Just give me one thing I can play for.
Disco boys on bicycles.
So what if too many times we have been here, both
Poetic Retrospective
The Weather votes for Kelly Clarkson.The rhinoceros is of the class bovinus murderus or "killer cows" (the other two being the hippopotamus and the elephant). It is very dangerous despite the fact that it is nearly blind and doesn't eat meat. This is due to its very bad temper, probably caused by tripping over furniture and a low protein intake.
There are five species of rhinoceros: White, Black, Javan, Indian, and Sumatran. The benefit of the white and black rhinoceros is that they are intuitively easy to identify; however, the Javan, Indian, and Sumatran rhinoceros indicate where you are. If you are lost in Asia, and don't know whether or not you are in India, Java, or Sumatra, just check out the nearest rhinoceros. Of course, this method of orienteering is best combined with a map and compass, due to the fact that, as a nearly blind mammal, the rhinoceros gets lost very easily.
The white rhino is not really a different color from the black rhino. The term white" actually refers to the shape of the animal's lip, much like the term arc welder" actually refers to Julie Andrews. Some say that white" is derived from the Afrikaner word weit" meaning wide". This certainly sounds like the kind of thing that some would say. Black" in "black rhinoceros" does refer to the animal's color, even though it isn't really black.
The Indian rhino has only a single horn, as opposed to the African species, which have two. Females of this species reach sexual maturity at the age of five; whereas, the males reach sexual maturity at the age of nine. This ensures a young trophy rhino for each male and completely abolishes the mid-life crisis. When ready to breed, the female whistles...much like Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not.
The Javan rhinoceros is one of the rarest mammals, with only sixty remaining alive today. This may seem impressive, but even more Javan rhinoceros remain dead today. The Sumatran rhino is much the same only it is hairier.
Most rhinoceros species are endangered, due to the fact that their horns are considered aphrodisiacs. I don't doubt the veracity of this claim; however, I'd have to see exactly where the horns are inserted in order to get them to work. Anyway, poachers kill a great many rhinos for their horns when a simple phone call might suffice.
The project aims to take a snapshot of DNA and store these sequences in a database for easier cataloguing and identification of the creatures we encounter every day. Ultimately, the goal is to build a handheld scanner that would be commercially available, so that anyone can identify the other creatures with whom we share our environments.
In the modern era of DNA testing, one might think that it would be standard for biologists to identify species using their genetic material, but until now this has not been the case. Most taxonomy has been done using morphology -- a more complex version of looking at a thing and saying "Yup. That's a worm all right." The Barcode of Life project seeks to bring taxonomy into the twenty-first century, combining databases, handheld and network technology.
Using a segment of mitochondrial DNA, the project is generating codes of DNA sequences for animals that function similarly to the UPC symbols used by clerks at stores to scan products. The project catalogues nucleotide sequences from a specific region of the gene called cytochrome c oxidase I, a gene possessed by all eukaryotic organisms, or COI, and is building a library that matches this barcode to the species.
Today, by querying the database for a nucleotide sequence, a match brings up the name and taxonomy of the species it comes from. However, the database could eventually include additional information such as images of the species, related species and so on. Armed with this information, taxonomists could rapidly and accurately identify species in the wild. Tests have shown that even using only the small barcode sequence, even species so similar they cannot readily be distinguished by experts can still be correctly identified.
Currently, the project is working on building its database. The associated Consortium for the Barcode of Life is an international organization of various groups who use taxonomic information, and already is engaged in cataloguing genetic barcodes for all birds and all fish. While the project is clearly in the early stages, the Barcode of Life project hopes to one day have a comprehensive database and an inexpensive handheld unit to go with it for identification of species on location.
Obviously, the benefits of such a device for taxonomists and science education would be immense, but the value to lay people is also great. Haven't you ever wondered what that thing is that just crawled out of your salad? And what if it bites you? Then you may really need to know.
The benefits to scientific study are also significant. For every human being there are about 200 million insects, and most of us are entirely missing out on this huge slice of the world. A DNA scanner in the school or home would bring the power of distributed networks to biology, enabling the scientific community to learn more about the location and distribution of species, all by harnessing the power of interested amateurs.
The first formal taxonomists were the natural philosophers of the Scientific Revolution. They were just regular people, usually with titles, but sometimes with entirely different professions, who were interested in trying to understand the natural world. There weren't any formal scientists back then; curiosity about our surroundings is a natural human instinct, and the first science was born out of that curiosity. Now, almost 400 years later, the democratization of science may become popular again thanks to handheld technology and a database of snippets of DNA.