The Jersey Devil

[cowmuflage]

Well for a thing that large there would have to be a HUGE population of them to suport a heathy population or it would become inbred and die off and if its as aggresive as people say it is then we would have alot of proof ya know :S

[Ryai]

Well we wont really know intill theres some cold hard proof now wont we :P I wouldnt be surprised if it was some yank army experimint gone wrong or something. As really if you think about it to have a population of animals that are that big there would need to be alot of them and stuff or they would all be inbreed and once your that hiding would not be easy as well you wouldnt work right or heck liveing infact would be hard as most inbred things have alot of things wrong with them just look at those "pure" bred dogs and all those problems they have.

Off topic but- only BAD breeders INBREED dogs, on purpose or regularly. Pure Breed dogs have diseases and such, not just from 'inbreeding' but from some people doing designer 'breed traits' into them, IE Siamese cats now looking all angular alien like when that is so far left field of what they were originally, or the slope that German Sheperds have.

A good example of good breeder vs bad breeder. My mother bought a wolfhound from a good breeder. He lived to nearly be 11 years old Ancient for a wolfhound, when standing on his hind legs, he was taller than my dad,. Who stands 6'2 atleast. HE was as sweet as could be, was beautiful as could be and only had two cases of inbreeding in his entire tree, and I checked it, it went back atleast 12 or more generations.

Now, bad breeder; Our poor diseased riddled wolfhound pups, obtained from here in Texas, were from horrible people who shouldn't have been allowed to breed, allowing fathers, daughters, sons, mothers, siblings, uncles, nieces, etc to breed. For Brian, I counted atleast 8 pairs of this, sometimes it was the SAME SIRE.

Anyways.

If the creatures are able to Asexually reproduce, than breeding wouldn't be required.

But tbh I bet if the jersey devil dose exist, it really is a demon or something and it wouldn't need to breed anyways.

Besides, the Amish pull off inbreeding and most are still living happy lives.

[cowmuflage]

really big things liek that don't Asexually reproduce.

[Saturo]

really big things liek that don't Asexually reproduce.

There are remarkably big slugs that reproduce asexually, and AFAIK they're not even close to the that size. Besides, the pictures of it look mammalian or reptilian.

[cowmuflage]

Well thats true and yeah it does look mammalian or reptilian and those things breed. I know some retiles can produce "clones" of them sevles or is that frogs? anywho those are allways female tho.

[Ryai]

Well thats true and yeah it does look mammalian or reptilian and those things breed. I know some retiles can produce "clones" of them sevles or is that frogs? anywho those are allways female tho.

Fish and Lizards.

There's also fish that change gender.

It's rumored a Komodo Dragon Asexually reproduced too. And they found evidence from the surviving hatchlings that greatly support the theory that the female was gravid, with no influence nor sperm from a male animal/outside force.

And Komodo Dragons are huge creatures.

[cowmuflage]

Yes but doing that would not truely help a population last in the long run as there nearly allwasy female in fact i think there only female. Yes they might last for a bit but they would not beable to ataped or evolve to the changeing contistions(so they WOULD die off) as to do that you need a gene pool to get the best genes and stuff. You can't do that with just one parent. These things would of have to have lived since the ice age and stuff like every thing else and by breeding with out any new genes it would not happen.

[Teigan]

.

[Saturo]

Yes but doing that would not truely help a population last in the long run as there nearly allwasy female in fact i think there only female. Yes they might last for a bit but they would not beable to ataped or evolve to the changeing contistions(so they WOULD die off) as to do that you need a gene pool to get the best genes and stuff. You can't do that with just one parent. These things would of have to have lived since the ice age and stuff like every thing else and by breeding with out any new genes it would not happen.

In addition to that argument, small genetic faults would eventually become prominent, similar to inbreeding.

[Mania]

Off topic but- only BAD breeders INBREED dogs, on purpose or regularly.

Emphasis mine. Well, the bolding is mine. The caps are Ryai's.

But yeah, I just wanted to mention that it's not unusual for a breeder who is trying to fix a trait (say, resistance to disease or better milk production -- err .. for cattle, of course, not dogs) to line breed (father to daughter or mother to son) for one generation. But there's a big difference between carefully controlled line breeding for one generation and letting your purebred dogs breed willy-nilly so you can sell your puppies to random people as fast as possible.

