Re: Not dinosaurs

[JCMcL <darwincr@laplaza.taos.nm.us>]

On Wed, 24 Jan 1996, Stan Friesen wrote:

> From: JCMcL <darwincr@laplaza.taos.nm.us>
>  >
>  > Some have said that these hairless tails may assist in temperature 
>  > regulation in hot regions, by serving as radiators of excess heat
> 
> The probelm with this is that the hairless tail feature doesn't correlate
> with climate.  It is a taxonomic character.  The Old-World rats and
> mice (family Muscidae, I think) tend to have "hairless" tails. Thus
> the black and Norway rats (genus Rattus) and the house mouse (genus
> Mus), both from Europe, have naked tails. On the other hand the New-
> World rats and mice pretty much all have hairy tails - as in the
> American deermice (Peromyscus), and packrats (Neotoma).
> 
> 
Murid rodents (Eurasian rats and mice) are astonishingly widespread 
despite the (to some folk) disagreeable comparative (not absolute) 
hairlessness of their tails.        

Despite - or because of?  What do these hairless tails mean, 
evolutionarily, if anything?

My own feeling has always been that the long sauropod tail was a cooling 
radiator, BTW.  Rather than a whip, or JUST a whip.