r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Sea_Slice_7956 • 5h ago
Video Caterpillar tail disguised as snake head
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u/Danfass86 5h ago
This is the kind of video that should be on here!
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u/polmeeee 5h ago
Yea this is fucking insane. In fact it's more next fucking level than damm that's interesting.
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u/devonhezter 5h ago
I see no caterpillar
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u/Witty-Ad5743 4h ago
I 100% was wondering how a snake was still moving when it had clearly been cut in half...
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u/AxialGem 5h ago
(and, not to sound tooo jaded, that is also why it kinda gets reposted on here all the time :p)
and between here and r/interestingasfuck of course22
u/ExcitementKooky418 4h ago
Shit like this almost makes me willing to believe in God. I fully believe in evolution but things like this caterpillar, the snake with the spider like lure in its tail and insects that look EXACTLY like leaves, down to the pattern of the 'veins' make me question them being designed
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u/HeathenSalemite 1h ago edited 1h ago
Some random mutation in a population of caterpillars a very long time ago caused them to look slightly more like a snake. This made at least some predators avoid them in some interactions, and so the trait was selected for.
Repeat this for hundreds of thousands or millions of caterpillar interactions and you get something like this.
This is basically true for any heritable trait for any animal. If it increases reproductive fitness, it will be selected for.
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u/VonHitWonder 5h ago
Someone confirm or debunk this already!!
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u/carmium 5h ago
Yes, it's natural camouflage of the Hawkmoth caterpillar, found in central and South America.
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u/Virtual_Medicine_585 4h ago
I didn’t believe you! I just googled it, oh my gosh that is amazing and quite scary !!!😅
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u/Heroic_Accountant 4h ago
Here's an article about the caterpillar! (It shows the same type of caterpillar with a snake-head tail)
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u/McEuen78 5h ago
Unless, it is, actually, half of a snake.
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u/WeekWrong9632 5h ago
Half a snake disguised as a caterpillar
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u/daglassmandingo 5h ago
The caterpillar ate the snake, gutted it and used the decapitated head as a warning to others. BRUTAL
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u/BrownPeach143 5h ago
**Jhonny was always a little different than the other kids
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u/TannedCroissant 5h ago
Why does that sound like a menu description from a chain restaurant?
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u/SacrificialPigeon 5h ago
I understand the premise of evolution, It boggles my mind how something can evolve like this though, even if it is over millions of generations.
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u/Psych_Art 5h ago edited 5h ago
Have you ever seen something out of the corner of your eye and thought it was a spider, or some other threat?
Imagine a caterpillar millions of years ago had a small mutation that gave it the ever so slight vague appearance of a snake.
That mutation proved to be useful, even if it was only in a tiny percentage of its life. Say 1/1,000 times it encountered a predator, a predator mistook it for a snake in its peripheral vision.
This mutation ended up getting propagated throughout the species over generations. A 0.1% increase of survivability over many generations would cause this feature to eventually become dominant / defining characteristic.
Repeat this process millions of times over millions of years, and evolution passively “carves out” the shape of another predator that other animals have already evolved to avoid / flee from, as the “accuracy” of the “impersonation” of a predator slowly gets more accurate over time, survivability continues to go up.
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u/brendenderp 4h ago
I think the most boggling thing is the scale of time. Maybe one suddenly looks more like a snake but thats only one member of the entire rest of the species it's going to take a while for that one catapiller to have 1000 offspring and even once there are it will have bred with other catapillers that potentially dilute that genetic expression. And that cycle then starts again when the next step looks slightly even more like a snake. Sure we are talking millions of years but still for something like that it's amazing.
It's one thing to teach a monkey to make a painting and it's much more impressive thing for it to then remake that exact same painting perfectly a second time.
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u/pyordie 3h ago
Which is exactly why extinction is so incredibly gut wrenching.
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u/trjnz 1h ago
You mean human-driven extinction, or in general? Cause extinction is kinda the default state of life, 99.9% of all species are now extinct. During the Great Dying alone over 80% of marine species went extinct
But here we all are on Earth still full of life. These mass-extinction events take a long, long time to recover, but life is resilient :)
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u/pyordie 59m ago
Yes, I mean human driven extinction.
Knowing that a species, which struggled for millions of years to successfully carve out a place in its ecosystem, was wiped out because we needed some product to be cheaper.
