Shocking news: Panda bites thumb

Talk about going to any length to publicize a website!

Re-write the textbooks: this is the true origin of the panda's thumb. It was neither designed nor did it evolve, it just has been stolen.

Get that piece of thumb at all costs. I'll start the ball rolling with $100. What about the Chinaman. Did he get away with the Panda's Thumb? I'll put down $200.

Send that woman a Binky the Polar Bear T-shirt.

Maybe the pandas will begin to regress to their carnivore ancestry now...

Old and Busted:   The Panda's Thumb

New Hotness: Prof Steve Steve's fark.com imitation

Old and Busted: The Panda's Thumb New Hotness: Prof Steve Steve's fark.com imitation

— Dunc

Re-write the textbooks: this is the true origin of the panda's thumb. It was neither designed nor did it evolve, it just has been stolen.

— sparc

Drunk Chinese guys are always trying to hug stuff. It never turns out well.

The rumors are that the Panda's actions were an act of revenge for the actions of a drunk Chinese tourist who had bitten a Panda.

Actually, it was in retaliation for the whuppin' that pandas took from Salvador et al. at Cornell.

Is this how the Panda got it's thumb?

OT, but right at this moment, Science Friday on NPR has a segment on how DNA can be used to convince people that evolution exists, and discusses a book that makes that statement. I'll try to report on it.

A bit more info on the NPR Science Friday program:
They interviewed Sean B. Carrol (sp?), a professor of genetics from UWisc-Madison, who wrote a book called, "The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the ultimate forensic record of evolution". His thesis is that evolution can be convincingly argued by looking at the DNA record in our genetic history. He also interestingly argued that S.J.Gould's contingency concept isn't necessarily true, that the same mutations would arise (because, for instance, he said that the sickle cell mutation has arisen at least 3 separate times) even if we rewound time and allowed evolution to proceed again.

I'm not a biologist, so I can't comment on the reliability of the the arguments presented, but it was interesting. Anyone else heard of this book or heard the broadcast?

Sorry if this is too off topic, but I don't know where else to post it.

Re "that the same mutations would arise"

Depending I suppose on the type of mutation and the number of individuals carrying the allele that's to be mutated?

I figure a specific base pair change would occur a number of times every billion copies of that allele, but other types of mutations are rarer than that, and if it would take a mutation to an already rare allele that's another matter.

"The rumors are that the Panda's actions were an act of revenge for the actions of a drunk Chinese tourist who had bitten a Panda."

Are you sure that was a Chinese tourist?

I thought it was an Australian tourist.

Odd, I was there an my impressions differ greatly.

— ivy privy

projection is an interesting phenomenon, eh secondclass?

a Panda cub has bitten of part of a visitor's thumb.

Gu Gu bites chinese, chinese bites Gu Gu: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/5364058.stm .

American visitor who was feeding the animal,[...] (a) 50-year-old woman, identified only as Lisa

had registered in the Wolong Giant Panda Protection and Research Center in Sichuan province as a volunteer, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

See, what did I tell you?

Fark.com:

Yahoo Scary Pandas at it again, this time biting off part of woman's thumb (23)