I did think about it, but I'm not entirely sure which side I support... ;-)

The World Team is at least as obsessed with worrying about its own obsession with engines as it is with engines. It seems that every other move someone's trying to sell a "human move" to the voters, occasionally managing to unite those scared of "blindly" following computers behind his move of choice... and in most cases it's hard to tell exactly what's so "human" about that move, apart from its not being the engine move.

Well played, MacDuff. You described in a few words a rambling thought I'd had about the state of affairs. Without naming names, there is one glaring example of that in the current game, and a half dozen lesser lights. In the legendary first game against Nickel, one of the proselytizers even hit on a great line, probably a winning idea. It always goes back to playing the best moves, but I am a bit tired of the marketers already.

I have taken happy note of a former tireless proponent of non-engine moves who has apparently seen the light and is even refencing lines his very own engine has discovered.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJnU...

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rdx...

<Scientists in South Korea have created a robotic jellyfish hunter and shredder (JEROS - Jellyfish Elimination Robotic Swarm) designed to ease the disruption they cause to coastlines around the world.>

<Minke whales showed preference for fishes regardless of blocks and years>

<Bryde’s whales showed preference for anchovy except block B>

<Minke whales showed preference for Pacific saury while sei whales showed preference for anchovy in block A-N in 2002. Minke whales showed prey preference for Pacific saury and achovy while sei whales showed preference for copepods in block A-S in 2003. Minke whales showed prey preference for Pacific saury and anchovy while sei whales showed prey preference for krill and Pacific saury in block E-N in 2005.>

<the average Manly’s α of three baleen whale species in the JARPN II offshore component survey area in summer from 2002 to 2007. Minke whales showed preference for anchovy and suary while they avoided krill. Bryde’s whales showed preference for anchovy while they avoided krill. Sei whales showed preference for copepods and anchovy while they avoided krill and Pacific saury.>

I would like to point out that anchovy (and saury to a lesser extent I think) support fisheries in East Asia. In my home regions, it's a staple food (called bolinao in Sugbuanon Visayan and balingon in Ilonggo Visayan.) I used to eat them a lot when I was a kid, but as an adult I had to stop because they would give me attacks of joint swellings and allergy. Therefore I would logically tend to view animals that significantly damage these fisheries somewhat dimly.

The other side of the coin is that the pro-whaling papers do not prove that whales consume too much fish. They do not even seem to try to; but just give subtle ingenuous indications.

The propaganda works this way: Krill is essentially not a commercial fishery in the Pacific, and there is no fishery at all for the almost microscopic copepods. Therefore by saying that

<Minke whales showed preference for anchovy and suary while they avoided krill>

the paper implies- "go ahead and harvest those fish killing Minkes."

<Bryde’s whales showed preference for anchovy while they avoided krill.>

Ditto as above.

<Sei whales showed preference for copepods and anchovy while they avoided krill and Pacific saury>

The above statement saves the sei whale from being totally demonized as a fish killer. However, there is no way that the lobby behind the paper can issue an opposite statement simply because the sei whale ever since studies on it began has always been known to prefer copepods. I have even come across an article that notes that the sei whale baleen is especially fine, designed to efficiently catch the tiny 1 mm copepods. The sei whale, like the right whales, seems to be a specialized copepod feeder.

Even so, the article still claims that sei whales prefer copepods and <anchovy>! Anchovy has to be thrown in the sei whale's mouth together with its true staple copepod diet, perhaps to justify any decision in the future to hunt it.

http://www.icrwhale.org/pdf/SC-J09-...

The paper below debunks the one above, and other pro-whaling papers from Japanese and Norwegian concerns. <Suggestions that fisheries problems can be attributed to whales consuming huge quantities of fish distract attention from the root causes of these problems: fisheries mismanagement.>

Specifically <They are usually the dominant members of the zooplankton, and are major food organisms for small fish, whales, seabirds and other crustaceans such as krill in the ocean and in fresh water.>

<Some scientists say they form the largest animal biomass on earth.>

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copepod

It follows that the copepod affects all marine food chains and natural cycles to a significant degree. For the climate change due to anthropic CO2 production crowd, the copepod would be seen as a natural ally as it is a major carbon sink as dead individuals and parts sink into the anaerobic sea bottoms.

And this amazing creature is so small <Copepods are typically 1 to 2 millimetres (0.04 to 0.08 in) long, with a teardrop-shaped body and large antennae. Although like other crustaceans they have an armoured exoskeleton, they are so small that in most species this thin armour, and the entire body, is almost totally transparent. Some polar copepods reach 1 centimetre (0.39 in).>

Yet filter feeding baleen whales evolved probably only in the Miocene, around 15 million years ago. A huge animal arrived on the marine scene that used a new mechanism in copepod feeding. A new niche had been discovered for the first time in Earth history- the giant filter feeder specialized copepod eater.

One lucky find is that the ancient lineage of baleen whales, from which all the other baleen whales have descended from, has survived until today, the pygmy right whale Caperea marginata, a living fossil member of the Cetotheriidae family or the Cetotheres. The early and original toothed forms originated earlier in the Oligocene <Toothed mysticetes first evolved in the late Eocene or earliest Oligocene, diversified in the late Oligocene, and appear to have been extinct before the Miocene began> but seem to have begun filter feeding only in the Miocene <The oldest true fossils of baleen are only 15 million years old. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baleen...>.

