Sunday, November 05, 2006

Dolphin with legs discovered!!!! (NOT)

I read the tag line on Comcast, "Dolphin with legs discovered"
I clicked, envisioning some wierd looking dolphin with freakish human legs attached, something out of Ripley's, etc. What do I see? A perfectly normal dolphin with fins, yes fins, not legs, attached just above the tail. Ok, so dolphins don't normally have fins there, but you can no more call them legs than any other fish with fins has legs. I know, a dolphin is not a fish but it is a finned animal, and as such, it has fins, not legs. All this to prove some supposed link with dolphins and deer. When a human comes up with a second arm or leg spouting out where it ought not be we don't immediately suppose it is a genetic throwback to days when humans had four legs, we assume they live too close to Hanford. When they spount an additional set of nipples we don't assume they are a genetic throwback to a multibreasted mammal of murky evolutionary lineage, we assume they are a crappy actor in a crappy 60's scifi film that shouldn't have made it out of the studio, not to mention into the theaters. No. really, the automatic assumption that it must be a sign of evolution, seems to be overreaching things a bit. Must every genetic oddity and abberation be a sign "proving" evolution? And boo to Comcast for the misleading tag line, it should have read "Dolphin with extra set of fins discovered!".

Update: it now says "dolphin may have remains of legs". I wonder why they felt the need to change it?

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home