Evolution - Blog Posts

w. wait. hold on a second. are. sharks whales????????

Nope! Sharks and whales are VEEERY different. They haven’t shared an ancestor since... well.... since the devonian, I suppose. That was over 450 million years ago!

See, it’s...

Oh, bother. Alright, fine, I’ll do an infographic. It’ll be easier to explain, because there’s a lot of stuff to digest.

Let’s go back in time to.... THE CAMBRIAN!!

Disclaimer: I made this in like an hour while slapping together what I knew about these two animals and decorating it with cute images. It isn’t totally accurate, and I’m simplifying a lot for ease of reading. Please don’t eat me, I’m not a bio major!

Transcript below the cut!

[Transcript start: The image is a simple-looking infographic with a green background and chalk-like white lined drawings of various fish.

The Cambrian Explosion, which took place about 541 million years ago, featured a whole bunch of neat stuff crawling around. This included things like: 

Opabinia - a shrimp-like organism with lots of side-fins and a tuby-like appendage which it used to scoop things into its mouth

Trilobites - the ancestor of arthropods, which we consider ‘bugs’ these days.

Dickinsonia - an organism which looks a lot like a leaf, with a middle section and ray-like parts coming out of it and forming most of its body. 

Andsome of the first fishes - the jawless fish, who were our earliest ancestors. The jawless fish resemble lamprey eels - things which don’t have a moving jaw bone.

During the Devonian period (approximately 490 million years ago), the fish line evolved jaws, which was great for them, because they could now smile winningly. (And eat stuff better.) This was the last common ancestor shared between sharks and whales.

The jawed fish evolved into two groups - one was the cartilaginous fish (or fish which have no bones, only cartilage, except for their teeth) - and the other was bony fish, which had a skeleton. These body fish were technically whale ancestors - because the group eventually evolved the species which first came up on land. These were creatures similar to lungfish, who were able to process oxygen out of water and could move themselves through mud using their flippers.

Meanwhile, the shark ancestors continued their lineage in the oceans and evolved into many more funky shapes, including rays (like stingrays) and skates.

As for the fish on land - they were the ancestors to what we know today as the tetrapods - the things which eventually became the amphibians, lizards, dinosaurs... and mammals! 

One of these mammals was the whale ancestor, which looked quite similar to what we think of as a regular land animal - it had four limbs, and a body plan not dissimilar to dogs, cats, etc. Although it could walk on land, it decided to make an evolutionary U-turn and go back into the water again.

They evolved to be optimized for swimming, and eventually lost their hind limbs. They still needed to breathe air, though, and they are still considered mammals, because they birth and nurse their young! 

This begs the question: If sharks and whales aren’t related to each other that much, why do they look so similar?

That’s a great question! That’s because of something we call Convergent Evolution.

It turns out some shapes just work really well when you’re trying to swim in water. Having fins, flippers, and being fish-shaped just gives you advantage, so many water dwelling creatures end up evolving similar bodyplans - like whales and sharks did.

There’s still a reliable way to tell the two apart, though. Check their tails! See if you can tell the difference.]

Technically speaking humans and avocados have a symbiotic relationship

Evolution of Pinterest boards is like

1. Strictly the thing that the board is named after

2.thing board is named after with a sprinkle of similar stuff

3.even mix of thing board is named after,similar stuff and pins saved to the wrong board be accident

4. Mostly stuff that is kinda like the original subject of the board (you will not change the name of the board)

Togruta Marking Headcanons (Evolutionary and Epigenetic)

Okay, so the question is:

Do you think togruta markings are purely genetic or partly genetic and partly influenced by the environment?

e.g. a stressful adolescence leads to more complex markings/breakage

This conversation was had in large part on discord with @atagotiak and @dracothulhu.

Keep reading

Some people can’t handle different skin colors. I don’t think furs will help.

I feel like a whole bunch of human aesthetic problems could be solved if we just re-evolved fur

I just want to see the evolutionary process that lead to this.

Two words: Stingray skeletons.

oh my stars and garters

how have we been sleeping on ocean skeletons???

So, we know modern domesticated, (and even some wild!) animals enjoy being petted.

The question is. How far back in the history of evolution does this trait go?

What dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals would have loved a good head rub?? Which ones would have flopped over for some under-the-chin scritches??? Would some of them have headbutted you to ask for more affection like a cat??? Did some make happy sounds, like purring???

