Why Do Things Keep Evolving Into Crabs?
PBS Eons1 HN recommender · recommended in 1 month, 2020–2023
explainer · general · evergreen · 2020–2023 on HN
A short PBS Eons episode on carcinization, the repeated independent evolution of crab-like bodies in unrelated crustaceans, and what makes that form so successful.
HN cites it as a clear, well-made treatment of convergent evolution and crabs.
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4 comments from Hacker News
Eons did a great piece on this recently: ▶ this video 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.
Counterpoint: Alien life will probably look very similar to life on earth. If you look at evolution then countless species have evolved into something crab-like: ▶ this video Turns out that their form is pretty good for survival. While biology can take on a myriad of forms, the competitive nature of life will weed out a lot of them. And since the rules for biochemistry are the same across the universe similar traits that are beneficial here will probably be beneficial there.
Funny this came out the same month as SciShow’s “Why does everything keep evolving into crabs?” Video: ▶ this video
I made a post 11 days ago ( link ) about a wikipeida page regarding things evolving into crabs. Then today I see this youtube video on trending ( ▶ this video ) talking about this very same concept. This is a very niche subject so I am surprised by its relative frequent appearances. This thing has happened to me before, so I finally decided to look up what its called.