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Crabs evolved at least five times from separate groups of crustaceans (2021)

newsweek.com

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Re: Crabs evolved at least five times from separate groups of crustaceans (2021)

#31

Post by docmechanic »

AlbertCory wrote: post #16

> We know the process has occurred multiple times and our current grant is aimed at better understanding the drivers and implications What can they actually discover? 10 legs good? But how about 12? [1] > The crab with the longest legs is the Japanese spider crab. It’s not related to spiders, despite its name. When extended, its legs can be as long as 12 feet. Now there's a nightmare for you. [1] https://www.referenc…

If the habitat was the bottleneck, we could learn about a convergence point that tells us about possible non-Earth life.

"Whatever the advantages are, they do not apply in all habitats because some groups have also lost carcinization; one modern example being the frog crab."

Re: Crabs evolved at least five times from separate groups of crustaceans (2021)

#32

Post by IncRnd »

jleyank wrote: post #24
dang wrote: post #12

Can you guys please not take the bait by posting unsubstantive comments? We've changed the silly title (edit: I meant the article's own linkbaity title) to a more interesting sentence from the article body.

Quoted post unavailable.

No post body was provided.

Re: Crabs evolved at least five times from separate groups of crustaceans (2021)

#33

Post by astrange »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #29
jleyank wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

> misunderstanding of their culture Maybe it’s just your culture?

This reminds me of ESR's Jargon File, which kept defining "hackers" as liking or doing things when it was actually just him.

Re: Crabs evolved at least five times from separate groups of crustaceans (2021)

#34

Post by docmechanic »

XorNot wrote: post #18

This is my favorite random fact about our biosphere: that for some reason it just keeps making crabs. The interesting part about it is whether they represent a local minima that optimization gets stuck in - i.e. the returns on building yourself an exoskeleton keep increasing the more exoskeleton you add, so once you chance onto that path every other direction then "more exoskeleton" is a net negative for the next gen…

Well, the frog crabs might indicate that they could both evolve an exoskeleton and then reverse course.

"Whatever the advantages are, they do not apply in all habitats because some groups have also lost carcinization; one modern example being the frog crab."

Re: Crabs evolved at least five times from separate groups of crustaceans (2021)

#39

Post by krapp »

jleyank wrote: post #30
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> misunderstanding of their culture Maybe it’s just your culture?

Yeah, I would say I come from the ancient hacker culture. Don't be too critical of that, as RMS and the GPL are full derivatives of that culture. And the products of the GPL have been sorta useful to the HN community. Or at least the programming side. The others were there back then, but they weren't interest in hacking, just in counting.

Unfortunately, the hacker culture that gave rise to HN is a different beast altogether, and the crab mentality is strong here.

Re: Crabs evolved at least five times from separate groups of crustaceans (2021)

#40

Post by animal_spirits »

kjeetgill wrote: post #14

Eons did a great piece on this recently: https://youtu.be/wvfR3XLXPvw One of the things I love about the way Eons cover topics is how they don't just focus on what we know, but also how we know, who figured things out, and what we got wrong along the way. Can't endorse their style of science journalism enough.

PBS has been putting out such great content in the last 5 years. Really impressive and highly overlooked
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