Comment on What is your interesting fact or knowledge that is completely useless that you wish to share?
iocase@lemmy.zip 1 week ago
Multiple species have evolved into crab body plans, and only a subset of “crabs” are actually true crabs. For example coconut crabs evolved from a sea scorpion ancestor. King crabs evolved from a hermit crab too (still a true crab)
The tendency to adopt the crab meta for your species is called carcinization.
sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 week ago
There is also decarcinization for when a crab loses its crab body plan and becomes something else
iocase@lemmy.zip 1 week ago
And then there will be recarcinization where a species regrets being a shrimp and will become crab, destroyer of detritus, once again.