood.\n\nThese dimensions are especially interesting when compared to those given in the mythical, Babylonian account of the Ark. Here the ark is described as a perfect cube, extending 120 cubits in all directions and with nine decks. Such a vessel would spin slowly round and round in the water and from the standpoint of stability, would be a disaster.\n\nWas the ark big enough to hold the number of animals required?\nThe total available floor space on the ark would have been over 100,000 square feet, which would be more floor space than in 20 standard-sized basketball courts.\n \nAssuming an 18-inch cubit [45.72 centimeters], Noah's Ark would have had a cubic volume equal to 569 modern railroad stock cars.The total cubic volume would have been 1,518,000 cubic feet [462,686.4 cubic meters] --that would be equal to the capacity of 569 modern railroad stock cars.\n\nNow comes the question, how many land dwelling air breathing animals would have had to be taken aboard the ark to survive the flood?\n\nAccording to Ernest Mayr, America's leading taxonomist, there are over 1 million species of animals in the world.\n \nGod only provided the Ark for the protection of humans and land-dwelling, air-breathing creatures. A huge number of animals would not need to be taken aboard the Ark because they are water dwellers. Representatives would be expected to survive the catastrophe. With God's protection against extinction during the Deluge, survival would have been assured. (Scene from The World that Perished, a Christian motion picture about the Flood)However, the vast majority of these are capable of surviving in water and would not need to be brought aboard the ark. Noah need make no provision for the 21,000 species of fish or the 1,700 tunicates (marine chordates like sea squirts) found th
15108
Actually when pure oxygen was first produced among tests of flammability somebody decided to put an animal in an enclosure with pure oxygen.  I think it was a mouse.  They observed that the mouse lived significantly longer in pure 02 than in normal air.
543086
I have zero knowledge of the full contents of the earth's oceans, but i'm going to throw out my opinion here that while almost anything is possible, it is improbable that mermaids truly exist in the form we see them in fairy tales.  They are represented as human formed/fish tailed beings, with human upper bodies, lungs, arms, etc...meaning they would be breathing air, not processing oxygen from water.  In spite of the size of the oceans, mermaids leaping from the water to suck in some air would eventually be spotted, certainly at a frequency greater than once every 500 years.
242019
Even though he did not break the world record, I think what he did was awesome. How many people can say that they can 1st live underwater in a fish tank for 170 some odd hours straight--then (without resting, eating or anything)become chained and hold your breath and remove the chains at the same time. Plus staying underwater for over 7 minutes. That guy is amazing. He definitely didn't fail in his task, he just didn't get as far as he wanted to go.
479416
Well i see no reason why they could never eat penguin eggs but they'd have to travel about 12,000 miles to get them! Its similar to another teaser i read about polar bears eating penguins. It doesn't happen because they live at opposite ends of the earth!
383112
This is an excerpt from the referenced website:\n"Recovery of diagnostic ankle bones in the skeletons of primitive protocetids during our field work in Pakistan in 2000 confirmed their derivation from Artiodactyla (the mammalian order including cows, deer, hippos, etc.), and showed convincingly that whales did not originate from mesonychid condylarths as Van Valen hypothesized (and we had expected)."\n\nHope this helps.
636461
As pointed out whales are mammals, they give birth to live young and nurse them with mammary glands. Whales have flippers that evolved from hands and actually have the digital structure pretty much intact, some even have the remains of pelvises and non-functioning hind limbs, clear evidence of their terrestrial origin.\n\nIf your really interested talkorigins.org has a really interesting article on the subject, it's heady, but a good read.
419217
In 2005, India experienced the sight of a mermaid at the sea coast of Chennai(Madras), she was very old, dead, had the fins and also the fish tail(surprising). First the scientists(who had not seen her) told she can be a sea-cow but she turned to be too big to be a sea-cow. When one of the scientists saw her, he died of a heart-attack(sounds like a rumor to me). She looked awful and would smell like Fish as well as the sweat odour of humans. She was a mystery and will remain one.\nP.S: Scientists say she died and floated to the sea and there could be many more in the deep parts of the ocean who may look better.\nFOR MORE INFORMATION EMAIL ME BACK.
171890
Well here's what my mother told me when I was little concerning Unicorn's and why they are no longer walking the earth.\n\nShe said that they were very playful creatures, and that when Noah was building the arc..and gathering all the animals to get on it, they were too busy playing around, to get on the boat in time...\n\nHA~ Sad yes, but it's what she told me...LOL
99333
After seeing the brand-new first photos of the giant squid alive in its habitat, I agree with you that there are resemblances...\n\nWell, both fly...\nI mean one flies under water, \nwhich I guess technically would be swimming.\n\nDid you know they're jet powered, squid that is,\nthey take in water at the front and expel water \nbehind for propulsion just like jet planes work in air. \nEagles take in air through their skin and feathers,\nbut they don't expel it for propulsion,bad choice there.\n\nAnd they both have feathers, except the squid doesn't.\n\nThey DO both have BEAKS!\nNow that can't be overlooked.\n\nAnd they both have tentacles, but the eagle's tentacles have bones in them are are called "legs".\n\nHmmm... I could go on, but I put it to you that \nNOONE has ever seen a Giant Squid and a Bald Eagle\nin the same place. One lives deep in the ocean and one in the sky. Perhaps the Bald Eagle, proud symbol of America, has had a secret identity all this time?\n\nWell, with the new squid photos I think the jig is up.