If you’ve spent enough time online, you’ve probably heard the meme that claims everything eventually turns into crabs.
The meme claims that whether you are a fish or Sean Penn, you will eventually turn into a crab. This is obviously just a joke, but it’s based on some amusing evolution. Because, as you can see, everything in nature (luckily just crustaceans) appears to be striving to turn into a crab.
Yes, evolution appears to continually producing creatures that resemble crabs, much like tech bros who repeatedly try to build a new mode of transportation and unintentionally redesign the bus. Carcinization was first used as a term in 1916, when it was initially explained as “one of several attempts by nature to create a crab.”
Convergent evolution occurs when traits that share a form or function arise in species from various eras or places, even when they did not exist in the animals or plants’ last common ancestor. Consider the evolution of echolocation in both whales and bats, as well as the development of flying in pterosaurs, birds, insects, and bats. Stop stealing everyone else’s evolutions, bats; get your own.
Consider how several creatures, such as hedgehogs, echidnas (of the monotremes), and porcupines (rodents), have developed thorny protusions (erinaceinae). Despite appearances, the three likely shared a last common ancestor during the period of the dinosaurs; they simply ended up with comparable traits.
Convergent evolution essentially occurs when plants and animals must adapt to comparable ecological niches or habitats and come up with comparable solutions. In decapod crustaceans, such as porcelain crabs, hairy stone crabs, and coconut crabs, crab-like morphologies are considered to have arisen independently at least five times.
Many things that you may reasonably refer to as crabs (since they appear to be and behave like, well, crabs) aren’t truly crabs, as the following video illustrates “transformed into something that resembled crabs. Independently. Time and time again.”
Cretaceous-era animals’ more lobster-like shapes grew more compressed, and their shorter back legs took on a longer, crab-like appearance. The advantage appears to be that the crab shape makes it easier for them to walk and burrow, and some crabs can even climb trees as a result of the design (see the horrifying main image).
Additionally, it’s probable that animals with shorter tail segments survived longer due to both their mobility (described above) and the fact that they provided fewer hooks for predators.
That is why everything wants to be a crab until we learn more.
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