Just to put some context:
- Predatory scorpions a couple feet long
- Armored millipedes larger than a man; they were probably herbivorous but as the article notes they “would have had few, if any, predators.”
- There is a theory, possibly not real well accepted but it makes sense to me, that trilobites were the creature that way-back-when invented effective predation shortly after evolving vision. (Before which the world was a fairly benign place.) The theory further supposes that the Cambrian Explosion was caused by every other organism on the planet having to scramble not to have their soft blobby flesh munched on at leisure by a limitless army of armored, invulnerable hunters, which they couldn’t see or avoid, but who could see and follow them.
I salivate whenever I hear about these ancient mega arthropods. Like, gigantic and armoured, whatever. But by modern standards, blind and incredibly stupid. And in that atmosphere you’d be constantly so well oxygenated. I don’t know why but I’m convinced these big fucks tasted like lobster.
Fantastic addition to the conversation, thank you
I really like that theory too. It further expands that vision is what granted us intelligence as creatures coming on land could see significantly further and thus start planning and reacting to distant changes giving birth to modern intelligence. To add, whales developed this intelligence and went back to the ocean to absolutely dominate it.
This video is really interesting and made me realize what a huge evolutionary advantage it is to be able to remember things - something we take completely for granted, but isn’t required to survive.
I crocheted a giant millipede that is about 1.8 m long and while doing this I also found that there lived actual millipedes that large long ago. Now I cuddle with my giant millipede and imagine that she was one of those giants! :)
That is incredibly charming 😃
Why do you find that particular theory about the Cambrian Explosion compelling? I assume mankind is putting a similar pressure on many ecosystems today, so shouldn’t we be seeing that kind of evolutionary explosion happening now?
Before: All phyla differentiated but all the creatures are soft and blobby and sort of unremarkable
After: All of a sudden there’s trilobites everywhere, they can see and some of them hunt, and all creatures everywhere suddenly have all this armor and mobility and a lot of them have spikesI don’t really know (even enough to talk about what might be the competing theories), but it seems like it fits and it doesn’t seem all that farfetched. That said, it kind of seems like all the scientists think me and Andrew Parker are wrong though, so IDK.
(Also - I didn’t know about this before as it’s semi-new, but apparently Anomalocaris also had eyes and hunted, so star power of the trilobites aside maybe those guys were involved as well. I have to say though the timing of the way it’s written in Wikipedia makes a little more sense if the sequencing is: Cambrian explosion -> some species turn into predators, as opposed to the other way around)
What humans are doing to the natural world right now is a global extinction event (not much different from has happened a handful of times). It’s happening too fast for anything to adapt to except in the most short-term emergency ways. Mostly stuff is just dying.
If we stay around for millions of years doing this same thing then I would expect the biosphere to develop defenses and then rebound into a new equilibrium with defense measures included against what we tend to do to it. Even that outcome wouldn’t really be another Cambrian explosion though, because everything before it was so universally blobby and unremarkable. That is actually exactly why I like this theory – the clear lack of a certain type of selection pressure before the explosion happened is as much as part of the theory (there must have been something missing from the threat matrix that suddenly arrived, and what was that thing?) as what things looked like after the Cambrian.
It is happening now but evolution takes a long time. If there were a ton of adaptations that happened in the next 10,000 years, that would be incredibly fast on an evolutionary timescale
Humans have only been dominant for a few thousand years. Give it like a million for enough evolution to happen and then ask this question again.
!remindme 1 million years ask this question again
Just give it another million years or so.
Humans are blitzkrieging the troposphere. Nothing could hope to evolve fast enough except fungi and bacteria I guess
trilobites were the creature that way-back-when invented effective predation shortly after evolving vision.
The fact that their closet living relative, the horseshoe crab, has remained pretty much unchanged for up to 480 million years lends credence to the idea that their design works very well.
anomalocaris anomalocaris anomalocaris
this is the bug equivalent of those memes about wolves becoming pugs
I don’t follow sorry. Could you explain?
I was just making a silly joke and also trying to point out that genetic memory red in tooth and claw stuff is fucking weird.
Like this
But they also became the noble greyhound
Thats about as noble as me flopping off the top bunk of a toyhauler right into the floor.
You’re talking about my daughter here. Tread softly.
Cute, but not noble. Mind ya my hounds are not noble in the slightest either.
I think that peacock spiders and related species can help people get past arachnophobia. They’re cute, they’re intelligent, and they have entertaining behaviors. The fact that they have the two large forward facing eyes makes them look less alien.
If you want to try exposure therapy for arachnophobia, they’re a great starting point imo.
We’ve got some pretty big centipedes around here, and they’re one of very few animals I slaughter ruthlessly without remorse. I have a hammer for the express purpose of braining them. Fuckers don’t need an excuse to bite you, they just do. And, they love bedsheets, clothes, etc. Ironically, we also have house centipedes, and they get a pass. They’re hideous, sure, but anything that eats cockroach eggs (another one I kill without remorse) is A-OK in my book.
Where do you live? I’d like to know so I can put that on my list of places to not go.
Sorry to tell you that my particular location is pretty much irrelevant. Centipedes and roaches are just about everywhere. The further north you go, the safer you are.