This is information I need. I need to know. Animals today exhibit these behaviors so it's pretty likely they could have done so in the past too!!

The idea of them being affectionate towards each other as well (as opposed to how they're often portrayed hunting/fighting/being scary) makes me happy too. I desperately wish we could see how they behaved.

I wonder how many eras of Earth's natural history have been completely lost just because they didn't make a visible mark on the planet.

I wonder how many species have been forever lost to time only because they never fossilized or left behind and traces of their existence.

Who knows what incredible, terrifying, or seemingly alien forms of life once called this planet home, that we'll never know once existed?

Ancient life is incredible. It makes me sad to know that so many species of flora and fauna and everything in between will never be known. Things so odd they seem straight out of movies.

Life and evolution are just so incredible, and deserve so much more appreciation than they get.

Oh how I desperately want to time travel not to change the past, but to just see the dinosaurs and watch the earth change and evolve over billions of years

Scary puppy

The Close-Up Face of a Spider.

she’s evolved

zay is now officially half blue 🔥 (theelin)

Soo the doodle page isn’t actually done whatsoever but i found a doodle from February (the one in the bottom left corner) and debated making Zay blue so now she’s blue andd i updated the doodles i had for her before :))

closeups under cut :)

bam evolution

when I was very young my mother told me “they’re going to try and teach you that we came from monkeys but that’s not true and you shouldn’t listen to them because we were made from god” and she was my mom and I was like 7, so I pretty much just went “okay, noted, anyway”

anyway like 2 years later evolution comes up in class and one of my classmates goes “is this the we evolved from monkeys thing?”

and I’m on Red Alert. this is what my mom told me about!

the teacher replies, “well, we share a common ancestor, but we didn’t evolve directly from apes. if you go back way before apes or people existed, you’ll find a different third thing we both came from. we know this because of things like fossils”

and I was like whoo! dodged a bullet there, good thing my 4th grade science class isn’t trying to teach us we came from monkeys and instead figured stuff out using fossils and taught us that instead :)

Instructions Unclear, Ended Up Believing In Evolution Anyway

✨Drawings Timeline✨

The start of my career, 2018 and 2019! Apparently, this guy had lightning and water powers that works better when he cries; and the lady was a drawing I made with Instagram poll, I guess.

2020 and 2021, these were DTYIS. My mum gave me a ceramic with the first drawing printed on it, but I don’t like this drawing a lot cuz the shoulders are so tiny lol. And I specially love the light in the golden drawing 💖

2022 and 2023, I got obsessed with semi-realism. These two were personas in my self-insert stories. The first was to Miraculous and LWA, the second was to Marvel.

Finally, 2024 and 2025! Tbh, it was hard to decide on a drawing for 2024 cuz I tried a thousand different styles, but I guess this Elsa one was my pattern style. The same goes for 2025, and, despiste the painting is simple, the drawing itself is my style for now.

(Omg, they’re always in front angle or facing left ☠️)

I find that there are 4 versions of Grian.

Cosplay is love, cosplay is life. Outfit for every and any occasion for anyone.

Poor bean who needs therapy, self care, and a lot of self esteem.

The opposite of 2 who is just a guy with too much ego to care about things.

CHAOTIC NEUTRAL WHO HAS TOO MUCH BASTARD ENERGY THAT CAN BE CONTAINED IN HIS BODY.

Anything after that would be a mix.

How The Nocturnal Bottleneck and Nipples Make Us Human

Almost every post here considers what humans do have, really. It’s a little tiring; realistically every world has its harsh environments and vicious species and a sophont to match. We probably wouldn’t be unique for our adaptability or our persistence or even adrenaline

But our evolution is fucked up as hell, to put it lightly.

Mammals went through what’s been dubbed the nocturnal bottleneck essentially since the start of the mesozoic right up until the Cretaceous ended the archosaur’s exclusive hold over the daylight. We lost a lot of things from every mammal spending most of its time in either a cramped, suffocating burrow or scrounging around in the faint hours of nighttime. Our blood cells lost their nuclei to hold more oxygen while we spent time deep underground, we lost protections against ultraviolet rays in our skin and eyes, we can’t even repair our own DNA using the light of the sun. Most aliens probably wouldn’t have such traits unless their evolution followed a very similar path to ours. They’d be able to see ultraviolet and wouldn’t have to worry about sunburn and all the wonderful privileges essentially all fish, birds, amphibians, and reptiles enjoy as we speak. 

