this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2023
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Science Memes

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It's just science. (mander.xyz)
submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 47 points 6 months ago (2 children)

The problem is they they’re just designed to eat and get chonky. If they had invested in cool ninja combat during evolution, scientists believe they would be not only more likely to survive, but be a lot cooler.

[–] cybervseas 14 points 6 months ago (3 children)

Some caterpillars are cool and spiky or poisonous or venomous maybe?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

there are definitely some ninja-inspired caterpillars out there

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago

Most caterpillars are mildly poisonous since they only eat a single type of plant so they are immune to the plants poisonous effect. That gets into their fleshy hotdog body. Unfortunately most birds are also mostly immune.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

Due to Newtons 46th law of awesomeness, Ninjas are still cooler than spikes, but still are pretty dang cool.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (2 children)

sometimes i wonder if life is sort of designed to be like that though. not in a strictly intentional intelligent way but also not in a fully accidental coincidental way.

somebody has to turn plant into food right? without them and homies like them our food system don't work.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago

It's designed that way in the same way as a hole was designed for a puddle*. The caterpillars are evolutionarily successful because of a "spray and pray" strategy, and other species are successful because of the easy food.

Biology is an arms race, in a sense: so everything is interlinked, and affected by everything else, even if only by distant, myriad links in an unbroken web of chains. It's the reason a lot of biologists like myself are anxious about the ecological destruction that's been unfolding for so long. Life finds a way in the long term, but short term...it sucks to be alive when many of the things you depend on aren't.

*This metaphor thanks to Douglas Adams