Weirdest evolutionary development?
 

There's a lot of weirdness out there, but square poop?

What's your pick on the strangest result of the evolutionary process? Mine is cube-shaped poop.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-46258616

How did you evolve cube-shaped poo?

At the end of the article it says that the cubed shape helps attract other wombats so more offspring the cube-ier their poop.

Probably have to block out a lot of time for that to occur. As to wombat sex, no cube equals no dice. It's a brick wall.

Nothing that weird. However, I did lean a bit about plant evolution. Dandelions developed flat low growing leaves via lawnmowers. More a survival of the fittest thing. Lawn mowers would kill off the high leaf growth ones before seed developed. The low growth ones survived, the mowers actually spreading their seeds.

Dandelions not native to Oregon. Brought here by pioneers who loved their dandelion tea...

Rookie.
I'm like the play dough fun factory; starts, hearts, even letters.

In the past I have chit a brick...

Weirdest thing in evolution...

The evolution I learned in school is now called vertical gene transfer: getting genes from parents.

There's a new sort of evolution called Horizontal Gene Transfer (HGT). In the past 75 years this idea went from becoming a hypothesis to an accepted theory.

Turns out there's cases where genes can arrive in other ways than just from parents.

One new clear way is via that gene editing stuff, but now scientists are comparing genomes and finding gene sharing cases that occured naturally too. Viruses can transfer genetic material and some species (mostly small things and plants) are more receptive of new genes via pollen 'n stuff. Totally makes sense that a successful species would be able to steal another successful species' IP.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_gene_transfer

^ That is interesting.

Earthworms are not native to some areas, from what I understand.

They have changed soil and thus flora and thus the entire pyramid of life.
The Michigan state bird, the Robin, is a predator of such.
After every rain they go to town.

Read something a few weeks ago that after a bone marrow transplant the dude's sperm even changed to match the donor's DNA.

I read a bit about this, blood and sperm and marrow will all grow with the new DNA, bones and tissue will remain with the old. A chimera! Very cool.

Platypus

Venomous!

That still doesn't explain why your kids look like the mailman.

I went down that rabbit hole reading about horizontal gene transfer a few years ago. The most interesting thing to me is that many of the genes related to human reproduction were transferred from viruses and then inherited.

There was a segment on NPR about this. Very interesting stuff.

I wonder what affect that may have on DNA testing for criminal purposes?

The drive of life to live and reproduce is astonishing. There are many Extremophiles like the water bear that can survive almost anywhere. Research has found that tardigrades can withstand environments as cold as minus 328 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 200 Celsius) or highs of more than 300 degrees F (148.9 C) and even the vacuum of space! That is astonishing evolution.

https://www.livescience.com/57985-tardigrade-facts.html

Virtually anywhere on the planet that has water at all, has life. At the bottom of mines over a mile deep, in solid rock, the miners find life. In the steaming geyser of Yellowstone at temps that would boil an egg in minutes are living things very happy to be there.

Chimeric things have been messed up for folks in the past.

One lady was having custody issues with her ex, DNA test showed kids weren't hers. She was preggers at the time, ended up birthing in front of a court witness who did a DNA test on the kid right then and there, came back as "not hers". She was chimera, and her ovaries were from the "other" part.

And yes, it is rather scary considering most folks consider DNA evidence to be absolute proof.

https://www.cracked.com/article_20055_6-unassuming-animals-that-are-secretly-immortal.html

So it's a race between The Umbrella Company(resident evil) and Cyberdyne Systems(terminator).
Who will do humanity in first?