oh man I wad gonna make a super cool science / zoology post and I forgot I took an edible and now I can't remember anything
like I can I know what I wanna talk about but I can't think hard enough to explain to people who may not have the background knowledge
like do you know what a phylogenetic tree is? because if you do- THEY RESTRUCTURED AVIAN PHYLOGENY BECAUSE OF WHOLE GENOME SEQUENCING
W H O L E. GENOME.
which for birds is over 8.1 BILLION base pairs and they did the ENTIRE GENOME that's coding and non coding that's all the viral history, mitochondrial dna, and all the ancestral history like that's so fucking coooooool but anyways they redid the phylogenetic tree!!!
and we were surprisingly close before this study (which like JUST came out- I'll try to find it when I'm sober) but now we have things like flamingos and pigeons or hawks/owls/eagles being all shifted around- I'll try to explain this later when I can THINK
also guys. I need to stress again how cool the WHOLE genome sequencing thing is especially in birds!!!
birds are ANCIENT much older than mammals I mean they're reptiles after all but with that comes like a fuck ton of genomic data
majority of these strands are "non coding" which means they just kinda exist and don't do any work but this is also composed of your genomic HISTORY which means it has your viral data
viruses inject their DNA sequences into your chromosomes and then they get replicated by asexual reproduction and those slow gradual injections of these viruses over time will change the phenotypic traits- that's what evolution is! (kinda- don't forget that babies also combine new DNA together so then you have mom/dad and their viral history allllllll mixing together- kinda?? man idk)
do you catch what I'm throwing here??? this shows the history of all viruses since the age of birds!!! (kinda... sorta? don't think about it too hard- I'm not! I can't think)
jeez I got off topic.... but the point is (I think) that they have 8.1 billion base pairs in a modern bird wanna know how many a human has? a human who can be like 100x the size of one of those little bitty bir-
guys, we have 3 billion.
THREE
and birds have 8.1!!!!
science is cool- don't do drugs kids
peace
-xoxo,
rob dog <3
