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Posted: Wed Nov 09, 2005 8:46 pm
by Fenrir
what about the gluttony guy from seven? :sickpup:

Posted: Wed Nov 09, 2005 8:49 pm
by Shadow Wulf
Fenrir wrote:what about the gluttony guy from seven? :sickpup:
Image j/k :lol:

Posted: Wed Nov 09, 2005 8:52 pm
by Fenrir
Hey you shouldn't be talking here :P

Posted: Wed Nov 09, 2005 8:54 pm
by Shadow Wulf
why you say that?

Posted: Wed Nov 09, 2005 9:16 pm
by Fenrir
You spam more then I do 8)

how else would you have 2866+ quotes in here before me :?

Posted: Wed Nov 09, 2005 9:27 pm
by Shadow Wulf
no not true, I just spend here more than you.

Posted: Wed Nov 09, 2005 9:33 pm
by vrikasatma
Couldn't graft it onto a human body anyway. You'd be up against some savage tissue rejection. The body's immune system would see a foreign protein (the wolf DNA) and go into uber-attack mode.

Posted: Wed Nov 09, 2005 10:12 pm
by white
I thought we were discussing convincing the body to grow its own tail, not grafting a new one on?

Posted: Thu Nov 10, 2005 8:27 am
by Timber-WoIf
It would be plausable to have a tail grafted together from other parts of your body... only real difficulty would be how to hell to get the bone. [spoiler] This one guy lost his, erm... "junk", and had a new one (fully functional) grafted together from flesh off other parts of his body. [/spoiler]

Posted: Thu Nov 10, 2005 8:33 am
by Shadow Wulf
*Shivers* thats creepy :shudder:

Posted: Thu Nov 10, 2005 8:42 am
by Timber-WoIf
*CAUTION* CREEPY AND NASTY POST

[spoiler] think thats wierd, he was unsatisfied with the first one, so he had a second one made. when they attached it, there was a chance the body wouldn't accept, so they had to leave the old one on until they were sure. so, for a period of time, he actually had two pieces of equipment. (though he did lose his wife.) [/spoiler]

Posted: Thu Nov 10, 2005 11:04 am
by Shadow Wulf
I wasnt on a need to know basis!! :o

Posted: Thu Nov 10, 2005 11:11 am
by Apokryltaros
After my last Embryology lecture, I think it is possible to grow ourselves a tail.
I mean, if we can induce a chicken embryo to grow feathers in place of eyes, or graft limb buds onto random parts of the embryo's body, or induce a double-tipped wing, or grow a human ear on a mouse, it wouldn't be too hard to grow a tail on a human.
Though, the catch is that the procedure needs to be done while one is still an embryo, as the procedure involves grafting the "Apical Ectodermal Ridge" of the desired limb bud onto the developing embryo.
...
Nevermind.

Posted: Thu Nov 10, 2005 5:11 pm
by Fenrir
I've just been struck blind deaf and dumb by reading those posts

Posted: Thu Nov 10, 2005 5:51 pm
by Apokryltaros
Fenrir wrote:I've just been struck blind deaf and dumb by reading those posts
Somebody grafted mouse flank embryonic tissue onto your corneas, too?

Posted: Thu Nov 10, 2005 6:55 pm
by white
Apokryltaros wrote:Though, the catch is that the procedure needs to be done while one is still an embryo, as the procedure involves grafting the "Apical Ectodermal Ridge" of the desired limb bud onto the developing embryo.
This is why we're researching stem cells and regeneration, among other things. I think that embryo barrier won't last too long at all.

Posted: Thu Nov 10, 2005 7:52 pm
by Fenrir
Apokryltaros wrote:
Fenrir wrote:I've just been struck blind deaf and dumb by reading those posts
Somebody grafted mouse flank embryonic tissue onto your corneas, too?
ok blind, deaf, dumb, and now there's a taste of vomit in my mouth :sickpup:

Posted: Thu Nov 10, 2005 10:38 pm
by Apokryltaros
Fenrir wrote:
Apokryltaros wrote:
Fenrir wrote:I've just been struck blind deaf and dumb by reading those posts
Somebody grafted mouse flank embryonic tissue onto your corneas, too?
ok blind, deaf, dumb, and now there's a taste of vomit in my mouth :sickpup:
Why am I suddenly reminded of the "seduction" scene from Dodgeball?

Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2005 1:42 am
by lupinsmile
Dr. Joe Rosen has it all figuard out.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/stor ... 28,00.html

Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2005 2:04 am
by vrikasatma
Good article...

One thing they got wrong, at least from my personal perspective, is that everyone who would want a drastic body mod like that is mentally ill and screaming for attention. I wouldn't want a tail so I could be noticed — actually I'm pretty self-effacing and like to blend in the background. But I would like a tail — provided it functions and can move — for the expressive extras and also for balance.

I wouldn't want the wings, though. They sound ugly and are purely for decoration. Nnnnnnnah. :P

Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2005 8:31 pm
by white
Agreement on all points, vrikasatma. Although I still don't think I'd go for a tail without the rest of the package.

Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2005 8:41 pm
by Lupin
vrikasatma wrote:I wouldn't want the wings, though. They sound ugly and are purely for decoration. Nnnnnnnah. :P

Yeah, that just sounds weird. Plus, wings look pretty weird without any feathers, and somehow I doubt they have the ability to do that.

Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2005 8:58 pm
by vrikasatma
It could be done with cloned tissue. Take a real close look at your skin: see the scale-like crisscross pattern? That's vestigial scales. Feathers are highly specialized and elongated scales and are made of the same material as your fingernails and eyelashes.

Unfortunately, it's not down to just wings and pinions. The biggest muscle on the bird is the pectorals: they need it to drive the wings. Can you imagine pecs as big or bigger than the gluteus maximii? That's how big you'd need to develop the pecs in order to drive the wings. Birds don't have hands, per se. Their feet have evolved into grasping structures (I'm visualizing the scene in Tim Burton's "Planet of the Apes" where the female chimp is writing in her diary — with her feet/paws!).

So, if I may be forgiven a slight topic drift — to get functional wings, we'd have to invert the human body system of extremities. The upper appendages would become the locomotors while the lower appendages would become the manipulators, which would be WEIRD :crazy:

Nothing on this planet — chordate, anyway — has evolved three pairs of limbs. There's no model to joint, suspend and power something like that, existent in nature. Insects are built on a slightly different template and on a completely different axis. Bees, sure — but they work on a slightly different muscular structure and require an exoskeleton to anchor it. Nothing with a spinal cord and endoskeleton has four legs and wings, not here anyway. We have to go to mythological creatures — gryphons, pegasi, angels, faeries, dragons, et al — before we find something with functional wings. And those are visual koans, not extant biological models.

Unfortunately...'twould be cooler than words to be a weregryphon...

Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2005 9:19 pm
by Kzinistzerg
oh, yes, definetly. I have to say, though ,that a tial owuld only be cool if it was a) prehensile, and b) was long enough, and c) if it got injured, would grow back properly, the way everythign else on your body does. however, winds are just pointless, there is no way any human will fly with biological wings with the materials we have- just no way. mechanics of flight and all that, we're too heavy and it takes fuel to carry fuel- muscles too lift weight have to lift themselves as well in flying animals. i owuld, really, only get a tial if they could give me the whole package, really.

Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2005 9:48 pm
by vrikasatma
Whole package — as in, full-body transformation?

I probably wouldn't go that far. People would think, "You got a tail? Cool!" or "Well, you don't see something like that everyday!" Benign reactions mostly. I'd be treated like an eccentric, which isn't a bad social existence. :)

But if I got totally transformed into a Wolf or whatever anthropomorph...Ahmm...well...everyone, and I mean *everyone* would back away slowly with shocked looks on their faces...and I'd never see any of them again. In short, ostracism. Being treated like an eccentric is one thing, shunning is another. One could go insane that way, and not the good insane, either.