arthropods

Just to put some context:

Predatory scorpions a couple feet long
Armored millipedes larger than a man; they were probably herbivorous but as the article notes they "would have had few, if any, predators."
There is a theory, possibly not real well accepted but it makes sense to me, that trilobites were the creature that way-back-when invented effective predation shortly after evolving vision. (Before which the world was a fairly benign place.) The theory further supposes that the Cambrian Explosion was caused by every other organism on the planet having to scramble not to have their soft blobby flesh munched on at leisure by a limitless army of armored, invulnerable hunters, which they couldn't see or avoid, but who could see and follow them.

I salivate whenever I hear about these ancient mega arthropods. Like, gigantic and armoured, whatever. But by modern standards, blind and incredibly stupid. And in that atmosphere you'd be constantly so well oxygenated. I don't know why but I'm convinced these big fucks tasted like lobster.
- Sounds like we need to break into a museum with some butter
Fantastic addition to the conversation, thank you
I really like that theory too. It further expands that vision is what granted us intelligence as creatures coming on land could see significantly further and thus start planning and reacting to distant changes giving birth to modern intelligence. To add, whales developed this intelligence and went back to the ocean to absolutely dominate it.
- This video is really interesting and made me realize what a huge evolutionary advantage it is to be able to remember things - something we take completely for granted, but isn't required to survive.
I crocheted a giant millipede that is about 1.8 m long and while doing this I also found that there lived actual millipedes that large long ago. Now I cuddle with my giant millipede and imagine that she was one of those giants! :)
- That is incredibly charming 😃
- That looks much more like a Velvet Worm.
Why do you find that particular theory about the Cambrian Explosion compelling? I assume mankind is putting a similar pressure on many ecosystems today, so shouldn't we be seeing that kind of evolutionary explosion happening now?
- Before: All phyla differentiated but all the creatures are soft and blobby and sort of unremarkable
  After: All of a sudden there's trilobites everywhere, they can see and some of them hunt, and all creatures everywhere suddenly have all this armor and mobility and a lot of them have spikes
  I don't really know (even enough to talk about what might be the competing theories), but it seems like it fits and it doesn't seem all that farfetched. That said, it kind of seems like all the scientists think me and Andrew Parker are wrong though, so IDK.
  (Also - I didn't know about this before as it's semi-new, but apparently Anomalocaris also had eyes and hunted, so star power of the trilobites aside maybe those guys were involved as well. I have to say though the timing of the way it's written in Wikipedia makes a little more sense if the sequencing is: Cambrian explosion -> some species turn into predators, as opposed to the other way around)
  What humans are doing to the natural world right now is a global extinction event (not much different from has happened a handful of times). It's happening too fast for anything to adapt to except in the most short-term emergency ways. Mostly stuff is just dying.
  If we stay around for millions of years doing this same thing then I would expect the biosphere to develop defenses and then rebound into a new equilibrium with defense measures included against what we tend to do to it. Even that outcome wouldn't really be another Cambrian explosion though, because everything before it was so universally blobby and unremarkable. That is actually exactly why I like this theory -- the clear lack of a certain type of selection pressure before the explosion happened is as much as part of the theory (there must have been something missing from the threat matrix that suddenly arrived, and what was that thing?) as what things looked like after the Cambrian.
- It is happening now but evolution takes a long time. If there were a ton of adaptations that happened in the next 10,000 years, that would be incredibly fast on an evolutionary timescale
- Humans have only been dominant for a few thousand years. Give it like a million for enough evolution to happen and then ask this question again.
- Just give it another million years or so.
- Humans are blitzkrieging the troposphere. Nothing could hope to evolve fast enough except fungi and bacteria I guess
trilobites were the creature that way-back-when invented effective predation shortly after evolving vision.
The fact that their closet living relative, the horseshoe crab, has remained pretty much unchanged for up to 480 million years lends credence to the idea that their design works very well.
anomalocaris anomalocaris anomalocaris
anomalocaris

this is the bug equivalent of those memes about wolves becoming pugs
- I don't follow sorry. Could you explain?
  I was just making a silly joke and also trying to point out that genetic memory red in tooth and claw stuff is fucking weird.
I think that peacock spiders and related species can help people get past arachnophobia. They’re cute, they’re intelligent, and they have entertaining behaviors. The fact that they have the two large forward facing eyes makes them look less alien.
If you want to try exposure therapy for arachnophobia, they’re a great starting point imo.

There are more kinds of beetles in the world than any other animal.

I needed a clarification, Wikipedia had your back.
The Coleoptera, with about 400,000 described species, is the largest of all orders, constituting almost 40% of described insects and 25% of all known animal species; new species are discovered frequently, with estimates suggesting that there are between 0.9 and 2.1 million total species.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beetle
- Note that this is described species. Beetles are really easy to preserve and are often super cool. There are likely more species in other orders, but they haven't had as much work done on them. Hymenoptera, for example, with all of the parasitic wasps probably has more species but they can be so freaking small and difficult to work with.
  Sorry, I am like a wanna be entomologist who works with akshual entomologists and this is one of the things that triggers them
Wot?
John
Paul
George
Ringo
That’s FOUR. Only four.

We've got some pretty big centipedes around here, and they're one of very few animals I slaughter ruthlessly without remorse. I have a hammer for the express purpose of braining them. Fuckers don't need an excuse to bite you, they just do. And, they love bedsheets, clothes, etc. Ironically, we also have house centipedes, and they get a pass. They're hideous, sure, but anything that eats cockroach eggs (another one I kill without remorse) is A-OK in my book.

Where do you live? I'd like to know so I can put that on my list of places to not go.
- Sorry to tell you that my particular location is pretty much irrelevant. Centipedes and roaches are just about everywhere. The further north you go, the safer you are.
- Don't move to the American Southeast. Look up palmetto bugs.

People see insects as extremely weak but they're the ones who despite being a thousandth of your size can still consistently ruin your day. Now imagine that scaled up and given a lifespan which allows them to develop intelligence and you'll start to understand why my insectsona would absolutely fuck up your dragonsona in a fight.

The can't be bigger today however, as they are limited by the oxygen concentration in the air. In the past, there was a higher percentage of oxygen in the atmosphere, so so insects could be bigger and thus have a lower surface area to volume ratio, because the air they did intake through their exoskeleton had more oxygen, so it was possible to spread oxygen throughout their body. But when the oxygen level dropped, they had to become smaller so that their surface area to volume ratio dropped, and the oxygen they intook could go further.
- Until they evolve lungs
- Same for dinosaurs. They got so big because more oxygen, couldn't survive today.
Nah my Sauropodsona would still wreck your insectsona
- It wouldn't have any viable attacks assuming they would even be able to target a relatively small creature who can fly.
There's five million ants for every human, should they decide to fuck us up, they will.
- 🥵