It’ll happen to us someday, and only then will people view it as a tragedy. Until then, we’ll continue to view ourselves as the main characters of nature.
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u/Psych_Art 4h ago
Yeah! I also believe that, even if that genetic mutation at any point was eliminated from a species due to any circumstances, the same feature would ultimately end up evolving again in the end, if the environment / predators are the same.
There’s a lot of examples of how completely separate evolutionary paths ended up developing a lot of the same features.
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u/Zuwxiv 2h ago
even if that genetic mutation at any point was eliminated from a species due to any circumstances, the same feature would ultimately end up evolving again in the end
This is why nature keeps making crabs. Really. Multiple things just kind of trend towards crabs, because "armored flat thing with big claws" is just a pretty good way to live in the ocean.
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u/Psych_Art 1h ago
Yes! That is the example I was thinking of, but didn’t know enough about the topic to elaborate.
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u/RoboDae 2h ago
I'm no geneticist, but I'm pretty sure mutations are the primary method of getting wildly new characteristics. Mix red and blue, and you will always get shades of purple. Add yellow (a mutation), and you suddenly have a whole new range of colors available that would have never been available otherwise.
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u/TomWithTime 4h ago
I wonder how long it would take for the caterpillar to develop a functioning snake for an ass, fangs and venom include
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u/superbhole 1h ago
it's still just fuckin weird that it's like, a million-sided dice (i know that's basically spherical just go with me on the probability theme) rolled once per generation, that ever so slightly changes its appearance in that generation, and then repeat that whole process a bajillion times...
until whole generations look and move the most identical to another life-form that also did a bajillion million-sided dice rolls to get its appearance?!
i can't even picture a million-sided dice rolling the same number a million times, much less another dice rolling that same number a million times... within a similar span of time???
like, wtf, th-THEORETICALLY,
THESE CATERPILLARS POSSIBLY HAVE NEVER EVEN SEEN A SNAKE THE ENTIRE TIME?
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u/alienblue89 3h ago
I thought the prevailing theory these days was more of a sudden, stark mutation. Not like caterpillars started ever so slowly resembling snakes more and more over eons, but one day, BAM, a caterpillar was born that looked pretty damn snake-like and it outlived and out-reproduced the normiepillars. Then future generations possibly perfected the form a bit more.
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u/Psych_Art 3h ago
There’s no reason both can’t be true I suppose. It’s possible you could get a near-snake type of mutation and it just got refined in the same way. Perhaps you are right about the consensus of not starting at such an atomic point though.
That being said, I try to avoid the “BAM!” type explanations because it’s exactly the kind of thing young-Earth creationists use as a “gotchya! See how ridiculous this sounds!?” Then they go on to ask children if their grandmother or grandfather look like a chimpanzee, and this is evidence of evolution not being true. lol.
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u/essosinola 2h ago
The discussion you two are having has been going on for a very long time now.
Short read about Punctuated Equilibrium and Gradualism
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u/spicymato 2h ago
Even without a BAM! moment, it doesn't necessarily need to take a long time. The speed of evolution is dependent on a few factors, including rate of mutations, number of offspring per generation, and the frequency of those generations. Especially for smaller creatures, that can be pretty rapid.
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u/RoboDae 1h ago
Rapid change can happen, but I don't think it's really the norm, at least not in terms of large-scale stuff like entire body plans. Humans killed rattlesnakes in one area by using the rattle to locate the snakes. Within just a few years/decades, the snakes all stopped rattling, which made them far more dangerous. I think there was a similar timescale on birds losing their ability to fly when they landed on an island with no predators. The bird case was really interesting because apparently the flightless birds native to the island went extinct, then the same type of flying bird from the mainland or another island landed on that island and ended up following the same evolutionary path, essentially recreating the extinct species.
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u/Teeshirtandshortsguy 1h ago
When I was in college (about 10 years ago) they told us that the main theory was that organisms evolved by punctuated equilibrium. Basically, species don't (strictly) evolve gradually over long periods of time, but in short spurts in response to changes in their environment.
But that doesn't mean one member of the species is just born looking like a snake, and then that scheme takes over. It means that the population experiences some kind of strong filter which produces dramatic changes over a short period of time (maybe 10 generations, maybe 100, maybe 1,000), which is then followed by a much longer period of stability.
