Today I Learned @lemmy.world ooli @lemmy.world 3 wk. ago

TIL , Why Do Animals Keep Evolving into Crabs?

www.scientificamerican.com Why Do Animals Keep Evolving into Crabs?

Crablike bodies are so evolutionarily favorable that they’ve evolved at least five different times

60 comments

convergent evolution is such a head scratcher, nature is full of puzzles, like how humans became to dominate this world, yet a human allegedly wrote the title of this post
- Tittle*
  
  *Titties
It's the same reason both bats and birds have wings.

This article is trash. It's been established for a long time that bats have wings to frighten criminals.

the tasty king crab that's coveted as a seafood delicacy, aren't even technically "true crabs."

I'm not ready for this today.
- King crab is technically imitation crab meat.
  
  I would call it mislabeled, since it's called crab but wasn't made to imitate crab.
- Man, you're not going to like the technicalities of what is and isn't a penguin...
  
  They wear tuxedos... right?
  Right?
They keep evolving into pigs too.

Peccary:

Tapir:
- Capybara:
  
  Thanks, I knew there was at least one more. I feel like there's something else I'm not thinking of as well but I can't place it.
  
  I thought those were technically rodents?
- Into two pigs? How often?
  
  Twice
The semantics of this title makes my brain itch
- Ok, when we're at 100 comments about the tittle, I will finally edit it
  
  lol throw a colon after TIL and it's good enough.
  
  Still hurts
  
  The title , yo
  
  Titillating
  
  Be careful what you ask for on Lemmy... :-P
- I like that it kinda implies that animals are spontaneously becoming crab often enough to be a problem.
  
  I mean, when you start categorizing things by phylogenetics instead of phenetics, you realize that certain body plans happen a lot more than expected.
- Drill a small hole and you can scratch it
Crab people, crab people.
- Taste like crab, talk like people.
If crabs came from animals, why are there still animals?

Nature: "Give it time."
note to self: don't evolve into a crab
- apparently we won't because we're not modular enough
The big takeaway the casual reader should learn from this is that contrary to the memes it's not "animals" it's "crustaceans" and to some extent arthropods.

Apes won't evolve into crabs unless we do it deliberately.
- Until we do it deliberately.
  
  Ah fuck, you guys found the secret ape crab lab, didn't you?
This title hurt me physically.
Crabs are the most chaotic structures in the universe so, naturally, entropy will always create crabs as order moves to chaos.
I want to be one of those crabs that form a conga line and swap shells.
- That'll be the hermit, ironically.
I've also heard kangaroos are further evolved, or more distinctly evolved, from our common ancestor than us.

No claws yet though. Having a biological pocket is cool.
- Ahem. 🫣
(V) (:,,:) (V)
detritis

You've viewed 60 comments.