Tag: evolution

Did blind cavefish evolve by breaking the laws of evolution?

mindblowingscience:

We’ve found out why a Mexican cavefish has no eyes – and the surprising answer is likely to be seized upon by those who think the standard view of evolution needs revising.

Over the past few million years, blind forms of the Mexican tetra (Astyanax mexicanus) have evolved in caves. Maintaining eyes and the visual parts of the brain uses lots of energy, so the loss of eyes is a big advantage for animals living in the dark. Instead the cavefish “see” by sucking.

It was assumed that these fish became blind because mutations disabled key genes involved in eye development. This has been shown to be the case for some other underground species that have lost their eyes.

But Aniket Gore of the US’s National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and colleagues haven’t found any disabling changes in the DNA sequences of eye development genes in the cavefish.

Continue Reading.

Did blind cavefish evolve by breaking the laws of evolution?

spoonyruncible:

I do feel bad for plants in general.
Like, I know they are often as vicious as animals in many ways, just slower.
But, I mean, they just show up and they’re like, “I Think I Will Evolve To Eat The Sun And Also Make Oxygen And How Now Is All This.”
And, like, everything fucking dies at first (totally not plants fault, btw. okay maybe it was but they didn’t mean to) but then new things evolve.
And they’re like, “Fuck it, eating each other suuuucks. Let’s eat the plants which give us life.”
And so we start doing that.
And plants are all, “Oh Dear No, I Do Not Care At All For Being Eaten. I Will Make Myself Into Poison Sometimes.”
But, y’know, stuff kept eating plants anyway so plants, ever the bro, came up with a new idea. “I Have Made A Decision About Being Eaten And You May Eat Me Friends And Here Is An Especially Tasty Bit Packed All Full of Delicious Sugars Which I Have Produced At Great Cost (What They Do Not Know Is That My Seeds Are Within And Shall Be Propagated Near And Far By Their Dung)“
But that’s not good enough for animals, no, not at all.
We love the fuck out of some pomegranates but also alliums which are like, “I Have Not Decided To Go In For This Being Eaten Business. I Shall Be Very Foul Tasting And Also A Poison.”
But no, sorry, onions, you fucked up.
You accidentally wound up with a species that just doesn’t give up or fully comprehend the idea of things tasting “”‘bad’“’ or other concepts like not eating poison. (Sorry, plants, later we turn some of you who are not poison into a poison we consume recreationally. We really enjoy eating poison.) 
Legit, alliums are deadly to, like, every other species.
And we call them aromatics and throw them in everything.
Peppers are the best, though.
They completely got on the being eaten train.
BUT ONLY BIRDS
Peppers are like, “You May Eat Me, Fair Avian, For You Are Sure To Spread Me A Great Distance. But, Mammal, Take HEED. Should You Eat Me Then I Will Burn You Most Terribly.”
And we were all about that.
“The FUCK, burning? I love pain,” said humans, presumably.
“You know, peppers, you and evolution have done a good job at burning us but I am pretty sure we could make your chemical agony even more potent. Come hang with us,” humans added to a very confused pepper just before creating the ghost chili.

violent-darts:

inflagrante-delicatessen:

gallusrostromegalus:

0somethingcool0:

kayla-bird:

surfcommiesmustdie:

nevergonnawalkpastafez:

surfcommiesmustdie:

rose-on-the-mountain:

drtanner:

thischick25:

tardishobo:

IM LAUGIHNG HARDER THAN EVER RIGHT THIS SECOND

Reblogging this again because Chris just made me realize that sheep are so stupid that I can’t even think like them:

These sheep? They are actually running away from the car.

They are so stupid that they’re following each other in a circle around the thing they are running from.

SHEEPNADO

when your group cohesion is set higher than your flee response distance.

Moshpit

This is actually called a sheep cyclone and it happens because sheep don’t have a hierarchy. In most herds, whichever animal is the leader will sense danger and take off running. The rest of the herd takes it’s cues from the leader and follows. Sheep, on the other hand, don’t have a leader. If the flock runs, they run, and they follow whatever fluffy tail happens to be in front of them. Usually, this works out fine for the sheep. Occasionally, however, the sheep in the front starts following the fluffy tail of the sheep in the back so the whole flock ends up running in circles, going nowhere fast.

sheeps are morons lmao

is this what the doggos are for

@gallusrostromegalus

This is, to my understanding, excactly WHY we have both herding and livestock guardian dogs.  Sheep are… really amazingly dumb most of the time.  

