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One issue with bringing back long extinct dinosaurs into living existence is finding a suitable method of nurturing your baby dinosaur into a healthy adult - all too often, the "terrible lizards" find the laboratory environment contrary to their needs - and, let's face it, your average flinching clinician
just isn't attuned to the general wellbeing requirements of a young abomination of nature.
What's necessary is a suitable method of sending your reptilian progeny out into the wild, and somehow have it develop naturally into an unstoppable horde of flying mega-lizards.
The ideal solution is of course to take advantage of the natural behaviours of the humble cuckoo - a bird who's parenting skills are legend, in that the female cuckoo will sneak into another bird's nest and insinuate one of her own eggs into the brood.
The host bird returns, and not being too clever in the number-stakes, fails to notice the additional egg in her nest.
Over time, the eggs hatch, and the baby cuckoo is considered by its adoptive mother as just another of her babies, and is fed and sheltered dotingly - despite its sometimes unpleasant behaviour towards its siblings.
The idea here is to capture millions of cuckoos, impregnate them with Pterodactyl sperm, and them release them back into the countryside.
Hopefully, the distribution of dinosaur babies among many different species of host bird will mean the chances of one species adopting a suitable set of conditions for fledgling pterodactyls (or, if this plan is somehow foiled, possibly Pteranodon stock, Archaeopteryxes being far too small) will be much higher than the otherwise disappointing results found in the lab.
The result should be a muah-ha-ha-able scourge of enormous flying reptiles across much of the countryside.
Quatzalcoatlus
http://en.wikipedia...wiki/Quetzalcoatlus
Some of these babies would go down a treat. [zen_tom, Oct 08 2008]
BTO Survey on UK Cuckoo population.
http://www.bto.org/...ds2007/wcrcucko.htm
[DrBob, Oct 09 2008]
European Bird Census figures for cuckoos.
http://www.ebcc.inf...ch=cuckoo&search=OK
[DrBob, Oct 09 2008]
London Oct 2008
London Oct 2008
A suitable occasion for providing me with liquid assets. [zen_tom, Oct 10 2008]
Study of Giant Squid by cloning
Study_20of_20Giant_20Squid_20by_20cloning
Similar [8th of 7, Jan 22 2012]
[link]
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//impregnate them with Pterodactyl sperm//
No doubt extracted from hens' teeth and rocking-horse shit. |
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Yes! Go - make it happen. |
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(do cuckoos sometimes lay eggs in ostrich nests?) |
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What could possibly go wrong? |
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Well, a mad scientist working for an evil millionaires genius in a secret laboratory hidden under a tropical island/dormant volcano/forgottoen cold-war bunker/unnamed totalitarian asian nation could capture some of the baby pterodactyls, brainwash them, and train them to fly high over the capital cities of the world, defecating on politicians from a great height. |
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Ummmm..... having said that, that's not exactly "going wrong", is it ? More a sort of bonus. |
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Besides, MI6 agents have to have SOMETHING to do at the weekends ..... |
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+ sure... and then the release of the new Dinosaur-Cuckoo clock! |
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<waits for someone to post Velociraptor Clock>
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I'm waiting for someone to explain where we'd get pterodactyl sperm, then convince me that it would impregnate a modern bird. |
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I'd like to see a flock of half bird/half pterodactyls, but if their bird half has the habit of laying eggs in odd nests, I'm gonna change my breakfast menu. |
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1: Obtain the most complete several copies of pterodactyl DNA
2:Fill in with bat DNA
3:Inject into cukooo sperm
4:death and destruction! hate and discontent! strange vanilla beans and greasy scissors! |
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It'll never work - the young Pterodactyls will be too heavy for the nests. |
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//The idea here is to capture millions of cuckoos//
Good luck with that plan, zen_tom. The cuckoo is now an endangered species with a decline of up to 50% of the population in Britain and 20% across Europe.
I like the flying reptile scourge concept generally though. |
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....and the source of the sperm will be? |
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Works well until the pterodactyl chick eats "mommy". There is no reason to believe dinosaurs (if we accept dinosaur-reptile lineage) have any imprinting behaviour, and might view mom as a tasty snack. I think [UB] was implying this. |
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My team of gibbering scientists assure me (on pain of death) that sourcing of the appropriate DNA/sperm etc is a (closely guarded, secret) detail that lies outside the bounds of this idea - which is limited in scope to the natural distribution method provided by the cuckoos - but I imagine they must utilise some kind of equipment (it's a tricky procedure, but if it were me, I'd want at least a pair of rubber gloves for reasons of hygene) |
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Matrivoric (herbivore, carnivore, matrivore?) behaviour could be a problem - We could try introducing smaller leathery - winged creatures to prepare a strong maternal base initially, before moving up to the really big ones in an incremental fashion. |
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Extract the DNA from insects trapped in amber (flora sap) from the Jurassic period. With careful placement of the eggs in Alaudidae nests, it won't be long until you have a Jurassic Lark. |
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[zen], I'm bunning for the natural distribution method provided by the cuckoos. That's clever. Perhaps if it were used to distribute eggs of endangered bird species? Then all you'd have to do is un-endanger cuckoos, implant them with eggs . . . well, an experienced bird-watcher and a agile boy would probably be a better way to get eggs into nests, but a croissant for creativity and for the last sentence. |
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//Perhaps if it were used to distribute eggs of endangered bird species?// I suppose you *could* do that, it just wouldn't be particularly evil. Perhaps after having successfully unendangered one species or other, you could wipe them all out again by releasing into the wild some kind of rabid death-mollusc? |
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// smaller leathery - winged creatures // |
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good god how did this get so many buns. |
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I think they were surreptitiously slipped in and now zen_tom is nurturing them as if they were his own. |
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Soon he'll realise they're not worth the paper they're printed on and that in order to maintain his capitalisation ratio he'll need to raise more buns on the inter-baker market. When he finds this is impossible and that he's a net holder of fishbones, he'll be nationalised. |
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Please don't nationalise me! How about arranging for some central bakers to provide me with some additional liquidity? I'm sure that'll help. Say, sometime next week? [linky] |
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"Just give us the f****** money !" |
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(sp. "Geldof") Well, he could hardly be *more* sumg and irritating, could he?
Note that any buns provided under this deal will be "Preference Buns", with icing and a glacé cherry on top. |
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howcome my giant ostriches get the fishbones and this gets the croissants<sulks> |
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"Whoever said that life is fair? Perhaps it is better for many
people that it isn't…" |
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I presume he said that before he was carted off to Reading Gaol? |
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Doubtless with Bosie in mind. |
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// howcome my giant ostriches get the fishbones and this
gets the croissants<sulks> // |
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