That rabbit/hare post is messing me up. I’d thought they were synonyms. Their development and social behavior are all different. They can’t even interbreed. They don’t have the same number of chromosomes. Dogs, wolves, jackals, and coyotes can mate with each other and have fertile offspring but rabbits and hares cant even make infertile ones bc they just die in the womb. Wack.
These
are more genetically compatible than These
and that’s why morphology-based phylogeny has Issues
The problem is perspective. People always think dogs are the ‘standard’ animal, the metric to use for whether or not two organisms “look like” they’re related. When in fact they’re a massive outlier due to the fact that we fucked up this lineage of wolf beyond recognition with selective breeding. It’s why people always say “breed” when they mean “species”, especially when talking about groups like lizards which can’t even be defined cladistically since some of them are closer to snakes than each other. To say nothing of fish.
I once read an article that emphasized there is no such thing as a fish. Sharks and rays, lamprey, lobe-finned fish like lungfish and coelacanth, bichir and sturgeon, and of course the multiple infraclasses of more “modern” fish groups are all only very distantly related to one another. They’ve maintained semi-similar body structures only because there are limited ways to efficiently move through water as a vertebrate.
This
And this
Are more distantly related from one another than you and I are from a lungfish
Which is absolutely fuckin wild.
Not only that, but all of us air-breathing land vertebrates, all the lizards and chickens and people and frogs, are closer to one another than those three “fish” are to one another as well.
these
are genetically closer than these
and…
these
are genetically closer than these
and my personal favorite, it really fucks with people…
these
are more genetically similar than these
COOL.
just the other day, one of my friends mentioned this book, “Dinosaurs: A Concise Natural History,” which apparently has a (tongue in cheek) chapter that argues that Cows are actually Fish.
OMG everyone I know the ACTUAL story behind the gif this time!
Yes, it’s in Australia– that’s a big angry goanna that wandered into a popular restaurant. All the Australians in the vicinity went OH FUCK NO and cleared off, because goannas are mean.
The waitress you see there is a French exchange student, who was quoted as saying something to the effect of “I thought it was a weird ugly dog” and had no idea it was a reptile that wanted to rip her arms off. She’s been hailed as a hero who saved diners.
It’s amazing what power “not knowing” has.
The thing I especially love about this is this is a pretty dangerous animal, except she managed to defeat it by just fucking grabbing it by the tail and walking too quickly for it to turn around. Once again the animal kingdom is thwarted because we evolved opposable thumbs, long limbs, and reckless bravery.
weird, ugly dog thwarted by foreign exchange student and polished floors
my take-home lesson here is that nobody in france has ever first-hand seen a dog
The Continental Divide at Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado is breathtaking. Add to it dozens of majestic elk, and you have an everlasting memory.
