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"A female crocodile or alligator doesn't sit on her eggs to keep them warm. She covers them with soil and vegetation, and as this material starts to "compost," the nest mound heats up. But don't think the temperature of an alligator nest is a trivial matter. The nest is made with just the right mixture of mud and vegetation to create a precise range of internal temperatures. Why so specific? Because the sex of hatchling crocs and gators is determined by the temperature within the nest! Eggs incubated at around 89 degrees Fahrenheit produce females, while those at temperatures below 87 degrees produce mainly males. In a well-constructed croc nest the eggs on top will be a few degrees cooler than those closer to the bottom, and -- VOILA! -- when the babies hatch there are usually an equal number of males and females.
This phenomenon (known as temperature-determined sex) is amazing, but it's not unique, also occurring in turtles and lizards. The sex of human babies, however, is not known to be affected by the temperature of their parents' compost heap."
eNature.com
Now that's a mouthful to contemplate...
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Carpal Tunnel
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And croc mothers do not just leave hatchlings to fate, as do turtles. They stay in vicinity of nest to drive predators away. I saw TV program with mother gently holding little ones in her mouth, purpose not entirely clear. Perhaps to scavenge her teeth for remnants of last meal?
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Carpal Tunnel
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OP
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And how 'bout croc fathers? What do they do? Are they like the hummingbird fathers who perform the great escape?
And, by the way, this was the first time (thread starter post) that I've ever seen compost used as a verb. Live and learn...
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Eggs incubated at around 89 degrees Fahrenheit produce females, while those at temperatures below 87 degrees produce mainly males.Hmm...so the females are hotter than the males. The sex of human babies, however, is not known to be affected by the temperature of their parents' compost heap."Evidently. 
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old hand
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old hand
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Concerning animal gender, I found it interesting to read recently that in birds the y-chromosome is carried by the female, opposite from most other animals, humans included, of course.
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Carpal Tunnel
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OP
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And why does the female bird carry the Y-chromosome?
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enthusiast
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Are you suggesting that hummingbird ladies are more Y's than human ladies, sir???
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old hand
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And why does the female bird carry the Y-chromosome?
I don't know, but butterflies are the same way. All humans (and most other animals, I assume) start out in embryotic form as females and then at some point in all of those cell divisions, the male y-chromosome kicks in. The book (Genome, Matt Ridley) says that the sex genes are the most volatile of the chromosomes. The x and y are constantly fighting with each other (seriously). Certain "improvments" in the x are deleterious to the y, and the y has been shedding excess genetic material for a long time. That's why it's so much smaller than the others. With all of this changing going on between the two, it's a fair assumption that it was all switched at some point, or that birds and the ancestors of mammals emerged from the asexual goo on opposite sides of the gender coin. But really, I don't know.
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Carpal Tunnel
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the word crocodile, curiously, is, at it's root, is related to the root word for sugar!
crocodile comes to english, from ME, and L. The ME cocodrille, is from MF, cocodrillus, an alteration of the latin crocodulus, which came from the Greek, krokodilos, (lizard/crocodile) from the greek roots of kroke (shingle, pebble) + drilos, worm.
the kroke of the greek is related to the sanskrit sarkara which also mean pebble(pebbles)
by an other route, sarkara moved to persian as shakar, and then to arabic as sukkar, and then dispersed throught italian and french (it still is surce in french)and into english as sugar!
the pebble meaning has to do with sugar's gritty quality, (very evident if you have ever spilled some!)and the same root shows up again in seersucker, (one of Anu's words with interesting etymologies) seersucker fabic comes from the persian, meaning milk and sugar.
who would have thought, sugar, seersucker, and crocodile, all related words at the root meaning? and are there other words with as much grit!
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Carpal Tunnel
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Seersucker...milk and sugar...what a lovely thought! Now I'll look at those old white-haired Southern gentlemen in their seersucker suits and will think, "You're milk and sugar, old men in seersucker, sitting there nodding your heads in your pews on Sunday mornings...milk and sugar..."
