2608: Family Reunion - Revision history

172.71.99.74: /* Explanation */ Added table of most recent common ancestors

2024-12-22T11:42:36Z

‎Explanation: Added table of most recent common ancestors

172.71.166.120: Undo revision 349714 by 162.158.175.129 (talk)

2024-09-01T03:31:34Z

Undo revision 349714 by 162.158.175.129 (talk)

162.158.175.129 at 03:30, 1 September 2024

2024-09-01T03:30:39Z

172.71.174.199 at 03:23, 1 September 2024

2024-09-01T03:23:41Z

172.71.166.4 at 03:20, 1 September 2024

2024-09-01T03:20:39Z

172.69.23.118: /* Explanation */

2024-02-07T05:27:54Z

‎Explanation

B for brain: /* Transcript */

2023-11-09T21:33:49Z

‎Transcript

172.70.162.155: /* Explanation */ I'm pretty sure this is what was meant (to match the comic)

2022-08-16T20:48:24Z

‎Explanation: I'm pretty sure this is what was meant (to match the comic)

172.69.70.65 at 20:41, 16 August 2022

2022-08-16T20:41:10Z

Account: /* Explanation */ Removing some stale incomplete tags

2022-07-02T21:28:53Z

‎Explanation: Removing some stale incomplete tags

@@ Line 13: / Line 13: @@
 The general English definition of a {{w|cousin}}, which is a person sharing an ancestor who is not a direct parent of either party, can be qualified by two numbers. There is the ''n''th-ness of the relationship (the fewest generations you need to go beyond one's parentage, "a first cousin" implies that a grandparent is the key link) - for example, [[Cueball|this Cueball's]] relation to [[White Hat]] is via a great-grandparent, whilst that with [[Hairbun]] is through a great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparent. A "removed" number is any difference in this number between the two individuals, such that a child of a direct cousin invokes a "once removed" relationship between the two (without individually qualifying who is the 'senior' generation, from whom the 'nth' count is determined). You would normally only qualify "first cousin" if this fact is considered important, and "zero times removed" would also be considered implicit.
 In this strip, all the humans are shown to be no more distantly related than 35th cousins. This may seem closely related for randomly selected humans, but the number of cousins a given person has increases exponentially with successive degrees of separation. For example, if family lines are separate, each person would have 64 pairs of sixth-generation great-grandparents. How many descendants those grandparents have now depends on how many living children each couple has, and how often breeding lines cross, but [[https://blogs.ancestry.com/cm/theres-a-1-in-300-chance-that-a-complete-stranger-is-your-cousin/ studies in Britain]] concluded that the average person in that region has nearly 200,000 sixth cousins. 35th cousins is probably nearly the most distant relationship you're likely to find among people who have ancestors from the same geographical region.
 As pointed out in the title text, cat lifespans (or, more importantly, inter-generational breeding cycles) are somewhat different from those of humans. Although they would have still been very similar immediately after the divergence from the appropriate most recent common ancestor (MRCA), the differences will have built up to a generational-count displacement of a similarly extreme nature. i.e. that while the shared ancestor is Cueball's 17-million-or-so-Great Grandparent, the cat is in turn the 31-million-or-so-Great Grandchild. Exactly how accurate, or even precise, Randall considers these numbers is unknown, but it is the kind of fact that we know he likes to research and use expert opinion for.
 If we presume that generations of humans (including proto-humans, pre-humans, etc) since the divergence from cathood (including proto-cats, pre-cats, and the rest, back to the common ancestral form) have averaged around 5 years, then a 17 millionth cousin may be about right. Many of our (and cats') early ancestors will have necessarily been small burrowing mammals — to have been amongst the ones who survived the asteroid around 66 million years ago that killed off most of the dinosaurs — with contemporary equivalents having breeding cycles in terms of a year at the most. But we currently have a large feasible range of generational cycle (15-50 years, ''very'' roughly, with or without technical/social help or hinderances), that may have started to drag our long-term average upwards since at least the age of the early hominids, if not the age of our primate forebears or earlier.

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 {{comic
 | number    = 2608
-| date      = April 18, 2023
+| date      = April 18, 2022
 | title     = Family Reunion
 | image     = family_reunion.png

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 {{comic
 | number    = 2608
-| date      = April 18, 2022
+| date      = April 18, 2023
 | title     = Family Reunion
 | image     = family_reunion.png