Then, once in a while, you get one sheep that’s Entirely Too Cunning and that’s when all hell breaks loose.

…that sounds like a horror story

I have been informed by those who study domestic animal behaviour that it’s not so much that they’re stupid with the occasional intelligent one, as that their priorities are so different from our priorities – in part because we did things like deliberately breed dominant traits out of them over thousands of years – that you have to change how you think about how they work at all. 

The one, major, overwhelming priority of sheep: Stay With The Herd. This is why you get sheepnados: every single sheep is doing his or her devoted best to stay with the herd. So the sheep runs out of the way … .to the rest of the herd. At which point the other sheep follow it and … .you get sheepnado. 

The sheepnado continues in part because there’s nothing to stop it: the car doesn’t actually present a clear and present threat (none of the sheep have been hurt), and there’s no farmer or dog to take that lead position and give them direction. It’s ore or less succeeding at what it needs to, which is that no sheep are being run down by the car, but, THE HERD IS STAYING TOGETHER. 

If you want to see how smart a sheep gets, take it away from the herd. 

(And if you think about this, it makes perfect sense: “stay with the herd” has HUGE SELECTION PRESSURE on it for domestic sheep. Domestic sheep who stray, die without reproducing. Domestic sheep that get stroppy with the farmer or interfere with the leadership of farmer and his dogs … die, usually without reproducing. Domestic sheep that Stay With The Herd? Usually live and reproduce. The herd becomes ALL IMPORTANT. It’s not that they don’t know they’re running in circles, it’s that running in circles achieves The Goal.

It’s not that sheep have no survival instincts: it’s that we as a species have actually redirected their survival instincts in one overwhelming direction, and evolution is a messy kludge.) 

And then if you want to give yourself a head-trip, combine this with those Humans Are Weird SF posts and start wondering what kind of behaviours WE have that could look, to an alien with a very different priority set, as stupid as sheepnado.  

koryos:

CATS

let’s talk about housecats and how fucking weird they are evolutionarily/anthropologically

like who thought it was a good idea to have tiny malicious predators in our homes anyways????? (not us actually)

are they even domesticated????!!!?? (yes) do they even feel LOVE???????!!? (yes)

LET’S LEARN ABOUT CATS

image

“you ready 2 learn punk”

Keep reading

knightless:

dakrolak:

owlbear33:

chibisquirt:

why-animals-do-the-thing:

maythefoxbewithyou:

allmyeggmateshateyou:

c0ffeecunt:

vvhatmighthavebeenlost:

joannanullo:

betweenlinebreaks:

Are we sure that foxes are canines? Are we sure they aren’t just big stupid cats?

Ugh what a cutie

I NEED IT

I need 12

foxes aren’t canines…

WELL, they’re certainly not felines.

I’m going to textgrab from this post by prokopetz:

I often see foxes referred to as “catdogs” on Tumblr, but I wonder if folks realise how true that really is.

There’s a phenomenon called convergent evolution that occurs when two taxonomically unrelated species exploit the same ecological niche. The features that are needed to best take advantage of a given niche are pretty much the same everywhere you go; thus, over time, those species will become anatomically and behaviourally similar, even though they’re completely unrelated.

And foxes? Foxes are what you get when an ecosystem has no native small felines, so a canine species evolves to take advantage of the ecological niche that would have been exploited by a small feline, if one existed.

In other words, a fox is literally what you get when a dog tries to cat.

So, in a way…

#omg #I knew I had a huge reason for loving foxs #other than #you know #loving fox

on a similar note, hyenas are what happens when there are no dogs so felines fill that niche, Hyenas particularly spotted hyenas are wolfcats

*mind blown*

@captainchibale

You don’t want one, they aren’t good pets for the same reason monkeys aren’t good pets, but yes- they’re a lot like cats. 

