It eats.
It is thus the primordial consumer.
… kinda does bear a resemblance to what AM turns Ted into.
omg hes just like me
Submitted 14 hours ago by restingOface@quokk.au to [deleted]
https://quokk.au/static/media/posts/cb/sY/cbsYdmgwL0AQj1D.jpg
Comments
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 hour ago
db2@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
No clear reason? It’s because the thing can successfully make more of itself before dying. That’s literally it.
See also: ticks
lauha@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
No animal has reason to exist.
GameOverFlow@lemmy.zip 10 hours ago
*nothing has
dogs0n@sh.itjust.works 9 hours ago
As an animal myself, I’d like to object.
TurboQueer@lemmy.zip 7 hours ago
It’s disturbing to me that so many people search for what something is used for or what’s the value or right to life a creature has. The point of life is to live. If you are successful you maybe make a child or split into a copy of yourself when you get enough food.
Purpose is something you accept for yourself. Imposing it on others is diabolically evil when they don’t have a thing to do with your clade. And still, it would be the case that a person would look at an animal and say “what’s the point of you?”
raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
<3
Bibip@programming.dev 1 hour ago
utility has several virtues, but i agree that it’s not the end-all/be-all. strictly speaking the “point” of any living thing is to pass it’s genes by reproduction, but in a complex and evolving world there are lots of animals that have a “point” in existing. oysters filter water, worms enrich soil, birds spread seeds, bees pollinate flowers, there are primary decomposers and secondary decomposers and tertiary decomposers and some birds build nests in trees and squirrels hide nuts and, you get the picture?
then there are other animals that we have changed for their utility. cows, pigs, chickens, and sheep are delicious and they would not make up such a share of modern biomass if we didn’t industrialize their slaughter. in some cases the point of an animal is that we’re gonna eat it.
if you’re an emotion-forward person you might think “oh, no, that’s terrible!” and you’re allowed to feel that way but usually things are the way they are for a bunch of reasons. feelings are great but food security is better. utility also has a role to play in conservation: we’re having a great time with industry but if the earth suffers catastrophic ecological collapse, the whole party stops.
NottaLottaOcelot@lemmy.ca 5 hours ago
I also find that to be a weird question to consider, as though something must have a purpose to be worthy of existence
In that vein, what is the point of humans? To bring on the 6th mass extinction?
gizmonicus@sh.itjust.works 2 hours ago
We’re really trying, aren’t we?
Bibip@programming.dev 1 hour ago
a fanciful answer i heard was that “humans are how the universe perceives itself,” and a person could be forgiven for thinking that the point of humans is to do science. closer to the ground, the point of humans seems to be to alter our surroundings to suit our society: kind of like ants. we build, we live, we reproduce, we spread. it’s not a good thing or a bad thing, it just is what it is.
RedAggroBest@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
So from the wiki
The monophyly of Xenacoelomorpha soon became established, but its position as either a basal bilaterian clade or a deuterostome remained unresolved until 2016, when two new studies, with increased gene and taxon sampling, again placed Xenoturbella as the sister group of Acoelomorpha within Xenacoelomorpha, and placed Xenacoelomorpha as sister to Nephrozoa (Protostomia plus Deuterostomia), and therefore the basalmost bilaterian phylum<
Seems like “where on the tree of life” is “the first bilaterals” which makes sense. They seem very worm-like in bodyplan. Shit from the Pre-Cambrian can look pretty alien and have shaky relationships to more derived species.
BCsven@lemmy.ca 14 hours ago
exists for no clear reason Sounds like Humans
sin_free_for_00_days@sopuli.xyz 14 hours ago
Sounds like everything, if you’re leaning nihilist.
Denjin@feddit.uk 12 hours ago
Nihilists! Fuck me! I mean, say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism Dude, at least it’s an ethos!
sroos@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
It also only has one hole, which, if you ask some topologists, is what humans have.
meekah@discuss.tchncs.de 12 hours ago
I thought most humans are 7 holes
Nikls94@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
It truly has one hole, in that it eats, has a digestive sack, and then vomits the poop
stickyprimer@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Kinda like a one stroke engine. The fuel and the exhaust all just mix.
It’s gross, but I can’t see any reason this disqualifies it from being on the tree of life.
mojofrododojo@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
vomits the poop
have had norovirus, know that feel
icelimit@lemmy.ml 7 hours ago
If the hole doesn’t go through, it is only a pocket, typographically identical to a plate.
Gathorall@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Well we’re just doughnuts.
ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 6 hours ago
Why is the digestive sack not an organ?
libre_warrior@lemmy.ml 11 hours ago
Exist for no reason? All life has a purpose, and that is to poop. The excrement speaks for itself.
Ravell@lemmy.ml 6 hours ago
Time to wake up and go to work in the shit factory!
ParadoxSeahorse@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Poop is subsistence, Sex is persistence
FinjaminPoach@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
It sounds like it doesn’t have a poop hole
tias@discuss.tchncs.de 7 hours ago
The universe is a chain of cause and effect, and the only way to interpret “a reason” for something without introducing artificial human constructs of morality, is “what caused it?”. The process of evolution caused this.
nexguy@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
It looks like they do get new openings on the surface that excrete eggs and sperm.
endless_nameless@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
I don’t think any natural thing exists for a reason. That’s reserved for things made with intention by sentient beings.
lung@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
It’s the roomba of the sea
GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
is that a living fleshlight?
dogs0n@sh.itjust.works 9 hours ago
This is a place for science! Not (your deepest) fantasy!
felixwhynot@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
Scientists do love to talk about worms
This has some details: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenacoelomorpha?wprov=sfti1…
TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
Bit of clarification: Xenacoelomorpha is the phylum that the genus Xenoturbella is under.
Someone left a tag at the top of the Xenacoelomorpha article advocating a rewrite, which I could probably quickly investigate right now (or even just check WoRMS) if I weren’t currently a lazy lump of dead weight. Without assessing the tag’s merits, I’d at least advise treading lightly as a heuristic.
wuffah@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
If it has at least one hole, then it exists for a reason. ;)
finallymadeanaccount@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Sounds like the pinnacle of evolution.
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 7 hours ago
You know, simple tools like
cat? Same thing in software engineering.
FinjaminPoach@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
Doesn’t belong. Too lame!
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 10 hours ago
recently the phylogenetic studies place this with another unusual bilaterian animal( very basal animals(Post-sponge creatures), they couldnt figure out which things this is related to.
vithigar@lemmy.ca 4 hours ago
Looks inside…
Image
…organs.
humanspiral@lemmy.ca 3 hours ago
is there a poop hole?
explodicle@sh.itjust.works 3 hours ago
No but also yes