--- Philip Hart <philiph at SLAC.Stanford.EDU> wrote: > > > On Mon, 26 Jan 2004, Julie Alipaz wrote: > > > there are two schools of thought 1) females are the bigger because of > > reproductive issues. They must feed a brood--take bigger prey, they > > must incubate the clutch--bigger = more body heat. that said, they > > also believe 2) that it is a historical artifact of early avian > > divergence. But the first theory gets more respect. Thanks! > I'm trying to understand why 1) wouldn't apply more generally in > predators. Me too. > Would this mean female raptors are scraping at the upper range of > useful size, and male raptors are less likely to starve or break > wings or graze trees by accident or something? I guess birds have > a more difficult design job than say cats... I don't think so, because the smallest North American hawk, the sharp-shinned hawk (which a Dragaeran wouldn't even consider a hawk) has at least as much size dimorphism as the goshawk. > I think Loiosh says Rocza is a better flier since she's bigger... Funny, I've discussed this one on the Nabokov list too. There's a very rough trend that bigger birds fly slightly faster, but the fastest birds are swifts, which are pretty small. For stamina, there's really no correlation. To a first approximation, size doesn't matter. I doubt you heard it here first. Of course, we have no idea what sexual dimorphism is like in jhereg beyond the size difference. I don't think we even know what color they are. Jerry Friedman __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/