The pgymy 'right' whale is a copepod feeder as with its larger true right whale relatives. <The pygmy right whale is found in the Southern Ocean in the lower reaches of the Southern Hemisphere, and feeds on copepods and euphausiids. Kemper, Catherine (2008). "Pygmy Right Whale". In Perrin, W.; Wursig, B. and Thewissen, J. Encyclopedia of Marine Mammals. Academic Press>

Why did the huge copepod feeding specialist only evolve about 15 millions years ago? Not only that, members of this niche have grown larger- the true right whales and the bow-head whale.

The above implies

1. the existence of huge aggregations of copepods suitable to filter feeding by a large predator with a high metabolic rate only began to occur in the Miocene.

http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress...

<Baleen whales: a lovely transitional form>

------------------

http://ecologicablog.files.wordpres...

A fin whale fetus showing teeth buds.

------------------

http://ecologicablog.files.wordpres...

and

http://ecologicablog.wordpress.com/...

Excerpt:

We have demonstrated that the presence of calcium salts in sei and humpback baleen increases their resistance to bending, but there is a far more straightforward way to increase flexural rigidity, and that is to increase bristle diameter. Flexural rigidity is the product of Young’s modulus and the second moment of area, which is proportional to the fourth power of the radius. Large increases in flexural rigidity can therefore be effected by small increases in diameter. This raises the question of why bristle flexural rigidity is boosted via calcification rather than a simple increase in diameter. One possibility is that there are limits on how thick bristles can get before the prey-capturing function of the baleen filter is compromised. This may be particularly relevant <in sei whales, which is the only rorqual species that specializes in small mesoplankton like copepods (Pivorunas 1979)>, and also possesses the most highly calcified baleen (Pautard 1963). In sei whales, filter porosity must be low to capture such small prey (Pivorunas 1976), and this requires fine baleen bristles. However, there is probably a limit to how fine the bristles can be before they are so floppy that they no longer form a competent filter mat between the baleen plates. In this way, calcification may have allowed for the evolution of finer bristles that were still functionally competent, which ultimately decreased filter porosity and allowed for the exploitation of smaller prey. <Interestingly, bristles from right and bowhead whale baleen are known to be as fine as sei bristles (Nemoto 1959), but are relatively uncalcified (Pautard 1963; St Aubin et al. 1984). This may be related to the fact that these whales employ a low-speed skim-feeding behaviour that generates far lower hydrodynamic forces than more energetic lunge feeding bouts in sei whales.>

The above article indirectly supports the view that evolution has designed the baleen of sei and right whales to filter very small prey- id est copepods.

If one peruses the whole article, which is on the baleen of sei, humpback, and minke whales, one would learn that the minke baleen is designed to filter larger prey than humpbacks, the sei baleen is designed to filter the smallest prey, with the humpback baleen is somewhere in between.

It indicates that sei whales prefer copepods (smallest), humpbacks krill and the small sand lance fish, and minke prefer krill and bigger fishes.

This is also a good example of how creatures partition natural niches, so that competition between similar species is minimized.

Which, for me, mostly means that Klu Hunt time must be near too. ;)

<VBD> thanks. If this goes on, we may end up knowing quite a bit more about all sorts of things! :D

<Dom> All forms are transitional...

<Whales evolved biosonar to chase squid into the deep>

Sonar-hunting is a very peculiar niche. I believe that of all creatures, only bats and whales (maybe shrews too) have evolved sonar to an extremely sophisticated and effective function. Many bats and toothed whales have become dependent on sonar to feed themselves, and beat the competition.

In a minor way, the ability to use sonar very effectively is a minor game changer in the flying mammal vs bird and marine mammal vs marine reptile and large fish competition. Birds with their highly efficient pulmonary system should by all rights beat bats anytime, but the bats' sonar has allowed it to invade ad establish night-time 'blind' niches that vision-dependent birds cannot take.

<Many genes in dolphins and bats evolved in the same way to allow echolocation> https://www.sciencenews.org/article...

Why have birds not done the same thing, while two separate clades of mammals have done it? IMO it's because of the highly sophisticated and complex middle ear mechanism of mammals (which includes the bony ossicles malleus, incus, and stapes), which birds and other creatures do not possess.

That's true. Actually it's a bit more complex than that. Owls specialize in night ambush hunting of relatively large prey such as mammals, birds, reptiles. Bats specialize in aerial hunting of small prey where they usually take exposed insects on the surface and more importantly in the air itself. There is niche partitioning going on here.

The night-time ambush niche belongs to a bird, the owl. Yet I can imagine a world where there are no owls, and where bats do the exact same night ambush predation as the owls. However, I cannot imagine a world with owls zooming in the air catching insects in mid flight.

My explanation of this? Birds are inherently more adapted to the air than mammals, because of their unique bellows type pulmonary system that mammals don't have. So in any aerial niche birds will eventually beat out mammals, or will exclude mammals from getting in as they have been around occupying the aerial niches for more than a hundred million years before the first mammals took to flight.

When the non-avian dinosaurs (birds are now regarded as dinosaurs) died out, it freed the small mammals to evolve larger forms. One of these took to the air; and early on it was apparent that it could only predominate in one very specific niche, the hunt-flying-insect niche. This niche could be occupied only by a predator that had a sophisticated and efficient sonar. And only mammals have middle ear ossicles that can be incorporated into a sonar system.

Plague Inc – Learn while you infect the world >

Have you had a chance yet to compare it to Pandemic 2? The premise is the same, but I imagine the implementations are different.