*sigh* I am just all off-topic today. Sorry about that.

[Mania]

Parthenogenesis is a little different from what we normally think of as asexual reproduction. And it's not uncommon for parthenogenic lizards, at least, to have males of the species -- the males are either rare and so much, but not all, reproduction is by parthenogenesis; or the males are common but females who are isolated will go ahead and reproduce when there are no males available.

As Saturo says, parthenogenesis will -- like any other reproduction -- pick up random mutations as it goes. Some mutations are beneficial, but most are not. Sexual reproduction introduces more non-random changes that may offset mutations (in either direction) and so change is faster. Neither one is better in absolute terms, but in an environment that is changing (climate change, for example), more change across a larger population is likely to help the species adapt more quickly.

[cowmuflage]

See thats why i don't think some thing this big WOULD breed with Parthenogenesis as it would need a big gene pool to be heathy. Ya know? As change is good if i helps your kin live in the place better.

[Razzy]

Maybe it's a flying fox? They could be seen as having a kangaroo-shaped head. It's back legs are long and slender, and it has a pretty impressive wingspan. I'm not saying that I don't like the mystery of the Jersey Devil, it's just that it's one of those cryptids that seems far too strange to be plausible, you know?

[cowmuflage]

hmm that could be the case. Like the mothman theres a theroy its just some form of Big owl that people mistake for it as it does haev big red eyes at night time.

[Razzy]

And in this video, a flying fox fights off a python. Maybe the woman's dog found it on the ground and it attacked it? Those thumb claws on its wings made a pretty vice like grip on the snake. And when you listen to the video, the bat itself is making some pretty eerie screeches. That doesn't explain it sitting on top of a roof, or how a flying fox got into the pine barrens, though.

[cowmuflage]

well there could be many reasons why its there. Thats just one thing it could really be and i can see how someone could mistake it for something else.

[Ryai]

For Flying Foxes;

Bats of the genus Pteropus, belonging to the Megachiroptera sub-order, are the largest bats in the world. They are commonly known as the Fruit Bats or Flying Foxes among other numerous colloquial names. They live in the tropics and subtropics of Asia (including the Indian subcontinent), Australia, Indonesia, islands off East Africa (but not the mainland Africa), and a number of remote oceanic islands in both the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

In response to;

well there could be many reasons why its there. Thats just one thing it could really be and i can see how someone could mistake it for something else.

The habitat would be so vastly different it would most likely die- it wouldn't find sustainable food source, or if it was a pet and was released, that wouldn't explain all the sightings -before- people started keeping bats.

So yeah not a bat tbh.

[cowmuflage]

Well it could be a bird or something you know how your mind can make things you see in the dark bigger/scarer than they really are.

[Ryai]

Well it could be a bird or something you know how your mind can make things you see in the dark bigger/scarer than they really are.

That's the thing- even with my bad eyesight I can tella bird, from a bat, and most bats shouldn't/wouldn't be acting like anything reported. And birds wouldn't be acting like that anyways. And there are very few birds who could be large enough to even start to be remotely mistaken for something like a jersey devil- but again most probably would avoid humans. I mean I know there are monsterously sized owls out there, but they for the most part avoid people.

And unless sick, most durinal birds would stay sleeping during the night so that eliminates them too.

So A: there is really something out there that sofar can not be explained away as a bat, a bird, a dog with mange nor hippies high on the weed again.
B: This is all some great big hoax like the two girls that did those cut out faries.

[Vespias]

Just for you Veph, I'm going to run amok in the Barrens here tomorrow and will post pics for you. Not sure if I'll be able to get deep into them here since NY has this idiotic habit of fencing them in. Another note to exploring the Barrens, in Jersey as you hike through them every so often you'll come across some remnants of homes that used to be there in the 16-1700s. And Lord Almighty, sometimes you come across PEOPLE living there. In the woods, living almost entirely off the land. You run into Cousin Skeeter in the middle of a pitch-black night and I can assure you a change of underwear is next on the agenda.