No, said Aziraphale, it's ineffable.

Anonymous asked:

Some reptile owners think their reptiles can form emotional attachments to people- to the point they think their alligators won't ever eat them or their big big boas won't ever constrict them. What do you think?

You know, that’s a good question, and I honestly don’t know.

I think it would be wrong to imply that reptiles DON’T feel emotion, but what they do feel is likely much more simplistic and basic than what other animals like mammals or birds experience. Also, it would be very wrong of me to imply that I can make a blanket statement- reptiles DON’T feel emotion or reptiles DO feel emotion- when the truth is that reptiles are a massive group and it probably varies hugely by species.

We often think of reptiles as creatures who lay eggs and then leave young to fend for themselves, even cannibalizing their own young later without recognition. But there are quite a few species that do provide a modicum of care for their young. In fact, there’s evidence that crocodilians provide pretty extensive maternal care, with some species caring for newly-hatched young for up to a few months.

Crocodilians also have a decent amount of social behavior amongst themselves, with lots of vocalizations and even evidence of a weak social hierarchy when it comes to feeding en masse.

Of course, crocodiles are probably the most extreme example, being that they are quite separated from most other reptiles by evolution (their closest relatives are in fact birds). But there’s also some scattered evidence that there might be more going on in reptile minds than we might think. For example, komodo dragons may have some play behavior. (Click for a video of a zookeeper playing tug-of-war with a komodo dragon.)

So, on the one hand, it is likely, to me, that a reptile might form a sort of attachment to an individual, depending on the species and the nature of the relationship. Reptiles can certainly be acclimated to handling to the point where they are very calm about it. But on the other hand, I don’t think it’s often the sort of bond the owner imagines it to be. The boa may recognize that this human is not for eating, but that doesn’t mean nothing, no prey-like movement on the part of the owner, will ever trigger it to give it a shot.

I also caution against the ascribing of mammalian behaviors to reptiles. There was a popular video being passed around of a lizard leaning into someone scratching it, which people were interpreting as the lizard liking the scratching. But in fact, the lizard was raising itself and turning its back towards the scratching as a threat display, warning the human to stop. Similarly, that one gif of a lizard having its belly scratched that’s going around? I’m pretty sure the lizard isn’t actually happy about it and is flailing in a defensive manner.

So, you know, I think your reptile might be acclimated to you, and even enjoy your presence at times (especially as it relates to food) but I think overall it rarely gets above the level of measured tolerance. Most reptiles, I think, would rather be left alone to do their own thing.

Further Reading

Veterinarian’s writeup on emotions in reptiles

Parental care in reptiles

Social signalling in adult American crocodiles

Play behavior in Komodo dragons?

Number of Confirmed Alien Planets Nears 1,000

Just two decades after discovering the first world beyond our solar system, astronomers are closing in on alien planet No. 1,000.

Four of the five main databases that catalog the discoveries of exoplanets now list more than 900 confirmed alien worlds, and two of them peg the tally at 986 as of today (Sept. 26). So the 1,000th exoplanet may be announced in a matter of days or weeks, depending on which list you prefer.

That’s a lot of progress since 1992, when researchers detected two planets orbiting a rotating neutron star, or pulsar, about 1,000 light-years from Earth. Confirmation of the first alien world circling a “normal” star like our sun did not come until 1995.

And the discoveries will keep pouring in, as astronomers continue to hone their techniques and sift through the data returned by instruments on the ground and in space.

The biggest numbers in the near future should come from NASA’s Kepler space telescope, which racked up many finds before being hobbled in May of this year when the second of its four orientation-maintaining reaction wheels failed.

Kepler has identified 3,588 planet candidates to date. Just 151 of these worlds have been confirmed so far, but mission scientists have said they expect at least 90 percent will end up being the real deal.

But even these numbers, as impressive as they are, represent just the tip of our Milky Way galaxy’s immense planetary iceberg. Kepler studied a tiny patch of sky, after all, and it only spotted planets that happened to cross their stars’ faces from the instrument’s perspective.

Many more planets are thus out there, zipping undetected around their parent stars. Indeed, a team of researchers estimated last year that every Milky Way star hosts, on average, 1.6 worlds — meaning that our galaxy perhaps harbors 160 billion planets.

And those are just the worlds with obvious parent stars. In 2011, a different research team calculated that “rogue planets” (which cruise through space unbound to a star) may outnumber “normal” exoplanets by 50 percent or so.

Nailing down the numbers is of obvious interest, but what astronomers really want is a better understanding of the nature and diversity of alien worlds.

And it’s becoming more and more apparent that this diversity is stunning. Scientists have found exoplanets as light and airy as Styrofoam, for example, and others as dense as iron. They’ve also discovered a number of worlds that appear to orbit in their stars’ habitable zone — that just-right range of distances that could support the existence of liquid water and thus, perhaps, life as we know it.

But the search continues for possibly the biggest exoplanet prize: the first true alien Earth. Kepler was designed to determine how frequently Earth-like exoplanets occur throughout the Milky Way, and mission scientists have expressed confidence that they can still achieve that primay goal. So some Earth analogs likely lurk in Kepler’s data, just waiting to be pulled out.

The five chief exoplanet-discovery databases, and their current tallies, are: the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia (986); the Exoplanets Catalog, run by the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo’s Planetary Habitability Laboratory (986); the NASA Exoplanet Archive (905); the Exoplanet Orbit Database (732); and the Open Exoplanet Catalog (948).

The Planetary Habitability Lab keeps track of all five databases, whose different numbers highlight the uncertainties involved in exoplanet detection and confirmation.

Watch: The Search For Another Earth

Source: Space.com

See, that’s what the app is perfect for.