And I’m pretty sure this cutie (who I doubt likes that little vest thing) is trying to pounce through the pillow like they do through underbrush or snow to get at prey underneath. Hence the bajillion videos of foxes faceplanting/diving headfirst into snow. 

spoonyruncible:

I do feel bad for plants in general.
Like, I know they are often as vicious as animals in many ways, just slower.
But, I mean, they just show up and they’re like, “I Think I Will Evolve To Eat The Sun And Also Make Oxygen And How Now Is All This.”
And, like, everything fucking dies at first (totally not plants fault, btw. okay maybe it was but they didn’t mean to) but then new things evolve.
And they’re like, “Fuck it, eating each other suuuucks. Let’s eat the plants which give us life.”
And so we start doing that.
And plants are all, “Oh Dear No, I Do Not Care At All For Being Eaten. I Will Make Myself Into Poison Sometimes.”
But, y’know, stuff kept eating plants anyway so plants, ever the bro, came up with a new idea. “I Have Made A Decision About Being Eaten And You May Eat Me Friends And Here Is An Especially Tasty Bit Packed All Full of Delicious Sugars Which I Have Produced At Great Cost (What They Do Not Know Is That My Seeds Are Within And Shall Be Propagated Near And Far By Their Dung)“
But that’s not good enough for animals, no, not at all.
We love the fuck out of some pomegranates but also alliums which are like, “I Have Not Decided To Go In For This Being Eaten Business. I Shall Be Very Foul Tasting And Also A Poison.”
But no, sorry, onions, you fucked up.
You accidentally wound up with a species that just doesn’t give up or fully comprehend the idea of things tasting “”‘bad’“’ or other concepts like not eating poison. (Sorry, plants, later we turn some of you who are not poison into a poison we consume recreationally. We really enjoy eating poison.) 
Legit, alliums are deadly to, like, every other species.
And we call them aromatics and throw them in everything.
Peppers are the best, though.
They completely got on the being eaten train.
BUT ONLY BIRDS
Peppers are like, “You May Eat Me, Fair Avian, For You Are Sure To Spread Me A Great Distance. But, Mammal, Take HEED. Should You Eat Me Then I Will Burn You Most Terribly.”
And we were all about that.
“The FUCK, burning? I love pain,” said humans, presumably.
“You know, peppers, you and evolution have done a good job at burning us but I am pretty sure we could make your chemical agony even more potent. Come hang with us,” humans added to a very confused pepper just before creating the ghost chili.

slitthelizardking:

war-rig-ace:

knightthreethousand:

did-you-kno:

Lay your arm on a flat surface and push
your thumb and pinky together. If you
don’t see a raised band across your
wrist, you are a product of evolution.
If you do, you’ve got a useless extra
muscle in your arm that is slowly being
erased from our genetic code. Source

I just did some research on this and apparently this muscle actually helps you hold a spear (something we as a majority haven’t needed to do much of in recent times, thus it is a mutation that is neither harmful nor helpful to lack this muscle)
But I’ll see you all in the post-apocalyptic world with my genetic advantage to hold and throw spears~

Important lancer test.

Mun has the thing. Mun always wondered why their forearms looked so muscular.

Source: didyouknowblog.com

What would you say is the oldest species still alive today? As in, something that’s changed so little that you could show a reconstruction of a however-old fossil to someone and they’d go “oh, yeah, that’s a ____”. I know sharks are ridiculously old, but I’m guessing some kind of invertebrate probably has them beat.

alphynix:

There are plenty of groups of organisms whose modern forms still look very similar to their relatives from many tens or hundreds of millions of years ago – so-called “living fossils”. Examples would include things like horseshoe
crabs, nautiluses, silverfish, scorpions, dragonflies, jellyfish,
hagfish, sharks, sturgeons, coelacanths, tuataras, crocodylians,
turtles, ferns, horsetails, redwoods, and mosses.

If something is already physically well-adapted to a stable ecological niche, and experiences
little environmental pressure to change, then they tend to stick with
the evolutionary equivalent of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.

As for a specific species, it’s actually really hard to tell for certain, especially
when it comes to fossils. We can label a fossil as being the “same”
species as a modern one based on physical appearance, but if we had a
living copy we might classify it very differently based on other factors
like genetics. (Plus there’s the problem that the entire concept of a biological “species” is really just a messy human construct with no clear consensus of definition.)

That said, under current species classification the tadpole shrimp Triops cancriformis doesn’t seem to have significantly changed for the last 200 million years, and some conifer trees like Araucaria araucana date back to similar ages.

But if we also include microbes here, then the clear winners are deep-sea sulfur-cycling bacteria. Modern ones are indistinguishable from fossils over 2 billion years old.