@@ Line 9: / Line 9: @@
 ==Explanation==
-Because all humans are descended from a {{w|Most recent common ancestor|common ancestor}}, every human is, at some point, related to every other human, albeit distantly. Similarly, all life forms on Earth are presumed (with good reasons) to be descended from a single {{w|Most recent common ancestor|even more distant relative}} whose ultimate lineage {{w|Last universal common ancestor|became more relevant}} than any from its own 'cousins' at the time, and thus ''all'' life forms are distantly related. This makes every interaction with another life-form, technically, a family reunion, if not in the traditional sense.
+Because all humans are descended from a {{w|Most recent common ancestor|common ancestor}}, every human is, at some point, related to every other human, albeit distantly. Similarly, all life forms on Earth are presumed (with good reasons) to be descended from a single even more distant relative whose ultimate lineage {{w|Last universal common ancestor|became more relevant}} than any from its own 'cousins' at the time, and thus ''all'' life forms are distantly related. This makes every interaction with another life-form, technically, a family reunion, if not in the traditional sense.
 The general English definition of a {{w|cousin}}, which is a person sharing an ancestor who is not a direct parent of either party, can be qualified by two numbers. There is the ''n''th-ness of the relationship (the fewest generations you need to go beyond one's parentage, "a first cousin" implies that a grandparent is the key link) - for example, [[Cueball|this Cueball's]] relation to [[White Hat]] is via a great-grandparent, whilst that with [[Hairbun]] is through a great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparent. A "removed" number is any difference in this number between the two individuals, such that a child of a direct cousin invokes a "once removed" relationship between the two (without individually qualifying who is the 'senior' generation, from whom the 'nth' count is determined). You would normally only qualify "first cousin" if this fact is considered important, and "zero times removed" would also be considered implicit.

@@ Line 9: / Line 9: @@
 ==Explanation==
-Because all humans are descended from a {{w|Mitochondrial Eve|common ancestor}}, every human is, at some point, related to every other human, albeit distantly. Similarly, all life forms on Earth are presumed (with good reasons) to be descended from a single {{w|Most recent common ancestor|even more distant relative}} whose ultimate lineage {{w|Last universal common ancestor|became more relevant}} than any from its own 'cousins' at the time, and thus ''all'' life forms are distantly related. This makes every interaction with another life-form, technically, a family reunion, if not in the traditional sense.
+Because all humans are descended from a {{w|Most recent common ancestor|common ancestor}}, every human is, at some point, related to every other human, albeit distantly. Similarly, all life forms on Earth are presumed (with good reasons) to be descended from a single {{w|Most recent common ancestor|even more distant relative}} whose ultimate lineage {{w|Last universal common ancestor|became more relevant}} than any from its own 'cousins' at the time, and thus ''all'' life forms are distantly related. This makes every interaction with another life-form, technically, a family reunion, if not in the traditional sense.
 The general English definition of a {{w|cousin}}, which is a person sharing an ancestor who is not a direct parent of either party, can be qualified by two numbers. There is the ''n''th-ness of the relationship (the fewest generations you need to go beyond one's parentage, "a first cousin" implies that a grandparent is the key link) - for example, [[Cueball|this Cueball's]] relation to [[White Hat]] is via a great-grandparent, whilst that with [[Hairbun]] is through a great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparent. A "removed" number is any difference in this number between the two individuals, such that a child of a direct cousin invokes a "once removed" relationship between the two (without individually qualifying who is the 'senior' generation, from whom the 'nth' count is determined). You would normally only qualify "first cousin" if this fact is considered important, and "zero times removed" would also be considered implicit.

@@ Line 22: / Line 22: @@
 To get a 50 billionth cousin from the potted plant, then the generations of (eventually) humans since we were of the same form as that time's ancestral plants (or vice-versa) would need to average two weeks. This is possible, but difficult to be precise about due to the lack of much of the required evidence in the known fossilized remains.  Any reasonable estimate, however, should be heavily weighted towards generation spans common for unicellular eukaryotes, rather than the longer generations common for multicellular eukaryotes: the general consensus on the most recent common ancestor for of animals and plants identifies it as a unicellular eukaryote.
-Given the above analysis of eukaryotes as cousins one wonders why Randal Monroe didn't include that every lack of gathering is also a family reunion.
+Given the above analysis of eukaryotes as cousins one wonders why Randall didn't include that every lack of gathering is also a family reunion.
 ==Transcript==

@@ Line 44: / Line 44: @@
 [[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
 [[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
-[[Category:Comics featuring Danish]] <!-- Danish?-->
+[[Category:Comics featuring Danish]] <!-- Danish? Could be Megan. Should delete.-->
 [[Category:Comics featuring Hairbun]]
 [[Category:Cats]]
 [[Category:Biology]]

← Older revision		Revision as of 21:28, 2 July 2022
Line 8:		Line 8:

	==Explanation==		==Explanation==
−	~~{{incomplete\|Created by THE PERSON WHOSE RELATIVE IS A CAT AND A HUMAN (WHOOPS) - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}~~

	Because all humans are descended from a {{w\|Mitochondrial Eve\|common ancestor}}, every human is, at some point, related to every other human, albeit distantly. Similarly, all life forms on Earth are presumed (with good reasons) to be descended from a single {{w\|Most recent common ancestor\|even more distant relative}} whose ultimate lineage {{w\|Last universal common ancestor\|became more relevant}} than any from its own 'cousins' at the time, and thus ''all'' life forms are distantly related. This makes every interaction with another life-form, technically, a family reunion, if not in the traditional sense.		Because all humans are descended from a {{w\|Mitochondrial Eve\|common ancestor}}, every human is, at some point, related to every other human, albeit distantly. Similarly, all life forms on Earth are presumed (with good reasons) to be descended from a single {{w\|Most recent common ancestor\|even more distant relative}} whose ultimate lineage {{w\|Last universal common ancestor\|became more relevant}} than any from its own 'cousins' at the time, and thus ''all'' life forms are distantly related. This makes every interaction with another life-form, technically, a family reunion, if not in the traditional sense.