Questions of a weird mind

[AtomicKitKat]

And because, I feel like asking a question for once instead of just answering:
I can understand the reasoning behind annuals, but why would any self-respecting plant grow for thirty to eighty years to a height of up to twenty-five metres before flowering once and then dying after setting fruit?
It seems rather silly to me...

I'm not a botanist by any measure(animals are my specialty, whether quirks, biology, or tastiness), but I'd think it might have to do with evolutionary pressures/environment at the time they were naturally-selected. Apart from the known Ice Ages(which I shall refer to as Epic Ice Ages), there were many mini Ice Ages(each lasting many decades, or even centuries, but less than millenia). Say these century plants came about during the first of the many mini Ice Ages after the Epic ones. So they follow the herbivore route, growing as gigantic as possible, while being as distasteful as possible, until the ice recedes, then spit out their seeds, die, and the next generation repeats it. Alternatively, they could in fact have come about during the Epic Ice Ages, and their actual lifespans actually measure in the millenia, just that all the constant care and attention on them with human intervention shortens the time needed for them to reach "maturity size" and thus reproductive capability.

Thoughts on my theory?

[Yora]

Maybe the plant needs a lot of room to grow and a single big one has much better chance to surive than lots of small ones keeping each other from growing to full size.

So the plant benefits from there being solitary, but a species needs to reproduce to ... well, be a species!
One biologist, who really just should have stayed in the field he knows about, made the very good explaination that it is not the individual organism that needs to survive and do well, but that the evolution of species depends entirely on which traits can be passed on to later generations.

So I would guess there was an environment in wich the ancestor of these plants lived, and some of them had genes for many fruits and others genes for fewer fruits. And every time something bad happened and destroyed a lot of the plants, those that produced the least amounts of fruit survived. Maybe they were standing further apart and so could grow larger or could recieve more light. In patches where the plants grew more fruit, the plants could not grow as big and where blocking sunlight from each other or stealing each others water. So they were eaten up or burned by fire, or really anything else imaginable.
Repeat this cycle a few dozens or hundred times, and you end up with plants that grow really big and have really few fruits. The best survivors would of course be those plants that had no fruits at all, but they did not reproduce and when they got axed (possibly quite literally), the genes that make the plant produce no fruit is gone.

[Ravens_cry]

I suppose... When it comes down to it, a person doesn't go to KFC because they're known for how healthy their food is.
They go because of those eleven herbs and spices.
And the chips are good too.

As for their gravy, it's nice, but not the best.



And because, I feel like asking a question for once instead of just answering:
I can understand the reasoning behind annuals, but why would any self-respecting plant grow for thirty to eighty years to a height of up to twenty-five metres before flowering once and then dying after setting fruit?
It seems rather silly to me...

Well, a large goal is to reproduce. Some reproduce profusely, making many, many, of spring, while others produce in much more conservative numbers.
Think humans verses salmon. A salmon will produce thousands of eggs, and only two need to survive in order to keep the numbers at parity, while humans produce only a handful of children and most survive.
Now if a plant only flowers once after that long a time, it probably is in a pretty nutrient poor environment, with little to spare to reproducing.

[Karoht]

I assume you are talking about trees in general, right?

Well, lets look at humans. We take typically 16-18 years before we are able to reproduce. A tree is still a living thing that entire time, all the way until it reproduces.

[Yora]

Does anyone know about the accuracy of the story that sailors used to be unable to swim, out of superstition?

I grew up at the sea, and this story sound to me just like knights being unable to move in armor and a flat earth. Funny to redicule the people of the past, but highly doubtful for a number of reasons.

[Gnoman]

Well, I'm not sure how far back it goes, but sailors of the great naval wars (1550s-1830s) are pretty well confirmed to rarely have the ability. Numerous primary sources from the era make reference to this. Now, the source of this lack is unknown. It may have been superstition, or the fact that most crews were largely prisoners or gang-pressed landsmen.

[Ravens_cry]

Knowing how to swim wouldn't help in most cases anyway unless you were really near to shore, and even then you need a fairly nice beach to survive that.
You fall in in open water and all knowing how to swim will do is make you die that much slower.
Also, there is a bit of sympathetic magic involved.
You don't want the sea to get a taste for you.

[Brother Oni]

Wasn't there also a period where it was believed that bathing was unhealthy for you? Since they didn't like to bathe, swimming would be pretty much out of the question.

[Ravens_cry]

Wasn't there also a period where it was believed that bathing was unhealthy for you? Since they didn't like to bathe, swimming would be pretty much out of the question.

I don't think the two were connected, at least not much. After all, it is contemporary accounts that mention the sailors lack of swimming. If it was a part of a widespread cultural trait, I have my doubts it would have been commented on.

