• Sylveon@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    2 days ago

    That’s not how evolution works. Today’s horseshoe crabs may look very similar to their ancestors hundreds of millions of years ago, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t evolve. I know it’s just a meme and not that serious, but misconceptions about evolution seem to be very common and I think that’s a shame.

      • Zink@programming.dev
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        1 day ago

        We need to see a subtle shift where one more character evolves into a crab between each panel of the comic.

    • alcibiades@sh.itjust.works
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      2 days ago

      Apologies for ignorance, but what changed about them? Is it that they’ve been evolving over millions of years, which is why they can survive in today’s world (even though they look the same).

      • Revan343@lemmy.ca
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        2 days ago

        Basically that; I’d imagine their immune systems are more complex nowadays just because the threats are

      • Pyr@lemmy.ca
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        2 days ago

        Similar to how humans and apes have a common ancestor, the horseshoe crabs would have an ancestor which looked very similar to today’s version, although slightly different, and some of them would have evolved into other things while some remained relatively unchanged.

        From what I can tell, arachnids might share a common ancestor with horseshoe crabs, which is kinda crazy to think about.

        As well, they look the same phycially but the DNA has changed significantly, potentially just internal things or chemical/biological processes etc.

        • mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 day ago

          Yeah, taxonomic classification always falls short of the natural world. It may be the same taxonomy, but that doesn’t mean they’re exactly the same.

          Hell, if we only had dog fossils to work with, different breeds would almost certainly be considered entirely different species. But as it currently stands, they’re all the same species, (canis lupus familiaris), because we know the different breeds can mate with each other and produce viable offspring.