There’s also what we gained from spending so much time in the dark.

Brown fat is only found in mammals, it’s a special type of fat which bear cells with several oil droplets and are utterly jammed with mitochondria. This lets it make heat, a lot of it, fast. We don’t even need to shiver to induce this heat generation from brown adipose tissue - factor in our downright hyperactive mitochondria, and we can warm up quickly. Sure, it doesn’t have too much use in adult humans, but it keeps our infants warm and still provides a little boost the whole run we have in this universe.

Unless aliens also went through a time where their small ancestors had to face cold nights, they’d have to produce heat the old fashioned way when chilled. Aliens might have to shiver the whole time they’re in a cold room while the human watches in confusion, quite literally unshaken, and wonders if the room is a lot colder than the thermostat set to 60 says. The aliens stare at their companion in confusion, it’s just a normal temperature to shiver at after all, how is the human sitting so still?

Our small ancestors spending all their time out foraging at night is also why we have such a good sense of touch, smell, and hearing. They were more important senses than vision (we’re lucky to have even redeveloped basic color vision, frankly) at the time and place and simply ended up continuing to serve us well. Birds and reptiles rarely have acute senses of smell and the latter especially are lucky to have acute hearing, and birds rarely have impeccable hearing themselves either. Our skin is free of scales and honed to sensitivity, and our external ears and complicated ear bones provide an immense range of hearing (from 20 all the way to 17,000 hertz!).

Aliens might not be able to pin down the chirp of a cricket or the light click of a lock being picked. The human might be the only one on board a ship that can pick out the finer sounds of the engine’s constant thrum and know the critical difference between when everything is fine and when something is wrong. The human could probably pick out the sounds of an approaching enemy’s careless footsteps - they’re only as light enough for *them* to stop hearing them, after all - and be the one to see the horrified expression (well, more on that later) on their face when we get the drop on them in spite of their perceived stealth. 

But perhaps the most versatile, convoluted, amazing, and utterly unique trait we have is right on your face this instant. Lips.

Lips in most animals are a simple seal to hold in the mouth’s moisture and protect the teeth, even if they’re supple they’re NEVER muscular except in mammals, and we have only one thing to thank for it; milk and nipples. Lips evolved exclusively to allow babies to suckle, it required a vacuum to be created in the mouth, and with no other animal having anything like a nipple it never happened in other animals. Many animals make milk, to be frank, but no other animal has nipples.

Your cheeks and lips are a marvel among tetrapods, no other animal can suck like mammals can. Aliens wouldn’t have straws or even be able to sip from the edge of a glass, they’d have to have a proboscis or simply tilt the whole thing back. Aliens likely won’t have woodwind instruments or balloons you can blow into. We take so much about our lips for granted. Hell, our muscular faces are vital for expressions, we’re probably absolute facial contortionists among a cast of creatures with mandibles and beaks and expressionless scaly maws. Aliens might find us ridiculously easy to read, if anything, compared to their own kind (all the better to deceive them) - or perhaps they’d find us hard to decipher anyways, with our lack of color-changing skin or erectable crests of bright feathers. Baring teeth might not be seen as a sign of aggression in most of the universe, smiling would be all too distinctly human. 

Perhaps with how infectious we are sometimes, that’s what we’d contribute to the universe; others might have to make do with opening their mouths just enough to show their teeth or splaying their innumerable mouthparts with just the right curve, but perhaps we’d teach the galaxy to smile, one ally at a time. 

Wouldn’t that be amazing?

Imagine a game like spore but you start out in a truly completely empty universe. Nothing but stars and planets. So instead of starting out with panspermia, on your first planet, in your first playthrough you have to play this "chemical stage" to decide the kind of stuff your planet's life will be made of. Then on other planets after that you can choose to do it again to make a completely different life or populate this planet via panspermia using life forms from your first world to see how you can get different things from the same ingredients.

So as you play and replay you can slowly fill up the universe. And maybe you can also have a simulation mode to just let things progress a little ways without you messing with it to see how things progress.

And as you keep playing it can get progressively harder to start life from scratch because now panspermia events happen so often (a toggle able feature) that every planet becomes increasingly competitive as time goes on.

Just an idea.