8 ms·
Island gigantism
- dang 3y agoRelated but small: Island gigantism and dwarfism the result of evolutionary island rule - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26826178 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26826178 - April 2021 (2 comments)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dhosek 3y agoI wonder whether early accounts of this phenomenon by 18th C. explorers may have inspired Swift in creating Lilliput and Brobdingnag.
- vatys 3y agoPerhaps the tardigrades spilled on the moon by the lander crash will become giants
- bloppe 3y agoFeels like they're desperate for a pattern but focusing on size (which can either increase or decrease) is oddly specific. The headline of the article should probably be "insular animals tend to differ from continental counterparts" which is really all you can extrapolate from this "rule"
- 1-6 3y agoI don’t think people necessarily follow this rule.
- asow92 3y agoPeople have gotten a lot taller in the last several millennia. Perhaps our island just earth itself?
- mkl 3y agoPeople have gotten taller in the last few centuries, but pre-agriculture humans were pretty tall. Early agricultural societies could feed more people, but often with worse nutrition.
- taneq 3y agoAlso smaller weaker humans survive better in an agrarian society than in a hunter gatherer society.
- truculent 3y agoHominids have shown insular dwarfism: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_floresiensis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_floresiensis
- moritzwarhier 3y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moa https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moa New Zealand seems to be a good example of this. Also, fascinating how there were no humans at all there before the 13th century.
- makapuf 3y agoI wonder how long it takes to lead to this effect, and if humains have been isolated long enough at one point in history to have had a local effect.
- mkl 3y agoWell, humans are pretty big already, and big animals on islands tend to get smaller [0], so the opposite may have happened. One theory of the origin of homo floresiensis [1] is that they were the result of insular dwarfism on homo erectus. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insular_dwarfism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insular_dwarfism [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_floresiensis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_floresiensis
- kirse 3y agoInteresting. I always thought it was cool that Hawaii is basically free of land-predators with the exception of the massive centipedes. Maybe this explains how they got so large. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scolopendra_subspinipes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scolopendra_subspinipes
- aeonik 3y agoTangent, but I just finished a wiki rabbit hole from this link you provided, very interesting read, but also found out that there is one species of millipede that actually has 1000+ legs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eumillipes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eumillipes
- AdmiralAsshat 3y agoIs this what inspired the idea of "Monster Isle", where giant monsters dwell?
- arichard123 3y agoMentioned in the infinite monkey cage, big things also get smaller when on islands, as though there is an ideal size. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0gr7m49 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0gr7m49
- mig39 3y agoI think the rule of thumb is that small animals tend to get larger when isolated, and larger animals tend to get smaller.
- mkl 3y agoYes. Island gigantism and insular dwarfism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insular_dwarfism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insular_dwarfism).
- fireflies_ 3y agoIt's a shame that these aren't parallel. Why couldn't it be "insular gigantism" or "island dwarfism"? (But not both!)
- messe 3y agoWhat’s even worse is that Island Gigantism is a Germanic derived word followed by a Latin derived word, while Insular Dwarfism has the etymologies the other way around.
- shusaku 3y ago… that’s literally written in the first paragraph of the original linked article.
- sdenton4 3y agoSomething something reversion to the mean...
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- methodicalism 3y agoRodents of Unusual Size? I don't think they exist...