Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/10/15/animals-have-evolved-into-a-crab-like-shape-at-least-5-separate-times.html
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Young Earth aficionados will love that!
After skimming the journal article, I think what’s meant is that the evolutionary process occurring on at least 5 separate occasions has been studied for at least the last century.
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crab? or spider?
I for one, welcome our new crustacean overlords.
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…nature just really likes the crap shape…for some inexplicable reason.
Of course it’s explicable. The crab shape is clearly very efficient. Evolution optimizes in local niches, primarily for energy efficiency. Sometimes it also optimizes for mating practices if competition in a niche is high. In other words, just like people, evolution starts out with engineering, but switches to marketing when that stops working.
At this point it’s not surprising when major body plans evolve multiple times. We know flight has evolved at lease three separate times, completely independently. Anything really advantageous is effectively inevitable.
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Seems to be nature’s call for biomimicry.
But that would likely end up a monstrous crab shaped tank that would tear apart anything in its wake using its digger like claws. Big money in military “innovation”.
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Obligatory xkcd is obligatory:
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That is the most salient thing I will have read today. Maybe this week.
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Now we have a good idea what our overlords will look like… and how they will taste with butter and lemon.
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More food for us I say!
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Let’s play Crabs!
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(I did not make this image. I downloaded these images from (I think) a personal web site at CMU in December of 1998. I have lost all other information about them. If you are the creator of this or any other CRAB image stored in http://www.ee0r.com/misc/crab/, please contact me.)
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The early ancestral form of arthropods is more wormlike with all body segments in the same plane. By folding the tail segments under the thorax extra protection is given to the animal by covering the softer underside and more protection is provided to eggs which develop attached beneath the tail segments. Its an easy enough change with clear benefits in security that many lines have done it
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Late-stage anthropocene fun all staged, wow. Aim for legendary Japanese Monster, achieve crabbiness.
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NEW SCI-FI TV PITCH: Star Trek except instead of encountering planet after planet populated by creatures that look like humans in various forms of face makeup it’s just new kinds of crabs.
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The crabs do not agree that crab shape is a crap shape. They’d like to nip this usage in the bud and ask you to take a sideways look at it and pincer it out of that sentence.
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Episode 1:
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The typo was worth it for the punstorm.
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