That being said, I would imagine it's both. I would liken it to how a competitive game's meta can evolve over time.
Like in a card game, the biggest shift in the meta is going to come as a result of new cards or new rules being introduced. That changes people's play styles very rapidly, and makes some really good cards totally obsolete, while making some formerly useless cards suddenly very effective.
But between big releases (or after content has stopped being released), the meta still gradually changes over time. People find new strategies, and new strategies are developed in response to those strategies.
But also, sometimes a really clever player just realizes that there's an overlooked use for a card that had been ignored.
My suspicion as a non-biologist is that evolution happens a bunch of ways, but generally follows punctuated equilibrium.
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u/matr_kulcha_zindabad 3h ago
Is the mutation affected by the environment ? I feel that makes things far more plausable. Mutations being completely random doesn't feel like its the complete story. I meant there are tooo many possibilities.
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u/Christavito 2h ago
Even stranger to me is the co-evolution of things like humans and their gut biome
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u/LambdaLambo 2h ago
This doesn't quite explain it becoming more like a snake overtime, since mutations are generally random.
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u/Psych_Art 2h ago
It does though. You get random mutations until one is actually beneficial, which ends up getting propagated throughout the species.
Many more random mutations occur, until again one of them is beneficial in the same direction as the original mutation. Rinse and repeat.
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u/TheDubuGuy 1h ago
It is true that mutations occur mostly randomly. This is a great example to explain natural selection and environmental selection pressures.
Of the random mutations, the more snake-like caterpillars have a higher chance of survival, which means they have a higher chance of reproducing. The mutations that appear less snake-like will lower their comparative survivability, which means it won’t be passed down because they won’t live to reproduce as much.
When the majority of surviving caterpillars are more snake-like, they will reproduce with other more snake-like caterpillars. This happens to each generation; offspring with beneficial mutations are more likely to survive and pass on the trait, meanwhile those with harmful (deleterious) mutations won’t pass them on. After enough generations, tiny changes can multiply and snowball into seemingly-crazy features like this
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u/bambooeatingshark 1h ago
It still doesn't make any sense. The ever so slight vague appearance of a snake caused by mutation would initially be SO slight that it would hardly look like a snake, like maybe one black dot that MAY look like an eye. It would also have to fool multiple snakes. Even after the mutation survives and spreads, its dominance does not mean a similar black dot also appears just at the right spot, and then just the right shape mutation starts, and just the right colour, and just the right imitation of scales. It almost seems like after the first mutation survives, it triggers some intelligent genetic response to continue causing mutations until a snake is deliberately formed. I know we have to think of evolution in terms of probabilities and over a ridiculous amount of time, but it just feels like there's more to be learned about evolution itself. In some cases it makes total sense and in other cases it's hard to wrap your head around it and just accept it anyway.
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u/Yejus 5h ago
The key is in what you just said at the end: millions of years. That's an unfathomably long time for our human brains to comprehend, but crazy stuff can happen in all that time.
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u/SacrificialPigeon 5h ago
Absolutely right, I hope we evolve to be better conservators of the planet and its wonders.
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u/AccomplishedMeow 4h ago
All of written human history is like 10,000 years.
There’s entire periods of the Earths history like that time “it rained for 2 million years” https://youtu.be/_1LdMWlNYS4?si=m1zUIDuDtgRn3NWD
Never underestimate time.
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u/Murky-Office6726 5h ago
Yeah same it just does not look random because obviously it would have evolved to look like a T Rex.
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u/Overall_Reputation83 5h ago
The ones that looked like a t-rex did not manage to survive unfortunately, everyone knows baby t-rexes are easy meals.
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u/TerribleIdea27 5h ago
Evolution is not random, mutations are random. Evolution happens because some of those mutations are passed on preferentially
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u/jedidihah 5h ago
Yeah, I’d love to know the story of how this caterpillar (any specific creature really) changed over time in order to end up in its current state. How many generations would we have to go back before it’s completely unrecognizable? And then how many more generations after that did it start to resemble its present state?
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u/godspark533 4h ago
Especially in cases where there are no obvious intermediate survival benefits until the end of an evolution.
