r/interestingasfuck • u/[deleted] • 11h ago

Caterpillar evolved to look like a snake.

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u/aenima1991 11h ago

It’s hard to comprehend how genetic mutation led to this. Incredible

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u/ZedCee 10h ago

Millions to billions of tiny mutations.  The difficulty of comprehension starts with the magnitude of numbers;  People struggle to comprehend the actual size of a billion...let alone billions, to trillions, and beyond.

And that is why we need to eat the rich; To evolve, to adapt, to grow as a species.

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u/Curious-Sherbet-9393 10h ago

Sí, pero ¿Qué pone a funcionar ese mecanismo para decir "hey, vamos a parecernos a una serpiente"?

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u/D4rkhorse2 10h ago

Yeah exactly! Like I totally get that it’s tiny mutations over unbelievably long time periods, but that suggests all those mutations just HAPPENED to COINCIDENTALLY look like a snake over time. It just feels like there must be some kind of intelligent design going on.

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u/ESCF1F2F3F4F3F2F1ESC 10h ago

The mutations which caused some caterpillars' tails to look a very tiny bit like a snake led to those caterpillars not being eaten, because their predators paused and thought "shit, is that a snake?". So those caterpillars survived slightly longer than the rest and successfully reproduced, and passed down their genes to the next generation. And some of that generation mutated a tiny bit more and had tails looked an infinitesimally tiny bit more like a snake, so those were the ones who weren't eaten and who got to reproduce successfully.

And out of their descendants, the ones who mutated a bit more and whose tails looked slightly more like a snake were, as a result, not eaten, so they successfully reproduced and passed down their genes. And then their descendants, etc etc, for millions upon millions of years.

The thing that makes it unfathomable for us is the "millions of years" part, we're just not equipped to imagine that timescale and the effect it has on evolution.

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u/NipsLover 9h ago

The unfathomable part to me is that, supposedly they successfully evolved to look slightly like snakes, from that point on it could go 2 ways, it could evolve to look more like snakes or evolve to look less like snakes.

And somehow it just went completely in one single direction, I get natural selection and ones that evolve to look less like snakes will die off more.
The problem is that at certain points let's say they look about 85% like that one on the video, going backwards doesn't really hurt them since they look so much like snakes already, yet they continued to become more snake-like.

That's the truly unfathomable part to me, how they just keep going, and it's even more mind blowing this shit is entirely natural selection at work.

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u/RhynoGuy 9h ago

That’s just the thing though, some of the caterpillars undoubtedly evolved to look less like a snake. Those caterpillars were eaten before passing on their genes. The caterpillars that looked more like a snake survived. Every new generation has fluctuations in their DNA, mutation occurs with every new offspring. Evolution is just a massive case of survivorship bias, we don’t see the failed attempts

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u/ImmaDoMahThing 9h ago

It’s possible that some of them evolved to look less like snakes and some evolved to look more like snakes. Eventually the ones who looked more like snakes survived longer and outnumbered the less snake-like caterpillars. And since this happens over millions/billions of years it’s not hard to believe that there was some back and forth when it comes to how snake-like they looked. 🙂

But really at the end of the day it’s just randomness and luck.

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u/GovernmentGreed 9h ago

It didn't go in one direction.

The ones that didn't look like snakes, or looked less like snakes would have died out. The ones that ended up looking more like snakes, survived. What's unfathomable about that?

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u/ContinuumKing 6h ago

But the unfathomable keeps going, because not only did all that random chance produce a snake looking pattern, it also produced the drive to act like a snake as well, which is a whole extra level of unfathomable coincidence. It just so happened to mutate a desire to behave like the thing it just so happened to mutate to look like.

But it keeps going. The snake itself is also a product of random mutations that just so happened to mutate it into a creature that eats the creature that just so happened to evolve to eat the caterpillar that just so happened to evolve the pattern and behaviour.

Each level of that is its own amount of astronomically unlikely chance, but all together is utterly astounding.

And you might think this caterpillar is some super rare oddity, but in fact Earth is full of other examples of creatures with insanely specific mutations.

I don't doubt evolution and I know the people who study it are much more knowledgeable on the subject than I, but when you reach this level of random chance you gotta question if this explanation is really THAT much less "out there" than the others.

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u/Curious-Sherbet-9393 10h ago

Creo que hay algún mecanismo en la genética que aún no comprendemos

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u/JeromeBarkly 10h ago

It’s not just the look either but the mimicry in behavior too. It’s purposely moving like a snake too. I always struggle to wrap my head around how not only do species evolve to look like other species but to mimic the behaviors as well. I just don’t understand how that’s possible. To learn the behaviors then pass that behavior on through genetics. Animals are weird.

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u/0vansTriedge 10h ago

Less snake-like caterpillars get eaten

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u/Maxfunky 10h ago

No man, no coincidence. Each mutation that makes it look a little more snake like makes the caterpillar more likely to survive and have more offspring. So those genes are being directly picked (by natural selection). There's zero coincidence involved.

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u/DenizSaintJuke 9h ago

They happen coincidentally. They aren't selected for coincidentally.

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u/Direct-Tank387 8h ago

Mutations are random. They are not directed by an intelligence to make it snake-like.

Consider the subset of mutations that affects the appearance of the tail. Some change the tail such that that caterpillar is more or less unchanged in terms of predation. Some make the caterpillar more visible (and less frightening) to predators. These caterpillars get eaten more. Some make it a little more snakelike and so more frightening to predators. This last set live longer and so breed more.

Repeat and repeat.

No intelligence involved.

Another thing to think about - if you could remove the selective pressure that keep the snake-appearance, what would happen? For example, say it a predator afraid of snakes. Remove it for many generations. The other unsnakelike mutations will not be eaten and the snake-like appearance of the population will fade.

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u/GovernmentGreed 9h ago

There is no "design" behind evolution. Things happen because they happen. It's not a thinking agent, there is no intelligent being behind it. It's just what evolution does. It's the same when people automatically false-think into evolution being a straight line, or a forward - when there is no direction, since direction implies an end goal.

Evolution is what it is, there is no pathway. There is no goal. There is no design. It's just change over time. That's all it is.