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Science Memes @mander.xyz

The Picard Maneuver @lemmy.world

5d ago

World travelers

80 comments

Do you're telling me that it had nothing to do with swallows being either European or African?!
- It could grip it by the husk.
  
  It’s not a matter of where it grips it! It’s a matter of weight ratios!
- Depends. Does the coconut weigh more than a duck?
  
  I don't know, I wasn't expecting some kind of Spanish Inquisition.
  
  Who are you who is so wise in the ways of science?
- But then of course, uh, African swallows are non-migratory.

35 million years of coconuts in Asia and they didn't float over until after traders established shipping routes to Asia?
- Yes, but for human related reasons. Humans moved them around a lot in Africa and Asia - moving them from Southeast Asia to India and Madagascar is bound to have an impact on the currents they get caught up in.
  
  are you proposing some kind of Columbus effect where people heading to India will occasionally end up in Taino land by accident
  
  So thanks to humans more coconuts went for a swim?
- According to the first article that popped up in the search results the most likely theory is portugese traders brought them over from madagascar.
- Climate change confirmed.

I'm gonna cast doubt on this. It happened too conveniently after people figured out long distance sea travel.
If they would have floated it's much more likely that it happened somewhere in the last million years rather than the last 500.
- Yes, it is wrong. It was the result of the sea migrations of the Astronesians

Not accurate. They were taken by Astronesians during their seaborne migrations.
Read more here
- So, aliens did it. I knew it.
- It also plays a central role in the Coconut Religion founded in 1963 in Vietnam.
  follows the Coconut Religion link
  The Coconut Religion was founded in 1963 by Vietnamese mystic and scholar Nguyễn Thành Nam,[1] also known as the Coconut Monk,[2][3] His Coconutship,[4] Prophet of Concord,[4] and Uncle Hai[4] (1909 – 1990[5]).
  Oh, come the fuck on, now
  
  Coconutship
  Definitely a sex cult.
- I was wondering how the heck coconuts journeyed around the southern passages for what would have been probably years on ocean currents and arrive in the caribbean still viable for growth.
  Or carried by a sparrow.
  Not really gonna happen.
  
  Is that an African or a European sparrow?
  
  They took the Panama Canal, obviously.
  
  A swallow could grip it by the husk
- Read more here
  Lol, I need to start doing that

The float yeah and that's how they spread, but the coconuts were mostly brought by ships.
A coconut is really good on a ship 500 years ago, you have fresh water, some nutrition, etc.
Some ship gets destroyed with a load of coconuts on board and so it began probably.
Then when even the first ones have taken root, they start floating from isle to isle themselves.
- No, it was clearly the Swallows gripping them by the husks!
  
  I wish someone gripped my husk.
- "500 years ago*
  Columbus makes the trip in 1492, 533 years ago.
  Yeah that checks out.

they only think coconuts floated over on their own 500 years ago because austronesians are supernaturally invisible to white people
- Bingo. I thought this was interesting and went looking for more information and its fake. They were brought to other parts of the world, first by austronesians and later by European sailors.
  
  Someone in this thread needs to say who austronesians are
  Edit:
  The Austronesian peoples, sometimes referred to as Austronesian-speaking peoples, are a large group of peoples who have settled in Taiwan, maritime Southeast Asia, parts of mainland Southeast Asia, Micronesia, coastal New Guinea, Island Melanesia, Polynesia, and Madagascar that speak Austronesian languages. They also include indigenous ethnic minorities in Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, Hainan, the Comoros, and the Torres Strait Islands. The nations and territories predominantly populated by Austronesian-speaking peoples are sometimes known collectively as Austronesia.
- Did austronesians reach the carribean? I thought they made it to madagascar and hawaii, but not the carribean.

So the coconuts migrated, but the majority population of many of the islands were taken there as cargo?
- Oof, good point

Please do not disturb the migratory fruits

Coconuts have evolved to spread from island to island by floating, but it's still weird that one happened to float to the other side of the world in historic times. I would have guessed that either the currents could never take a coconut there or that the currents would have taken a coconut there long ago.
(When I visit Florida, I see coconuts float by sometimes. Some have been in the water a long time - they're covered in barnacles. However, if they're still floating does that mean they might still be viable?)
- Y'know... I'd have found all this "coconuts floated from Asia to the Caribbean" stuff pretty far fetched...
  But not two years ago I was fishing, and a goddamn coconut floated right down and bumped me in the leg.
  In the Monongahela River.
  In Pittsburgh.
  
  Floating upstream - what a coconut!

No swallows necessary
- That's not what my partner says uwu

Caribbean from Asia? did they take the Panama Canal 400 years before it was built? there is not path that isn't crazy
- Asia via the Pacific to the Americas, then a swallow grabs one and brings it to the Atlantic coast.
  
  African, or European?
- They went around the horn like a real man!
- There's a current originating in Indian ocean flowing south of Africa to the gulf of Mexico, before proceeding north east between Iceland and Great Britain. It's why Scandinavia is so much warmer than the same latitude in the Americas. I'm 55 north in Denmark, and have hardly seen snow this winter, meanwhile Edmonton in Canada is 2° south of that.
  Coconuts bobbing around the south of Africa is pretty wild, but not implausible.
  
  Native Americans and Polynesians Met Around 1200 A.D.
- I assumed one finally got lucky and got around the southern tip of Africa while headed west.

The swallow may fly south with the sun or the house martin or the plover may seek warmer climes in winter, yet these are not strangers to our land?
- They could grip it by the husk

This is nuts!

Coconuts: the world's strangest migratory mammal

Life... finds a way.
- uh..

80 comments