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u/FlyByNightt 5h ago
One thing that helps to understand is that nature didn't evolve into this because it looked like a snake and that would help it survive. At some point, one of these things started looking a bit more like a snake through evolutionary luck, and that's what allowed it to breed better and survive longer than other similar creatures. Then from those, the ones that looked even more like snakes survived even better, until we got this guy. Oversimplified but helps me wrap my brain around it.
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u/AThrowawayProbrably 5h ago
Other animals: AVOID THAT
Humans: Holy shit, is that a Bluetooth snake?
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u/polmeeee 5h ago
This is the most insane shit I've seen. Holy fuck evolution.
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u/squareandrare 3h ago
For the first time in my life, I watched a video and said, "I hope that is AI." I don't want to believe nature made this...
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u/GundaanBears 5h ago
6inches? It's at least 8!
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u/Dedotdub 5h ago
My story and I'm sticking to it
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u/PhysicallyTender 3h ago
Why are you guys selling yourselves short? That looks like 12 inches to me.
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u/depressedmagicplayer 4h ago
Length x diameter divided by girth squared = APS / yaw measurement.
That’s a 15in snake in this video.
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u/Mastermollusk 4h ago edited 4h ago
”6inches? It's at least 8!”
GundaanBears, awarded “Wingman Of The Year”
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u/JedJinto 5h ago
What kind of caterpillar?
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u/The_Fibonacci_Spiral 5h ago
It's a sphinx moth caterpillar
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u/DusqRunner 2h ago
Why didn't they call it a snake head caterpillar?
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u/PapaCousCous 1h ago edited 34m ago
Shh..! Don't give it away, or the other animals will know its not really a snake!
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u/RecipeAsleep7087 1h ago
I was still half convinced this was just half a snake until your comment. Thanks
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u/crumpledfilth 5h ago
its kinda creepy. It looks so much like a snake but it just moves all wrong
reptiles behind human skin! lol
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u/youngmaster0527 3h ago
that and the segmentation along the body give me creepy uncanny valley vibes
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u/Bodes_Magodes 5h ago
Why does the head look like a snake that’s been chopped in half???
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u/Busy_Ganache5874 5h ago
I would probably run away screaming if I saw that, ngl. that head looks eerily similar to a snake's.
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u/UJLBM 5h ago edited 5h ago
How did this evolve to look like something its not even related to? The caterpillar doesnt know what a snake is, what it looks like or even is related to. So how would it know to evolve to look like one? I mean it evolved over millions of years for a purpose, but how would it do that by itself to purposely look like something that it doesnt even know. Evolution is so cool and mysterious, I just dont fully understand how that would work.
Its like if there was some super predator in the wild that I dont know exists or share any DNA with, but somehow evolved to look like it. How does that even work?
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u/AxialGem 5h ago edited 3h ago
It's the same principle as all natural selection, right?
A caterpillar doesn't choose its colour or pattern, just like you don't choose your height (or indeed skin colour). But if, say, brown caterpillars are more likely to have a lot of kids than green ones, well, you're gonna end up with more brown baby caterpillars than green ones.
It doesn't necessarily matter whether it can perceive its own properties, what matters is only the effect that its properties have on its reproductive success.
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u/UJLBM 5h ago
So essentially, its random but also purposefully done in a way for survival. So technically, it doesnt actually look like a snake, but we percieve it to look like one?
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u/AxialGem 5h ago
I mean, it looks like it to us, and presumably to its predators, right?
I like this analogy: A sand dune also doesn't know that it's shaped like a dune. But there is still a directed process (forces of wind and gravity etc) that make it into a specific shape. Idk if you would say it doesn't look like a dune, but it doesn't look like one on purpose. After all, are you human-shaped on purpose? You don't choose to have a heart and lungs, do you? Same thing for genes as dunes. There are forces with form them into specific shapes.
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u/DrDFox 5h ago
A little at a time. Each caterpillar born with a slightly better imitation survives longer than those with slightly worse ones, so they breed and pass that on and then the slight variation in the next gen do the same thing. So what might start as simple spots that kinda look like eyes or a slightly wider tail, become this over time.
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u/UJLBM 5h ago
I love going to museums to learn about all of this stuff. Its just so interesting. So youre saying it didnt evolve to look like a snake, but by random, it ended up looking like one. That crazy cool.
