Animals continue to develop into ants. Could this be the future of humanity? | Helen Bilcher
WHe does not like Inter? I mean, regardless of ants, clearly. With their long nose and longer sticky tongues, they wander, they wander around insects like milk. They have handsome, thick tails, wrapped around at night like a blanket. They are excellent fathers. The giant ant notable mothers allow their young to cling to their appearance, similar to the borders, for periods of up to a year.
In fact, the surreal artist Salvador Dali was so with the giant ants that he was once taken on a picnic in the streets of Paris. Before you ask, no, this was not a dream of cheese. there Photography evidence.
As if that was not enough, I published a recent study in the magazine development I found that mammals have evolved into ants not once, not twice, but 12 Time since the dinosaurs have disappeared about 66 meters ago. Ants seem to be a frequent trend. The result prompted the main author of the study, Thomas Vida of the University of Bon sciences Magazine: “Things continue to develop into ants, in some way.” What raises the question: Will human beings one day?
Through “Things”, Vida means mammals, and through “ANTEALS”, the four types of Antaater from Central and Southern America, Bangolines and Aardvarks in Africa and Asia, and Echidnas in Australia. Various animals, in different continents, practice all myrmecophage, also known as termites and ants. If you are a parent of young children, you call them noisy food. If you are an evolutionary biologist, you indicate that they are not deliberately difficult. Instead, it has evolved to fill a very specific environmental position.
This place is provided by the population of the widespread world of ants and termites, about 15,000 species, which the group biomass is more than 10 times larger From those everyone Wild mammals. At least dozens of times in evolutionary history, mammals decided that if they were unable to overcome it, eat it, and began to consume the crunchy appetite.
This is the source of abundant food to serve as what biologists call “selective pressure”. The properties that enabled animals to eat more ants and termites – thus surviving better – are likely to be passed. Over the course of millions of years, animals have evolved from all the three main groups of mammal life, including marsupials and monotremes laying eggs, to have long tongues, sticky, reduced or missing teeth, and the strong seven to breach in insect nests.
It is a strong example of converging development, and it is the phenomenon with which different species develop, in different places or times, independently similar characteristics. Facing the same problem – how do I eat these ants? – They all reached a similar solution. Therefore, although it is not closely linked, it has superficially similar features.
Congenital development is how the location of the echo (the ability to determine the location of the objects using the reflected sound) has evolved separately in the bats and dolphins, and the eyes similar to the camera developed in octopus and vertebrates, and the opposition numbers developed in the main, porn and strings. The energy -powered journey has evolved at least four times – in birds, bats, trackers and insects – and poison production is more than 100 timesWhile crustaceans have evolved the classic crab body plan At least five times. Known as StretchingI was born Crabby Applenty.
Evolutionary biologist Simon Conway Morris The converging development was used to say that development is inevitable and predictable. He says that rewriting the lifebar, and run it again and will develop similar lifestyles.
This means that, in theory, with sufficient time (many tens of millions of years), the appearance of the required genetic mutations required and retained, decisively, same Selective pressures that formed the appearance of previous eating animals, and some mammals-so perhaps we- Be able to The development of gum and sticky tongues. Forget the history books, they are the cooking books that will be rewritten.
Only there is a fly in an ointment. We are wrong to assume that due to the development of myrmecophage several times, the top of some evolutionary trees. After all, there are many mammals that did not evolve into the ants more than began to storm the termites hills. The fact that the convergence development does not necessarily make it the virtual path.
In addition, development has a way to withdraw the carpet. maybe Be expected, but it can also be strange and irregular. In his book in 1989, he argued the wonderful life, and another ethical biology, Stephen Jay Gold, on the importance of random events. This can be any of the lightning strikes to the effects of the asteroid: any unexpected occurrence that hinders the prevailing development path and sends it along a different path. In other words, the moments of “sliding doors” that affected development as long as there was life on Earth.
Therefore, just because things have kept “developing to ants” in the past, it does not mean that history will repeat itself. It is a shame. Nelons and Aardvarks do not usually eat all ants or termites in a nest, but leave some of the colony can rebuild itself. This makes them an example of a sustainable life. If we cannot develop in it, we can at least learn from it.