Mammals have evolved into ant eaters 12 times since the dinosaur age,study finds
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.bestiver.se/post/872325
https://phys.org/news/2025-07-mammals-evolved-ant-eaters-dinosaur.htmlOpen linkView original on lemmy.world128
Comments15
Are crabs still winning and is there a word like carcinization to describe the mammal -> anteater pipeline?
Zotification.
Very cool Nature, I love it 👍
The parallels with crabs / carcinization was the first thing I thought of when I saw the headline.
Ants should stop being so fcking tasty if they don't want to be eaten.
Fire ants are the spicy flavor!
Tasty barely has anything to do with it, they should stop being the most common animal on the planet by like a factor of 8.
The total biomass of Earth's ant population is estimated at around 12 megatons, that's a fucking lot. I'm told this exceeds the total combined biomass of all wild birds and non-human mammals, and matches about 20% of total human biomass.
If you put all the creatures of the Earth in a bag and pulled one out at random, you're about 50% likely to pull an ant.
If we can get them all in one area, we should be able to pull the Earth out of orbit.
"This animal eats ants, so let's call it an Anteater."
"What about this other one that also eats ants?"
"Uh, I dunno, Numbat I guess?"
Become a crab. Become an anteater.
¿Por qué no los dos?
With CRISPR CAS9, we can become both. While WW3 is on the doorstep, WW4 will be fought between the crabby ant-eaters and the ant-eating crabs.
Hahaha, I thought the crab counter was at about 5? Ez win for the anteaters. I mean there were some bivalve boys but there can only be one, true clam.
Yeah, I'm a crab dude and am not switching to anteater now, this is the delicious hill I die on. But I'll pay them their rheumatism.
It makes sense. Ants are delicious!
Anteaterization.