• AnIntenseMoist@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    Considering horses (and thus horseshoes) came way after the horseshoe crab, we really should rename the horseshoe to “crab shoe” or something and “horseshoe crab” to something else. Ideas welcome.

      • casmael@mander.xyz
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        6 days ago

        Yeah I was gna say something like this - the crab is on the other foot, if you get my drift

    • Zerush@lemmy.ml
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      6 days ago

      Agree, they don’t seems Horse shoes, they are not even crabs or crustaceos, Arrow Tail Scorpion or Spider would maybe the biological most exact name.

      • LousyCornMuffins@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        angry hissing crab? nah that’s all of them. alexa how do you say pointy butt crab in esperanto? we gotta use dead languages to name our creatures

  • Sylveon@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    6 days ago

    That’s not how evolution works. Today’s horseshoe crabs may look very similar to their ancestors hundreds of millions of years ago, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t evolve. I know it’s just a meme and not that serious, but misconceptions about evolution seem to be very common and I think that’s a shame.

    • alcibiades@sh.itjust.works
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      6 days ago

      Apologies for ignorance, but what changed about them? Is it that they’ve been evolving over millions of years, which is why they can survive in today’s world (even though they look the same).

      • Revan343@lemmy.ca
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        6 days ago

        Basically that; I’d imagine their immune systems are more complex nowadays just because the threats are

      • Pyr@lemmy.ca
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        6 days ago

        Similar to how humans and apes have a common ancestor, the horseshoe crabs would have an ancestor which looked very similar to today’s version, although slightly different, and some of them would have evolved into other things while some remained relatively unchanged.

        From what I can tell, arachnids might share a common ancestor with horseshoe crabs, which is kinda crazy to think about.

        As well, they look the same phycially but the DNA has changed significantly, potentially just internal things or chemical/biological processes etc.

        • mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          5 days ago

          Yeah, taxonomic classification always falls short of the natural world. It may be the same taxonomy, but that doesn’t mean they’re exactly the same.

          Hell, if we only had dog fossils to work with, different breeds would almost certainly be considered entirely different species. But as it currently stands, they’re all the same species, (canis lupus familiaris), because we know the different breeds can mate with each other and produce viable offspring.

  • CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social
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    6 days ago

    I see a trilobite and an ammonite in there, did those guys even leave any evolved descendants before they went extinct?