Science Controversy: Hippos More Whale Than Pig

[guttsfukk]

21 march 2009

Two scientists are challenging the accepted theory that the Hippo is more closely related to the pig than it is to the whale. According to Jessica Theodor, an associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Calgary, and her colleague Jonathan Geisler, associate professor at Georgia Southern University the hippo’s closest relatives are the whales. The scientists suggest that this may explain the hippopotamus’s love of water.

Recently a study was published in Nature in December 2007 by J. G. M. Thewissen, a professor at North-eastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine. According to Thewissen whales are more closely linked to an extinct pig-like animal, often known as India's pig or Indohyus, while hippos are closely related to living pigs. According to Theodor this study concentrates only on fossil remains to establish its conclusions and ignores extensive DNA research.

"What Thewissen is saying is that Indohyus is the closest relative of whales - and we agree. Where we think he is wrong, is that he is saying that those hippos are more closely related to true pigs than they are to whales," says Theodor. "This contradicts most of the data from DNA from the last 12 or 13 years. Those data place hippos as the closest living relative to whales." Theodor Was quoted in the website 'Science Daily' as saying.

[dssxdss2]

So Rosie O'Donell's ancestors are infact whales, not pigs as commonly assumed... Fascinating..