Apparently this is associated with a change in Boeing’s corporate culture. The company used to be engineer-driven (for want of a better term), but that changed when it merged with McDonnell Douglas, whose management essentially took over. Now the values of MBAs trump those of engineers.

The IUCN distinguishes between species that still have wild populations and those that only exist in captivity. The latter are known as “extinct in the wild”. It makes a difference in conservation work.

Fortunately, the tendency of male kakapos to mate with the heads of visiting humans will introduce new genes into the population:

I am naturally selected.

While it’s not important to diagnose the entirety of Scientology...

No reason it couldn’t be the other way round, but you can’t count on it. Natural selection doesn’t always have what it needs to work with.

Bottlenecks not only reduce a population’s genetic diversity, they can result in favourable alleles being lost by chance, and deleterious alleles becoming fixed.

What kind of superpowers will you get if you’re bitten by one of these radioactive pigs?

I wondered about that, but is there any evidence that they stamped these seals on clay, like the Mesopotamians did?

They found artifacts they described as “seals”. What would the original owner have used these for? Did this civilization have any form of paper?

Or their cummerbunds.

They don’t wear boots.

It would be interesting to look at the genetics behind this - sometimes an understanding of the genetics of colour patterning leads to a deeper understanding of pattern formation in general.

No spots? So she’s completely cured, then.

Yep. We’re terrifying.

I guess he had no plans to use his hands for anything in the near future.

This case is high-profile - there would be immediate efforts to replicate it.

Don’t these people understand that they will always get caught? Science is self-correcting - that’s the way it works.

Quite possible. They seem to have had a different physiology from today’s large terrestrial vertebrates.