Spyke
lemmy.world

I dont think they can go 360 maybe 270 those wings are a fundamental change

7
kautaureply
lemmy.world

You and her call them chickens, but it’s not the chickens I’m afraid of

4

you're absolutely right, I just figured enough people had seen it I would just embed the gif

2

I mean we have flightless birds already, their vestigial wings could turn prehensile again eventually

6

Not sure whether that was intended by the comment in that screenshot but it's a great detail either way

3

Crustaceans: Crab

Mammals: Weasel Crab

Plants: Tree Grass. Everything grass.

Amphibians & Reptiles: Unchanged because they are perfect Crab

Birds: 360° around back to dinosaurs First of all, avian dinosaurs are dinosaurs. Secondly, 360° doesn't really make sense, probably they meant 180°. Finally, crab.

Fungi: I shan't speculate on the affairs of gods.

Moral of the story: You might not like it but decapods are peak animal evolution. All roads lead to crab.

35
programming.dev

One fungus will eventually manage to mind control the crabs, like some already do with ants.

5

Hopefully, in a less destructive and more symbiotic manner. As much as I have a grudge against odorous house ants, I wouldn't wish cordyceps on them, much less our future crab descendents.

1

Plant evolution is anything but stable. They keep evolving and devolving from weeds to trees and back every few 100 generations.

4

360° makes sense if the starting point was dinosaurs. Birds would be the 180° mark.

3

360° could be implying they are already that and that they'll go through some cycle from being modern dinosaurs into future dinosaurs, but remaining much the same at the start and end positions. Or they were one of the many that never did understand angles and degrees during geometry 🤷‍♂️

2

Secondly, 360° doesn't really make sense, probably they meant 180°.

It makes sense if you consider birds to be a mid-360° position of dinosaur evolution. They started at "classic" dinosaurs, pivoted to the avian variety, and will continue to pivot until they return to their classic form.

2
rozodrureply
lemmy.world

you seem like an expert and I was actually wondering this yesterday while I was out on a walk cause I tend to think about silly things. So Theropods evolved into birds right? what about Sauropods or like Triceratops? or did they just go extinct

2
Danquebecreply
sh.itjust.works

Groups never evolve into something. Species do.

Theropods are a group comprising a lot of species.

There was one species of theropod that evolved a few characterics we associate with birds. They evolved into a few species and some of them evolved into yet more species. They're at the origin of the whole bird group.

See it like a tree with branches branching out with many branchss just getting cut short. One of that branching branch is the bird group, and it's on the branching branch of theropod.

And yes, the branching branchs that are Sauropods and Ornithischia were all completely cut at the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction 65 million years ago.

4

Yeah. It was admittedly a bit heartbreaking to discover that it appears that there are no extant descendents of any sauropod or ornithischia species. :(

1

These are actually questions that I've asked and done digging about in info sources on. I'm sad to report that it does appear that only descendents of theropod species appear to have survived. :(

1
gruereply
lemmy.world

Fish are three of the categories listed in the meme.

3

::: spoiler Fish, fish, and fish. Mammals, amphibians/reptiles, and birds :::

2

Crustaceans: Extinct

Mammals: Extinct

Plants: Extinct

Amphibians & Reptiles: Extinct

Birds: Extinct

Fungi: Interstellar hive-mind

11
lemmy.world

Everything in the system evolves into a cloud of dust and gas about 27 million years from now.

9
Machinistreply
lemmy.world

I respect the hell out of Baxter, he's a hard sci-fi artist. However, he's so unrelentingly bleak I had to quit reading his stuff.

5
Macreply
mander.xyz

Can you share where you felt that way? Been a while since I've read him.

3
Machinistreply
lemmy.world

The midpoint to the end of Evolution, humans basically devolve and ultimately go extinct.

It's been awhile since I've read anything by him as well.

I remember another book where artifically created people inside a dwarf star were dying due to solar harvesting, IIRC. I remember it being depressing but fascinating. Don't remember how it ends.

5
Macreply
mander.xyz

Yeah, very fair. I guess i quite like the bleakness. I love dark and gritty stories.

3

He's an incredible author, I'd put him up there with Alastair Reynolds. I just can't handle it.

3
lemmy.world

There's a phenomenal documentary series called The Future Is Wild that speculates on this question.

https://youtube.com/@thefutureiswildofficial

https://www.thefutureiswild.com/

It has 3 parts, projecting to 5, 100 and 200 million years into the future.

The main theme is that niches determine attributes. So when an opportunity opens up, one species will evolve to fill that niche. For instance sea birds evolve into whales. Octopodes evolve into primates.

I loved this as a kid. It was one of a handful of really influential pieces of media from my childhood.

6

I'm actually surprised octopus haven't evolved more than they already have. I suppose they would have to evolve skeletons to be able to survive on land so that's probably what's holding them back.

1

Plants keep evolving and devolving into trees every 100 generations.

5

Hot take: the fungi will take over all existing animal and plant life, and create a whole biosphere of fungi. Fungi crustaceans, fungi mammals, fungi plants, fungi amphibians, fungi reptiles, fungi birds.

The fungi humans would have achieved world peace, because there's no genders to create inequalities, and with spores flying everywhere, unwanted infidelity and physical differences are so common that anger and jealousy makes no sense.

5

We seemed to have it all hammered out. Love me some Cambrian explosion, wild shit! It was like the 1910-1920s for the industrial age. "Throw it at the wall and see what sticks!"

3

Everything becomes crab on long enough timeline, Daniel-san. Be the lobster! Shell on. Shell off. Sift the floor.

3

Raccoon also seems to be a pretty popular mammal convergance. Or generally small climbing quadruped with a varied diet and at least semi-functional hands.

3

I had a dream a couple weeks ago where I was reading some news about penguins developing a language to talk to each other. And in the dream I was wondering if we as humans were in any way hindering the penguins' capacity to evolve into a sentient species - then realized they were already so close to us. They have arms and legs, can use tools, talk with a structured language and everything - what kept them being labeled as plain animals if they did all that?

In the afternoon I suddenly remembered the dream and for a split second was kinda agreeing with my dream's argument, until I realized the penguins in the dream were closer to Animal Crossing characters than to actually penguins.

2

We'll just have to see what spots get opened up by lack of biodiversity to know for sure. There won't be new crabs and weasels if there aren't enough prey for them.

0