More importantly, actual evolution doesn’t change the individual. The “evolution” in Pokémon and Digimon should be called “development”.
Evolution isn't linear.
Submitted 6 months ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/4ca841c4-0e26-4ce3-b91f-3f990636350f.jpeg
Comments
dogsoahC@lemm.ee 6 months ago
GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org 6 months ago
Or metamorphosis.
dogsoahC@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Yes, that’s better, thank you.
agressivelyPassive@feddit.de 6 months ago
That’s actually what it’s called in German. Never thought about the implications of the “X evolved to Y” screens.
mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
And would have avoided so much pearl-clutching from right-wing fundamentalist busybodies.
God damn were the 90s stupid.
dogsoahC@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Unlike the following two and a half decades, which were filled to the brim with meaningful conservative talking points.
orphiebaby@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Japanese media is stupid too, Pokémon especially. South Park even commented on that when it was new. So it was stupid against stupid.
Rinox@feddit.it 6 months ago
In Italian Digimon it’s called Digievolution
southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Yo, I have chickens. The idea of a chicken the size of a pony is terrifying enough. One the size of a t-rex is nightmare inducing.
I love ours, they’re pets that get spolied and coddled. But they are vicious. Our rooster caught a little bluebird, stomped it and ate its head. Took all of thiry seconds. Our hen goes after bugs and just beats them until they’re tender and juicy before swallowing.
They would 100% eat us given a chance. Like, at the size they are now, you would not want to fall into a coma long enough for them to get hungry.
marcos@lemmy.world 6 months ago
My father once made the mistake of letting himself be surroudee by chicken while having a flesh wound.
A coma is completely unecessary.
cloudless@lemmy.cafe 6 months ago
I have seen chickens eating chickens.
mortemtyrannis@lemmy.ml 6 months ago
It’s a pecking order for a reason.
deania@lemmy.world 6 months ago
When I was younger, I used to throw grasshoppers into pens full of baby chicks where they would tear the grasshoppers limb from limb.
threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Have you seen a cassowary foot? It’s basically a modern day velociraptor.
Klear@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
It might actually be scarier. Velociraptors were smaller than that.
Other raptors, though. Just a few days ago a new one was discovered in China. 5 metres long IIRC.
kadu@lemmy.world 6 months ago
This title is also misleading, though. By claiming “evolution isn’t linear” and then showing a massive dinosaur leading to a chicken, you’re suggesting the chicken is a downgrade (otherwise, what “linear” would even mean in this context?).
The chicken is, however, a massive upgrade - for the specific environment it lived in. Well, “proto-chickens”, let’s say. The actual domesticated chicken is the result of artificial selection.
Glowstick@lemmy.world 6 months ago
The title and the meme are correct. Many people think that evolution means becoming bigger and physically stronger and having more powerful offensive capabilities and smarter and faster etc. But in reality evolution can just as easily mean becoming smaller, weaker, dumber, and slower
kadu@lemmy.world 6 months ago
The issue is precisely in your mix up of “linear progression” and implying “smaller” is somehow a counter argument to that. While it’s true evolution isn’t linear, being smaller is not a downgrade at all.
cloudless@lemmy.cafe 6 months ago
What you said isn’t an “upgrade” either. It is just adapting to the changes.
kadu@lemmy.world 6 months ago
It is just adapting to the changes.
Increasing fitness in one’s environment is an upgrade. Being smaller or bigger, by itself, is not an upgrade nor a downgrade, it depends on context.
Jesus_666@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Well, “proto-chickens”, let’s say.
Also known as red junglefowl.
MajorHavoc@programming.dev 6 months ago
I adore the total lack of surprise for the ‘fridge with machine gun’ in the comments here. We all watched Digimon, apparently.
root_beer@midwest.social 6 months ago
Hell yeah.
Pokémon: [day one] I wanna be the best Pokémon trainer the world has ever seen! [20 seasons later] Wow I got another gym badge! Pikachu is pretty decent!
Digimon: [day one] Oh this poor kitten, gotta save it from these big jerks! [end of season] Today, we must destroy God.
nintendiator@feddit.cl 6 months ago
Digimon: [day one] Oh this poor kitten,
[midseason] kitten evolves into buff lion anthro then dies on you.
Zoop@beehaw.org 6 months ago
Right? It’s absolutely perfect and spot-on and I love it
Jackcooper@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Needs 3 stages for balance
The chicken will eventually be a crab
therealjcdenton@lemmy.zip 6 months ago
You forgot to put the lion on two feet and to give it boxing gloves
Snowpix@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
Nooooo! Not another fire/fighting starter!
WamGams@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
Modern birds almost certainly evolved directly from the Dramaeosaurus, not T. Rex, but otherwise, great meme.
illumrial@lemmy.world 6 months ago
No need to be so dramaetic about it.
loaExMachina@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
U sure? Because dromaesaurus lived during the end cretaceous, birds were already a thing. Aurornis, which can be considered the earliest known bird, lived almost 80 million years before dromaesaurus. Even if you meant the dromaesaurid clade, birds aren’t usually classified in it, and possibly predate it.
Tho it’s true that birds are closer to dromaesaurus than to T-Rex, as birds and romaesaurids are part of the maniraptora clade.
WamGams@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
Interesting. I was already out of school in 2013 so never knew about this discovery. Thank you for letting me know.
Shampiss@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
I enjoyed this piece of information
WamGams@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
Thank you. I am glad my time in college has finally found a use!
HonoraryMancunian@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Fun fact (if you’re a super pedant like me) the r is officially lower case in T. rex
WamGams@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
I used to be super pedant, but my wife threatened to leave, so now I am just a regular one.
