Doesn't this all get back to the English vs the African Swallow? On Jan 28, 2004, at 6:41 PM, Jerry Friedman wrote: > > --- 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/ >