Palaeo After Dark

The gang discusses two papers on suction feeding among tetrapods, the process by which animals take in water to pull food into their mouths. Specifically they look at two papers showing suction feeding strategies in fossil whales and in modern auks. Meanwhile, Amanda finds new ways to become ill, James finds new things to get angry about, and Curt makes new, very unfortunate deviant art searches.   Up-Goer Five (James Edition): The group look at two papers that deal with animals that suck. The first paper is looking at how animals with hair that live in the place where water can not be drunk got big. One of the thing that these really big animals share is that they eat lots of little food all at once by pushing it through a brush, and it is thought that they got big because they could push so much food through their brush at once that they could eat lots and lots. The study looks at the hard parts of a really old hair covered water animal that got very big, but it does not have the brush and so could not eat