There are just so few optimal solutions to the same problem.
It’s also why we should always try to copy nature when it comes to technology.
We should always look to nature, yes. A lot of aerodynamic designs seem to look a lot like the world’s fastest birds. Trees really do seem to optimize for capturing solar energy in an easily encoded blueprint.
But also there are a few areas where we should recognize the limits of scope of the solutions nature has provided, or recognize the path dependency in how evolution might optimize for a particular pathway that no longer should continue to pose a restriction (the giraffe’s recurrent laryngeal nerve, for example).
We’re allowed to mix and match. Just gotta be careful and recognize just how powerful billions of years of evolution is, as an optimization method.
A lot of aerodynamic designs seem to look a lot like the world’s fastest birds.
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Me too, thanks. If I’m not making a total ass of myself, you need to get me to a hospital because something is wrong
This is lemmy. It’s not like we need a special time
everything in nature has analagous structures. if you don’t see them you’re either looking too close or too far and you need to shift your perspective. a coral reef is a forest and the corals are the trees.
Coral trees are make of rock wood and each leaf is it’s own organism.
Trees are coral. Dead wood/dead limestone, wrapped over with living tissue.
There’s also anteaters
There are anteaters! Well done!
Big if true
Small if false
Medium if ambiguous
Asymmetric if uncertain
About dog-sized actually.
Depends on the dog
I think its even wilder to think about that sharks existed prior to trees
Sharks also existed prior to Saturn’s rings
And Polaris! (the North star)
Do you mean before the star itself existed or before its position became the north star?
Polaris is only up to about 70 million years old. So, technically it’s likely to be way younger than the rings of Saturn, but it’s still crazy to me to think that a star was just… not there until it showed up one day, and sharks were there well beforehand.
I thoughts snakes are all related?
It is worth noting – as someone who’s reasonably knowledgeable about arguably the main example, king crabs – that carcinisation is really interesting, but I think some people took the meme semi-unironically as this especially widespread example of convergent evolution.
In reality, it’s confined to some members of the true crabs’ sister infraorder, Anomura. Which is still super cool, but even the faintest notion that crabs are some singularly ideal
male bodybody form is just a runaway shitpost.the faintest notion that crabs are some singularly ideal
male bodybody form is just a runaway shitpost.What about that sounds like something I wouldn’t want to start a cult about?
The word “tree” just describes a plant phenotype, nothing more
Fish
Orson Scott Card was right*.
*About one particular thing.