Can confirm. Am north, no centipedes in my clothes or roach eggs in my house.
That you know of.
Centipedes sure but we don’t get the big tropical horrors in Europe.
Yet…
Don’t move to the American Southeast. Look up palmetto bugs.
Let me put it to you this way:
I would rather slam my fingers in a car door than move to the South.
There are more kinds of beetles in the world than any other animal.
I needed a clarification, Wikipedia had your back.
The Coleoptera, with about 400,000 described species, is the largest of all orders, constituting almost 40% of described insects and 25% of all known animal species; new species are discovered frequently, with estimates suggesting that there are between 0.9 and 2.1 million total species.
Note that this is described species. Beetles are really easy to preserve and are often super cool. There are likely more species in other orders, but they haven’t had as much work done on them. Hymenoptera, for example, with all of the parasitic wasps probably has more species but they can be so freaking small and difficult to work with.
Sorry, I am like a wanna be entomologist who works with akshual entomologists and this is one of the things that triggers them
I recently heard a tidbit that we think there’s less bugs in the air because windshields aren’t as dirty. Like, if that’s our indicator on such a huge and fundamental part of life on this planet… Less bugs on the windshield. We have no idea
It’s not even very good logic (in my humble, non-expert opinion). There are more cars about, so even if the number of bugs was the same there would be less bugs per car, and that ignores that cars are more aerodynamic and so are probably just killing less bugs anyway!
The aerodynamic thing is where money is at. I drive a 91 jeep and I still have to use the windo washer at the gas station, cause the wipers are insufficient.
I imagined they used bugs per license plate for that. Since those are fixed size and vertical.
There’s probably still a bit of aerodynamic effect, but yeah that sounds a lot more scientific!
People see insects as extremely weak but they’re the ones who despite being a thousandth of your size can still consistently ruin your day. Now imagine that scaled up and given a lifespan which allows them to develop intelligence and you’ll start to understand why my insectsona would absolutely fuck up your dragonsona in a fight.
The can’t be bigger today however, as they are limited by the oxygen concentration in the air. In the past, there was a higher percentage of oxygen in the atmosphere, so so insects could be bigger and thus have a lower surface area to volume ratio, because the air they did intake through their exoskeleton had more oxygen, so it was possible to spread oxygen throughout their body. But when the oxygen level dropped, they had to become smaller so that their surface area to volume ratio dropped, and the oxygen they intook could go further.
More detail
During the Carboniferous period, which lasted from about 359 to 299 million years ago, giant dragonflies and huge cockroaches were common. These prehistoric insects grew to impressive sizes, and one of the leading theories behind their gigantism is the abundance of oxygen in the atmosphere at that time. Here’s how it worked:
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High Oxygen Levels: The rise of vast lowland swamp forests during the Carboniferous period led to atmospheric oxygen levels of around 30 percent—close to 50 percent higher than current levels. This rich oxygen environment allowed adult bugs to grow to ever larger sizes while still meeting their energy needs.
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Larval Perspective: However, the new study suggests that it’s not just because oxygen affected the adults. Oxygen had a bigger effect on larvae. Insects like dragonflies and stoneflies have a larval stage where they live in water before becoming terrestrial adults. Larvae typically absorb oxygen directly through their skin, so they have little control over how much gas they take in. When oxygen levels were high, this passive absorption could lead to oxygen poisoning. To decrease this risk, growing bigger was advantageous because large larvae would absorb lower percentages of oxygen relative to their body sizes.
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Regulating Oxygen Intake: Adult insects, on the other hand, can regulate their oxygen intake. They have valve-like holes called spiracles that allow them to adjust the amount of oxygen they absorb. While oxygen is crucial for life, it can be poisonous in large quantities. Humans exposed to excess oxygen can suffer cell damage, vision problems, difficulty breathing, nausea, and convulsions. Ancient insect larvae likely faced similar risks when oxygen levels were exceptionally high.
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Dragonflies and Cockroaches: Not all insects responded the same way. For instance, dragonflies grew faster into bigger adults in an oxygen-rich environment (hyperoxia), while cockroaches grew slower and did not become larger adults. Overall, ten out of twelve kinds of insects studied decreased in size in lower oxygen atmospheres. The hollow tracheal tubes insects use to breathe played a crucial role in these responses.
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Fossil Proxies: Understanding how modern insects respond to varying oxygen levels could help us use fossilized insects as proxies for ancient oxygen levels. By studying the plasticity of modern insects raised in different oxygen concentrations, researchers gain insights into the evolution of insects and the impact of oxygen on their size and growth.
Until they evolve lungs
Same for dinosaurs. They got so big because more oxygen, couldn’t survive today.
There are dinosaurs right outside my window right now. I think they might be nesting, one is collecting sticks while the other is hopping across the lawn to look for worms.
And by the way, same as the extant dinosaurs, many of the extinct ones had an extremely optimized pneumatized breathing apparatus that would likely allow many to survive today. Maybe not the really big ones though.
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There’s five million ants for every human, should they decide to fuck us up, they will.
🥵
Fucking fascinating.
Well now my mild arachnophobia seems a bit insufficient.
Make Arthropods Great Again!
But I’m not scared of them at all