[Gnoman]

Wasn't there also a period where it was believed that bathing was unhealthy for you? Since they didn't like to bathe, swimming would be pretty much out of the question.

That was two to five centuries earlier. By the time period in question, the prime reason for not bathing regularly was the logistical difficulties inherent in the process. Most people didn't have time.

[Eldan]

Plus, water in the cities was really dirty. Bathing or drinking water really could give you Typhoid or Cholera. Which is why beer was so important: the alcohol content kills quite a bit of germs.

[Tonal Architect]

Question:

How do cannibals protect themselves against AIDS? I assume that gorging on a victim's insides is most definetly a risky behavior.

[Ravens_cry]

Plus, water in the cities was really dirty. Bathing or drinking water really could give you Typhoid or Cholera. Which is why beer was so important: the alcohol content kills quite a bit of germs.

It's also that water was boiled as part of the production process as much than the alcohol content, which was quite low in small beer.

[Eldan]

Question:

How do cannibals protect themselves against AIDS? I assume that gorging on a victim's insides is most definetly a risky behavior.

I don't know about Aids, specifically, but the few societies on Earth that regularly practise cannibalism (there's only a handful, really) often suffer from diseases you can almost only get that way, especially brain diseases like Kuru. If AIDS is a factor, I don't think they could do much about it.

[Brother Oni]

Question:

How do cannibals protect themselves against AIDS? I assume that gorging on a victim's insides is most definetly a risky behavior.

As Eldan said, they don't.

They tend to avoid it by virtue of their victims simply not having been exposed to those diseases, but when they munch on an infected person, they catch it. Kuru is an excellent example of an endemic disease that got into their food chain and subsequently developed.

[thubby]

Question:

How do cannibals protect themselves against AIDS? I assume that gorging on a victim's insides is most definetly a risky behavior.

they... don't?
tribes that still practice it continue to have problems with a lot of diseases because of it.

[Yora]

Plus, water in the cities was really dirty. Bathing or drinking water really could give you Typhoid or Cholera. Which is why beer was so important: the alcohol content kills quite a bit of germs.

And making it usually involves boiling.

[Eldan]

Yeah. I was more thinking of keeping it fresh once made ,actually.

[Yora]

Wasn't brewing done mostly at home? I wonder how frequently that was done and how it was stored?
On a farm with 10 people, you can easily go through 20 to 30 liters every day. Even when you prepare it for a week, that would still be about 200 liters. I think this makes it quite likely that it wouldn't be stored for very long. But I think the alchohol would probably help keeping the storage containers clean. A half-filled wooden barrel with water would be one of the first places I would start looking for any kinds of molds.

[Elemental]

Question:

How do cannibals protect themselves against AIDS? I assume that gorging on a victim's insides is most definetly a risky behavior.

As everyone has said so far, they don't.
Societies that still practice cannibalism aren't exactly known for their advanced medical knowledge.

[Karoht]

Question:
How do cannibals protect themselves against AIDS? I assume that gorging on a victim's insides is most definetly a risky behavior.

Easy. Modern Cannibals don't eat human meat. They eat Hufu. Human flavored tofu. Look it up.

[Doomboy911]

As everyone has said so far, they don't.
Societies that still practice cannibalism aren't exactly known for their advanced medical knowledge.

Or food critics for that matter.

[Brother Oni]

Easy. Modern Cannibals don't eat human meat. They eat Hufu. Human flavored tofu. Look it up.

Wouldn't it be cheaper just to eat pork?

[Elemental]

Wouldn't it be cheaper just to eat pork?

I'm just concerned that people actually want to eat human flavoured tofu...
It's very disturbing...

Also, it's strange to think how someone can be a cannibal and vegetarian without being a plant...

[Zale]

Easy. Modern Cannibals don't eat human meat. They eat Hufu. Human flavored tofu. Look it up.

I lol'd. Then I looked it up.

It's really a thing.

What.

[Brother Oni]

I'm just concerned that people actually want to eat human flavoured tofu...
It's very disturbing...

I wouldn't mind trying Hufu.

That probably says a lot about me...

[Yora]

Wouldn't it be cheaper just to eat pork?

Socially accepted canibalism is usually not for food, but for riualist purposes.

I think the most commonly practiced form is to cremate the body of the dead and then drink the ash mixed with water, to allow the soul to remain with the tribe and become part of the soul of children born in the future.

[Ravens_cry]

I lol'd. Then I looked it up.

It's really a thing.

What.

Which leads to something like the chicken question from the Matrix.
How do they know it tastes like human flesh?

[Yora]

Somebody donated a body. For science!

[Ravens_cry]

Somebody donated a body. For science!

I did a little research and apparently it's not a real thing.
There was a real website, but not a real product.