Do you think the crocs were called so because of the bumpy texture of their skin? Gritty?
Thanks, of troy, for this information!
DubDub
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Do you think the crocs were called so because of the bumpy texture of their skin? Gritty?
yes, the greek kroke is defined in my M-W10th as meaning shingle or pebble.
but, i never use the word shingle to mean a gravelly stretch of beach, particularly the sea coast. (but i'm sure many from the UK would say "then what ever do you call it?" i know the word (PD James "holy orders" (is it?) but the East coast has sandy beached (except way up in maine) so we just don't have to many shingles! here a shingle is something on your roof, unless your have a wood (shakes) or tiles, or tin (and no one has a tin roof, its always a standing seam tin roof, or a flat seamed tin roof, or some other modifier-- plain old tin roofs just don't exist! whoops, this is going off topic, maybe i'll copy it to misc, and we can discuss building parts!
but getting back to shingle as gravel, or a strip of gravel on a beach, yes, i feel sure that the bumby texture of the the croco's skin is the reason it is a kroke dilas!
and i think it the texure of the wrinkles in seersucker, (a gravelly texture) that it behind the name of the fabric.
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of troy, it is MEANT to be that this discussion is going on between you and me!! And who knows who else may have a word with which to wash this fabric.
Fabric. Your last word. There you are talking about shingles and roofs and tin and all that, and you move back to seersucker...
And, well, you're just not going to believe what I'm about to tell you, but it's true!! I was sitting at the Hungry Bear this morning waiting for my daughter, the cook there, to bring me breakfast, just reading the condensed OED at the bar, as word nerds are wont to do at breakfast bars, right? Anyway, I read the definition for fabric--big deal, huh?--until my eye caught sight of the second definition, which I never realized till this morning at the Hungry Bear:
fabric: walls, roof, and floor of a building
Now, have you at least, of troy, ever heard anybody, in real life, internet, or detective fiction, refer to the structure of the building, in earnest, as "fabric."
"I examined its fabric, and discovered, to my dismay, a leak in the attic."
I would have thought fabric was being used poetically, honest to goodness, but here I discover this morning in the unaffected fabric of the Hungry Bear that fabric is a bona fide word for the built structure itself.
Live and Learn,
Wordwind
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Well, i vaguely knew fabric meant more than cloth.
the old meaning of build up a structure is seen in the idiom 'a fabric of lies', or the fabrication.. the whole of Enron business plan was a fabrication..
Forge is a close cousin of a word from the same root---*dhabh meaning to fit together.. the current word came to english from the french in about 1483, (fabrique) meaning building. but the latin faber, was a term for an artisan who worked with hard materials, ie, a carpenter or smith.
so a carpenter, a kind of faber, fabricated buildings.. and in the 18th C., the sense of manufactured materials, gave rise to textiles, which were being made in fabricated buildings not at home, but in building specially fabricated for the manufacture of cloth!
the smith side of fabrication lead to the word forge-- meaning to make! and a forger is someone who makes something up, like iron works, or like lies, or fake money! interesting how both sides of the word have a meaning of lies/dishonesty isn't it?
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Thanks, of troy, for the etymology. Made me think of one of our previous discussions on lead and plumbs and plumbers and Pb and Rome.
Fabricate, fabrications, yes, those were more than good friends--but fabric as the physical structure of a building--specifically its roof, walls, and floors--that was brand new. Your tie-in to the manufacturing of textiles in a fabric--and then on to fabric being called so because it was fabricated, well, very interesting.
Care to expound upon textile or structure? (Hint, hint...)
Animal Safari, indeed. 'Tis the work of the human animal here today, at least.
Best regards,
WWorsted
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text-- (words) and textiles (cloth) are of course, related.
text (from the latin, <textus, fabric, stucture, text)> pp. of texere, to weave, and related to technic) is the actual structure of words
(i like the idea that text is weaving words together to form ideas!)
technic goes to the IE root of *tekth, to weave, to build, to join and gives rise to technical and technique. and the second meaning of the word, is: the study or principles of technology, an art, or the arts.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Alright, who let the Wordies loose in the zoo?!  ROTFLMAO In Spanish, crocodile is cocodrilo (latin-crocodilus) and alligator is caimán(no etymology cited but I suspect it is an indigenous word).
