Re: Beaks

["Nicholas Jainschigg" <nickej@earthlink.net>]

I'm not saying that beaks account for birds' life spans, merely that they
make adaptive sense in a longer-lived organism, and may contibute to
adaptive success. I remember seeing an article that suggested that the
proximate cause of a lot of large-cat mortality was dental difficulty,
rather than what we might think of as more common signs of senescence like
arthritis. Another astonishing bit of hearsay: I've heard that up until the
mid twentieth century in Britain, dentures were considered a generous and
considerate wedding present.And people, at least, have the means to
brush.....
Nick J.