Biomimicry

They dont. It just happens that natural selection favored flowers that looked vaguely bird like and over time, flowers that looked more and more like a bird outcompeted the ones that looked less like one.

What's funny is how absurd this is. Most flowers don't look like birds and they're fine.
- This has nothing to do with natural selection. It's just a coincidence that the buds very shortly and from a specific angle vaguely look like birds.
  Most of the images shared are probably photoshopped to enhance the effect too.
- It's about tiny percents.
  A bird will land on a flower.
  A bird will not land on a bird.
  So every one in a million time a bird mistakes a flower for a bird, that's a flower that survives.
  All you have to do is wait a couple million years for the odds to turn in the bird flower's favor.
Right, but what about the mimic plant? It mimicks whatever plant is near it. And it can mimic plastic plants. https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/2022/11/30/23473062/plant-mimicry-boquila-trifoliolata
- Should be a pretty trivial experiment to replicate

"Appear to look like"...

I wonder what they look like if you manage to ignore the appearances.

My guess would be Yulan magnolia blossoms.

Animals are something plants invented to help spread their seeds around.

Know what's wild? For millions of years nothing around ate trees, so when a tree grew and died and fell it was permanently there because there was no rot. Which is how we got petrified forests.
- From my readings, I don't think this is the case. Lignin degradation evolved rapidly with terrestrial plants. Coal and petrified wood is more due to geological events and swamps for example. Evolving ligninases is trivial for bacteria and fungi.
- Isn't that more because of the lack of fungi that could break down wood?
Life in general is most likely something the universe invented to speed up entropy.
- Life is a natural part of entropy for sure.
- There's a nice theory about how it looks like the goal is actually to produce photons more efficiently.
  Edit: my source is French astrophysicists and science popularizer David Elbaz https://inis.iaea.org/search/search.aspx?orig_q=RN:53012702

#BirdsArentReal

Please tell me there is a lemmy community for this
- birdsarentreal@lemmy.world exists

"..how birds look like.."

Just one of many issues with the English here.

what it looks like
how it looks

You need to pick a lane.

I typically assume it's a non-native speaker with things like this, but I'm not sure in this case.
- I too try to give the benefit of the doubt when reading stilted text that basically conveys the meaning but the syntax is janky.
  I'm in southern Ohio so there are quite a few people from the hills and hollers around here.
  Methany definitely talks exactly like how that is.
I'd read this with commas around 'like', rather than with a period after it: "... how birds look, like, I'm afraid" works as a sentence while "... how birds look like. I'm afraid" is both wrong, like you point out, but also sounds much more serious than the jokey tone I'd expect from a message without punctuation and capitalization
- We will never know what the tweet author intended lol
Did you understand what was being communicated? Yes? Congratulations!
Because, really, that's generally all that's necessary.
- MY PARSER BROKE
Multi-track drifting
No they're asking how do birds look like the way they do. In which case the answer is that a bird's body evolved to be streamlined and lightweight in order to fly more efficiently. /s
No one cares mate.
It's fine to correct the grammar of children in your care, but not really in other circumstances.

Why do plants know how birds look

The potatoes told them. (Potatoes have eyes)

This is brilliant, thanks
However it doesn't explain how trees know how to fly (thinking of maple seeds with they're near-perfect wings)

More evidence birds aren't real

The evidence is building, I can no longer deny

There are a lot of weird flowers out there

Evolution is wonderfull

The lizard vine is a fake
- The fruit is, but not the plant, scientific name: Tetrastigma voinieranum, common names: Chestnut Vine, Lizard Vine, Wild Grape
My aunt had one of these but she watered it too much and it drowned. lmao

Annihilation vibes

I rewatched Annihilation recently. That fucking bear scene still haunts me. Great film.
- If you're into books, it's also the first book in the Southern Reach Trilogy. The movie was good, but the books really flesh out the situation. I was sad they didn't continue the movies with the rest of the books.
- Just looked it up and it seems like a movie me and my wife would love. I'm surprised I've never seen or heard of it... do you have any more movie recs?
droning sounds intensify

No, it just implies that it was adaptive to look like a bird.
It could be for any number of reasons, including because aliens exist and years ago they were like "let's screw up all the plants in this area for generations" until the leader's kid saw one that kind of looked like little birds and threw themselves in front of it and said "wait, no, spare this one."
Most flighted birds don't actually have functional penis (ducks are a notable exception). Both the males and females reproduce through their cloaca.
Plus the first flower might feel a bit jealous if it finds out

That question below is honestly a good way to demonstrate how bad people can be at understanding what would be called materialism without it being explained to them first

Easy to assume the shape of that flower is due to decisions made by the plant itself instead of the more accurate way of understanding its shape being the result of external conditions and pressures acting upon the plant and its flower growth over a long time

What the fuck does that have to do with materialism?

Why are people so unfathomably dumb, like, I'm afraid.

Yeah, some people can't even recognize a joke.
- Right, anytime anyone fucks up it's sarcasm, anytime anyone is dumb, it's a joke, nothing is real, everything is a cake.
People don't get the timescale of an evolutionary feature like this. And how long it was only kinda bird like.
Intuitively understanstanding evolution is something most people dont need so i cant really fault people for it. But yeah either trolling or actually stupid who knows.
- I do wish that the personification of evolution wasn't such a thing. People so often attribute reasoning or intention to the process, when there is no such thing.
- Intuitively understanstanding evolution is something most people dont need so i cant really fault people for it.
  LOL, how meta ("people haven't evolved to understand evolution").

How do you know it's not a bird trying to look like a plant? Y'know to evade predators and all...

What's if it's a bird-plant pretending to look like one of those plant-birds

Theyre watching us https://www.the-scientist.com/can-plants-see-in-the-wake-of-a-controversial-study-the-answer-is-still-unclear-70796

There are plants that cam see, so you are rightly afraid.

Still looks like a fake

When a bird and a flower love each other very much...

Looks fake as hell. I'd be more afraid of falling for stuff like this. Cute as a Photoshop challenge though

I thought you were being too cynical because plenty of plants evolved this technique but then I realized because of AI I have absolutely no idea if they're real or not, unless I spend time that I don't have on researching it.
- Seems like it's a touched up fake. The white duck head one is especially obvious. https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/52975/does-the-yulan-magnolia-flower-bud-look-like-a-bird

Does this fuckwit know what punctuation is?