Thank you for the correction.
Ephera@lemmy.ml 6 months ago
Don’t forget the part where actual evolution requires a lot of sex and dying…
Haagel@lemmings.world 6 months ago
The discovery of horizontal gene transfer implies that it’s more like a web than a tree.
"Biologist Johann Peter Gogarten suggests “the original metaphor of a tree no longer fits the data from recent genome research” therefore “biologists should use the metaphor of a mosaic to describe the different histories combined in individual genomes and use the metaphor of a net to visualize the rich exchange and cooperative effects of HGT among microbes”.
I look forward to this dinosaur = chicken colloquialism being inevitably discarded.
Jax@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
It’s funny, I remember being 7 years old and thinking two things.
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T-rex feet look very similarly to chicken feet, they must be descended from the T-Rex.
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I’m 7, there’s no way this is true.
I immediately wrote it off as being incorrect. There’s no way people actually believe this right?
-
Enkrod@feddit.de 6 months ago
How is horizontal gene transfer between microbes in any way relevant to a discussion about the ancestry of chickens that only reaches back to the dinosauria clade?
Haagel@lemmings.world 6 months ago
Not just microbes. HGT has been observed in carnivorous plants as well. It could be much more prevalent than we think.
Liz@midwest.social 6 months ago
Chickens are dinosaurs in the sense that they’re also tetrapods. A dinosaur is an evolutionary group in which all members have a common ancestor population that is distinct from the rest of the evolutionary tree. So too with tetrapods, isopods, primates, arachnids, etc. So anyway, it’s true that birds are dinosaurs, but it’s not a very useful description.
SatansMaggotyCumFart@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Can you selectively breed chickens back to dinosaurs?
OutlierBlue@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
Num10ck@lemmy.world 6 months ago
i’d rather selectively breed ostriches into rideable flying dragons.
Zagorath@aussie.zone 6 months ago
Chickens are already dinosaurs. So…yes?
StrongHorseWeakNeigh@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I’m pretty sure they made the Digimon evolutions while fucked up on coke.
vithigar@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
Why is this image muted?
fossilesque@mander.xyz 6 months ago
Because he thought that
Thcdenton@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Isn’t Chicken the closest living relative but not a descendant of T-Rex?
Rinox@feddit.it 6 months ago
Yup, the T. rex is just extinct, chickens are the closest thing that remained after the cataclysms that wiped out pretty much all dinosaurs.
Same reason why humans didn’t actually descend from monkeys, both monkeys and humans descend instead from a common ancestor that does no longer exist. This is why, IMO, Digimon could be a better representation of evolution than Pokémon, since one Digimon can evolve into many different forms, so that kitten could become a fridge, but also a dragon or a knight with cannons, depending on the evolutionary line.
Then again, I doubt any of these were intended as a realistic portrayal of anything at all, least of all the theory of evolution.
Enkrod@feddit.de 6 months ago
Chicken is equally close to T. Rex as all other birds. They all go back to the same common bird-ancestor who was a relative of T. Rex.
T. rex is more closely related to birds than to all non-theropod dinosaurs.
T. rex also lived closer to us in time than to Stegosaurus.
Same reason why humans don’t actually descend from monkeys, both monkeys and humans descend instead from a common ancestor that no longer exists
But that ancestor was a monkey! We are monkey, you can’t evolve your way out of a clade.
This is why, IMO, Digimon could be a better representation of evolution than Pokémon, since one Digimon can evolve into many different forms, so that kitten could become a fridge, but also a dragon or a knight with cannons
But that is specifically not how evolution works. You can’t evolve your way out of a clade, everything a cat would evolve into, would also be a cat. Maybe a weird cat, maybe a whale-cat (like whales are still ungulates, even if they are really weird ones) but still a cat. You can’t evolve out of your ancestry.
Liz@midwest.social 6 months ago
I mean, monkeys are an evolutionary group. Technically, we are monkeys, as well as being apes, hominids, mammals, humans, tetrapods, etc.
Son_of_dad@lemmy.world 6 months ago
My grandpa used to have backyard chickens. I saw a couple of chickens completely brutalize and dismember a field mouse that had made it into their coop. I also have a pet parrot, he’s small, but if that little fucker was 6’ tall and pissed off, I’d be dead. Even at his size he can mess you up. If dinosaurs were just bigger versions of current chickens, they’d eat us all.
cordlesslamp@lemmy.today 6 months ago
when I was little, my neighbor had this tiny chicken that acted like a guard dog. It would chase and attack anything that comes near the front gate. All the neighbor kids are traumatized by that little fucker, including me. That’s why I have an eternal fear of chicken, even now as a 6"2’ male adult.
DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe 6 months ago
We survived the Terror Birds, we can survive the Chicken Army.
NounsAndWords@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Technically, it is very much linear. It’s just it doesn’t always go the way we feel like it should.
cloudless@lemmy.cafe 6 months ago
Wait… pokemon evolved from female to male??
NakariLexfortaine@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Well, there’s Azurill. That was an actual glitch that happened due to DVs being a factor for gender, if I remember correctly.
GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org 6 months ago
That’s a puma, not a lioness.
Though you might still be right. I’m not sure if there are clear visual indicators in pumas.
ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
Big body = big appetite
CallMeButtLove@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Counterpoint: tiny terrestrial mammals becoming whales.
fossilesque@mander.xyz 6 months ago
Whales came onto land, said fuck this and walked right back into the sea. It is widely regarded as a good decision in whale culture.
TxzK@lemmy.zip 6 months ago
I wish I could do that :(