5 ms·
Crabs predate cuttlefish in the fossil record by a significant amount of time (~50 million years), but both have had a good 100 million years to battle it out a
by teruakohatu 2y ago
Crabs predate cuttlefish in the fossil record by a significant amount of time (~50 million years), but both have had a good 100 million years to battle it out and crabs are still blinded by the camo. Cuttlefish maybe have not exerted enough evolutionary pressure on crabs to make them adapt, or there are crabs that have adapted and we just don't know which species or have not discovered them yet.
- lukas099 2y agoThey could be at an evolutionary equilibrium already.
- mmooss 2y agoSomehow, predators succeed in many scenarios that have plenty of time for evolution to solve the problem for prey. But of course it's also solving the problem for hungry predators. It raises an interesting question about the limits of evolutionary adaptation, and how the evolutionary competition reaches a stable equilibrium.
- kuhewa 2y agoI'm not sure it's that unique of a situation though, most prey organisms have some antipredator adaptations but rarely are they foolproof, just like rarely are predatory adaptations like mimicry/camouflage/crypsis absolutely foolproof.
- willvarfar 2y agoIts an 'arms race'. As crabs adapt to the current crop of cuttlefish ruses, the cuttlefish also adapt to overcome again. An aside, but the recent book by Dawkins "The Genetic Book of the Dead: A Darwinian Reverie" is fascinating and explains how you can look at an animal and understand the environment of its ancestors. You can read it as a kind of massive autobiography of the species and detect waypoints on its evolutionary journey.