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i think caiman, like the caiman isles, is a carib (what was the name of the language awak....?) word.. and while alligators and crocodiles are in the same family of animals, they are different looking (croc's have pointier snouts, and gators have rounder ones.. ..
and i am not sure of distribution new world (americas)vs. old world..
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journeyman
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"the kroke of the greek is related to the sanskrit sarkara which also mean pebble" From the Apte Sanskrit Dictionary @ http:// http://aa2411s.aa.tufs.ac.jp/~tjun/sktdic/ : The sanskrit word 'sharkaraa' (though the phonetic symbols used on the site make it 'zarkaraa') also means the following, all in keeping with the "gritty quality" you mentioned Helen... "1. candied suger; 2. a pebble; 3. gravelly mould; 4. soil abounding in stony fragments; 5. a piece; 6. a potsherd; 7. any hard particle as in <&Jalazarkaraa> a nodule of water; 8. the disease called gravel; 9. golden earth" What in the world are 7 and 8???
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7 Maybe a hailstone?
8 kidney or bladder stone (many small ones)
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Carpal Tunnel
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glad to have you join us for fun below the fold..
these topics are often over looked.. WordWind and i had an almost private conversation about crocadiles, sugar, fabric and cloth.. fun wasn't it? and it makes seersucker so much more interesting!
its nice to know too, so many words from the one root.. and surce (if not sugar) is so close to the sanskrit! isn't it amazing?
can you think of any common words in use to day in any indian languages that seem to have the same root? there are less than a half dozen, (sugar, seersucker, shingle, crocidile...no others that i could find..)but the gritty quality is clear in all of them..
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newbie
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I have had quite a bit of interaction with crocs, alligators and caiman. A lot of it is related to snake collecting in the swamps but possibly the most interesting in crossing a then unexplored jungle, http://www.image-ination.com/Darien/.
I have always been fascinated by them. As a youth I kept five Caiman and a alligator in a pond in the back yard. The alligator grew faster than the caiman and eventually ate them all. One day when I was away at college it bit my father and later died in a mysterious accident.
What may be of interest is it easy to call alligators. Hold your mouth open. Press your tongue against the roof of your mouth and emit sort of a "gung" sound with a click sound. Do this repeatedly. The alligators will usually come streaming. The males looking for dinner as the sound mimics the sound of baby alligators. I assume that the females are coming to interrupt dinner. I have tried this with crocodiles without success.
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Pooh-Bah
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Gosh, Carl, you've shed a whole new light on the alligator for me. I didn't know they were 'gung ho' cannibals. Do they have any redeeming features whatsoever?  What I learn't today: Alligators are classified in the phylum Chordata , subphylum Vertebrata, class Reptilia, order Crocodilia, family Alligatoridae. 
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Carpal Tunnel
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learn't
Does this mean you did or you didn't?
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learn't
I thought it meant he couldn't think of a good nonsense poem with all those words in it.
I'll play a chordata
With my vertebrata,
And call the reptilia;
Not all crocodilia,
But only, I'll say,
An Alligatoridae.
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Pooh-Bah
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Just happ'ned to have some odd apostrophes that I needed t' get rid of...
"Anyone read 'The Eyre Affair' and it's sequel yet?", he ask'd, rapidly changing the subj'ct and shedding apostrophes and commas as he went.
I like the poem tho'.
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the poem
It practic'ly wrote it'self.
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newbie
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"Gosh, Carl, you've shed a whole new light on the alligator for me. I didn't know they were 'gung ho' cannibals. Do they have any redeeming features whatsoever?"
Yes probably the biggest danger to young alligators are other alligators.
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Pooh-Bah
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But the Mom's are very protective, aren't they? Do any other reptilia look after their offspring?
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