4 ms·
Sounds like Orchids are the Crabs of the plant word.
by 4ggr0 3y ago
Sounds like Orchids are the Crabs of the plant word.
- sand500 3y agoTo add context, animals across the world have evolved independently to resemble crabs. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation
- moron4hire 3y agoCrustaceans, not animals in general, and there are also examples of crab-like species that have evolved away from crab features. This is one of those popsci memes that is wrong and just won't die.
- pvaldes 3y ago> Everything evolved to a crab Cant' wait until this people eventually discover the Coleoptera
- marcosdumay 3y agoIt's exactly the other way around. While every animal seems to eventually become like a crab, orchids seem to eventually become like every plant and then some more.
- lisper 3y ago> every animal seems to eventually become like a crab Say what??? Reference needed. I can think of plenty of animals that are nothing like crabs.
- RajT88 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation It comes from a recent clickbaity headline, "Why does everything keep evolving into crabs?". Crab-like creatures have independently evolved a bunch of times from different crustaceans. Nobody is saying that fish keep evolving into crabs.
- moron4hire 3y agoNobody? GP said "While every animal seems to eventually become like a crab...". That's not nobody. I think you'll find a lot of people online who have gotten the "crustacean carcinisation" idea wrong and think it applies to all animals.
- RajT88 3y agoFine, fine - I will clarify so as not to get dinged by the pedants. Nobody in the scientific community is saying that fish keep evolving into crabs.
- PakG1 3y agoBut... what about humans???
- victorbjorklund 3y agoWhy you think rust is so populare?!
- RajT88 3y agoSee: Zoidberg
- Viliam1234 3y agookay then... Nobody in the scientific community except humans is saying that fish keep evolving into crabs.
- PakG1 3y agoWell, the joke was about whether humans keep evolving into crabs, but I think I crashed the joke's landing. :)
- eszed 3y agoI think you'll find there's no such thing as a fish. Source: Pedant.
- carabiner 3y agoI'm a crab and I can type on computers.
- hinkley 3y agoGiven the right spacing of keys, I suspect a crab could manage a pretty high wpm rating. Assuming the brain could keep up of course. Sort of like tap dancing on the FAO Schwartz piano (Big), but with six legs per creature instead of two.
- NoZebra120vClip 3y agoSome of them retire to Gila Bend, AZ: https://www.weirduniverse.net/blog/comments/gila_bend https://www.weirduniverse.net/blog/comments/gila_bend
- marcosdumay 3y agoIt's a popular over-generalization, made purposefully for humor.
- AlienRobot 3y agoThey aren't crabs yet, but they might be, in a billion years.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- cmrx64 3y agoIf crabs are the terminal object in the category of evolvable animals, orchids are an initial object in the category of evolvable plants?
- Clamchop 3y agoArticle doesn't appear to be presenting a similar thesis at all, nearly the opposite. It doesn't have much to say about non-orchid plants, certainly not that they evolve to be orchid-like. Orchids are famous for being unusual and unusually diverse, that's what the article lingers on.
- k__ 3y agoYes, sounds more like Brassica oleracea to me, lol.
- krick 3y agoNo, not really. Brassica oleracea is a single species manually cultivated by humans into variety of forms that are known by different names. Orchids are a huge family of plants. If anything, you should compare them to all Brassicaceae. A quick refresher: Brassicaceae family aside from that notorious Brassica oleracea also contains such things as mustard and horseradish, and even Brassica genus alone contains a whole lot of things that are completely unlike all these Brassica oleracea varieties. And Brassicaceae family is 5 times smaller than Orchidaceae, in terms of number of species. So this is a silly comparison. Talking about all "orchids" is talking about like 15% of all flowering plants. In fact, I would say that even the mere fact that somebody knows a common English word to name all "orchids" kinda suggests that the family is not that diverse… Except, an even larger family is Asteraceae, and they probably look even more like each other. (That said, I actually have no idea why all these broccoli, kale, etc are still considered a single species. Can you really easily cross-bred modern specimens of broccoli and kale?)
- eszed 3y ago> Can you really easily cross-bred modern specimens of broccoli and kale? I know that one particular pairing of broccoli and kale did cross-breed, in my father's garden, many years ago. At least, that's what he (a PhD biologist) told me. They shot up into flower stalks right away, and neither leaves nor florets were edible. Broccoli and cauliflower would interbreed, as well. Sometimes their piebald florets were edible, but usually they were terribly bitter. They were a curiousity, no more.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]