Jayme Blaschke wrote:
>
> >>>What in the world is a weta?
>
> Director Peter Jackson's Wellington-based SFX company. :-)
>
> Jayme Lynn Blaschke
No great surprise... Jacko's a Kiwi (New Zealander); with a taste for
cinema almost as ugly as the weta itself.
The weta is a very large arthropod endemic to NZ & surrounding islands; &
as such is most unlikely to win any animal beauty contests (in fact, it
looks a little like a mutant cross between a cockroach & a crab). As
Bruce pointed out - & i acknowledge - being a large hard shelled critter
puts you at a serious disadvantage in a mature ecosystem; but the NZ -
even more than Australia - was ecologically very isolated prior to the
arrival of the Melanesians (now Moari) people less than 1000yrs ago... as
a result, the normal rules of competition didn't apply here; & insects
like the weta & large, flightless birds like the tuatara, moa, kiwi &
kakapo survived quite comfortably.
To reconcile my position with Bruce's observations: there's no doubt that
some bodily systems are more efficient in the contemporary environment
than others; but that isn't the same as saying that - in the absence of
competition from more efficient living systems - large cockroaches
mightn't reappear in contemporary conditions. Indeed: they almost
certainly would (following the bigger is better principle); & the
palaeontonological Lystrosaurus Interlude (immediately following the
Permian extinction; where a single therapsid called the Lystrosaurus
which survived the extinction dominated the environment for about 10my)
would be matched by a new Cockroach Interlude, as these enormous roaches
essentially waited for better designs to supplant 'em.
This has a strange relevance to Europa, however. If life exists in the
Europan ocean, it's likely to be living in a low energy environment where
competition is unlikely to be widespread. Unlike most people, therefore,
i don't rule out the possibility of really large life forms there; but
would still expect them to be expect them to be extremely primitive....
All the best,
Robert Clements <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
==
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