Cabbits

[RCIAG]

Originally Posted by llewtrah

http://youtube.com/?v=cI3lR6idUJY
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=e15_1232758435

I will have to wait till this evening to see the clip, but they sounds like Manx-types to me.

Most definitely manx cats.

Now when you image google cabbits, you get those images of those tortie cats that are posted in this thread!

I think I've solved where cabbits come from...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSgzRJXLdJI...maybe NSFW.

[geminilee]

Originally Posted by nonnieyrissa

Yeah, I couldn't find the exact words to explain what I meant.That is a part of what I meant.But there was more. To evolve means the development of new species or new traits within a species over a time right? So they are losing to some degree the ability to completely care for themselves, varying depending on what they have been bred for. Even breeding a sheep for longer hair would make it more likely for them to develop giant "rats nests" in their hair which can cause sores, which if not cared for can become infected, which could move into their blood stream and be fatal.

I understand where you are going with the explanation, but the key here is humans. While an animal is domesticated, those traits such as longer wool are adaptive; they result in a reproductive advantage for the animal under the conditions in which it lives. If conditions changed those traits could become maladaptive, but that is true for any trait to start with. The "fitness" that evolution produces works only under a very specific set of circumstances. Change the circumstances and what makes an organism "fit" could make it very much "unfit" for the new conditions.

As an example, I will use polar bears and their fur. While they live in an area dominated by cold and snow that super-insulating hair is a very good thing, and makes their lives possible. If the climate warms (whether changed by humans or by normal cycles is irrelevant) then that hair traps too much heat, and can in fact kill them. The hair is neither a good or a bad trait in and of itself, indeed no trait is good or bad in and of itself. Conditions can change and make any trait good or bad for the organism, regardless of whether it worked in the past.

And by the standards of evolution, domestication has been very good for the animals we chose. Cows could never have achieved the numbers they have now had their wagon not been hitched to ours. It is entirely possible that had we not domesticated a given animal that species may have died out, as so many others have. It is possible that once humans are gone and conditions change for the animals they will die out anyway because of the changes we have made, but that is true for any animal that specializes.

[BlueStar]

Here's some

[queen of the caramels]

I was listening to the radio this morning when I heard this.

This morning we talked about Cabbits...the cross between a cat and a rabbit. I swear when I was in college we'd see these weird hybrids in the field behind the school...animals with cat heads and rabbit hind legs and tails.

Complete with the "cousin in Ontario" who breeds them.
I sent the Messybeast link. Doubt if it will change any-one mind though.

[llewtrah]

Originally Posted by queen of the caramels

I was listening to the radio this morning when I heard this.
Complete with the "cousin in Ontario" who breeds them.
I sent the Messybeast link. Doubt if it will change any-one mind though.

Will be opening my email with trepidation! I've had a few requests to say my piece on a phone-in, but timezone differences and restrictions imposed by work on contact with media (even if not work-related) makes that impossible.

[Horse Chestnut]

Darby's been making sweet love to his kitty all evening. Lucky they're both fixed, or I'd be overrun with Catlies... or Colats? Whatever.

[Lainie]

You know, if you videotaped that, you could probably find people who'd pay you for it.

[Horse Chestnut]

Oh, Lainie. You make it sound so... tawdry!

[llewtrah]

Reviving an old thread here. In the last several hours my website has been getting a load of hits from people looking for cabbits/cabbit information (90% from the USA and the rest from Canada). Has there been something in the news or on TV over there about cabbits that's causing this "flap"?

[queen of the caramels]

I haven't seen or heard anything but I'm not a big tv watcher, sorry.

[snopes]

Originally Posted by llewtrah

Has there been something in the news or on TV over there about cabbits that's causing this "flap"?

Last night on "Headlines," Jay Leno featured a classified ad from someone who was offering Cabbits for sale and proclaimed that he'd never heard of a cabbit.

[llewtrah]

Thank you kindly! Currently about 90% of my traffic relates to cabbits and much of that involves "cabbits for sale". I'm continually amazed that people still believe the myth (I guess there really is "one born every minute"). These days I get queries with a modern variation on cabbits - that they are GM creatures rather than the result of interspecies romance.

[Hapax Legomena]

Originally Posted by snopes

Last night on "Headlines," Jay Leno featured a classified ad from someone who was offering Cabbits for sale and proclaimed that he'd never heard of a cabbit.

Jay said he'd never heard of it? He must not have remembered this...granted it was nearly five years ago:

Originally Posted by CenTex

Tonight on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, he was doing his "headlines" segment, and someone had sent in a classified ad for cabbits.

Clearly this cabbit thing is never going to die...and with the new idea that these things can now be created in a lab you'll start to hear stories about how one or two must have escaped and are now breeding in the wild.