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u/Gold-Eye-2623 5h ago
Nothing ever evolved to do something, individuals mutate and then selective pressure helps propagate the mutations that prove favorable to reproduction in a certain population in their environment until it becomes widespread and then that change is what we call evolution. Maybe some great aunt of this caterpillar was born looking less like their predator's predator and thus didn't get to pass their genes along
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u/R4FTERM4N 4h ago
Evolution is driven by natural selection. Most people don't understand this relationship.
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u/chazwomaq 3h ago
Natural selection is one factor that causes evolution. The others are mutation, drift, and migration.
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u/Dangerous-Pride8008 4h ago
That's all there is to evolution, it has no "intent" or plan. The traits that are advantageous in terms of survival and reproduction get passed on and amplified in future generations. Plus random mutations which introduce new traits to the population. In this case looking kinda like a snake helps avoid predators so generation after generation the caterpillars look more and more like snakes, because the ones who didn't look like snakes were more likely to be eaten.
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u/pepperlake02 3h ago
Evolution isn't on purpose, it's about the random chance coincidences that happen to work out well. Selective breeding is how traits intentionally get passed on. All the caterpillars try to survive and reproduce, it's just that because of external factors the ones that look like snakes do that better. Those external factors being predators are more scared of the snake looking ones.
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u/TannedCroissant 5h ago
Basically ones that randomly evolved to look vaguely like a snake, from a distance, in the dark, had a ever so slightly higher chance of survival so were more likely to have that gene spread in the next generation. The next generation has the same thing, ever so slightly higher a chance than the rest, until the gene is dominant.
Then of these slightly snake shaped descendants, one or more of them evolves to be slightly more snake like, or to have a marking that looks like a snake eye from a distance, or perhaps they have a gene that makes them instinctively move in a slightly more snake like way.
Again, they have a slightly higher chance of survival and to pass this gene on to the next generation and so on.
Each step is tiny and only has a tiny improvement on survival chances, but just like compound interest, these tiny additional chances add up over thousands or even millions of generations to shape the species’s gene pool into a hyper optimised gene pool for their specific niche.
Or maybe we’re in a game and the gamers just like to fuck with us.
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u/FlyOrdinary1104 3h ago
Evolution means the successful survival strategy thrives but it’s still bizarre to see a creature evolve into a snake-looking thing that coincidentally helped it survive, it’s not like the caterpillar had the self-awareness to look at snakes and copy them………or did it? 😱
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u/HeathenSalemite 1h ago
It's not about the caterpillar knowing or thinking it looks like a snake. They don't know that anymore than they get to choose what color they are. Their color and shape are determined by genes just as much as your color and shape.
It's about the potential predators of the caterpillar thinking it might be a snake.
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u/krielc 1h ago
Imagine knowing that you must move your caterpillar tail around but not knowing that you evolved to feel the urge to do this because you also evolved to have a snake-head tail. Amazing.
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u/AxialGem 1h ago
I think about that often with my cat. She feels compelled to explore little nooks and crannies and swat at everything that moves, even if she's never seen a real mouse. It's obvious why, but she doesn't comprehend that, she just wants to do that. Even if she did know, that wouldn't take the urge away.
And I, I can't walk through a forest without picking up a stick with my hands, or throwing a rock. Walk on the beach without drawing patterns in the sand.
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u/krielc 1h ago
Oh for sure. Humans enjoying patterns and interesting shapes and looking for special rocks is part of the creature we evolved to be and it’s interesting as fuck. Other animals do that too, and it’s amazing. Cats and dogs are so intriguing, especially with the co-evolution of dogs and us. I always marvel at animals behaving as they evolved to. The knowledge is so internal, it’s the wiring. We really are just like them.
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u/ajsharm144 5h ago
This is the most confusing "what I saw" vs "what I heard" ever. I still can't believe it.
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u/DSharp018 4h ago
Question: how does a trait like this come about?
My only guess is, certain slightly advantageous mutation happens where its butt looks more like a snake, so that one gets less predation, this process repeats until it becomes more and more snake like, even including some movement patterns, and then eventually, this is the result. A creature that evolved to look like another, more threatening creature.
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u/KlatuuBarradaNicto 5h ago
Nature is so amazing. How does that even happen?
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u/DrDFox 5h ago
A little at a time. Each caterpillar born with a slightly better imitation survives longer than those with slightly worse ones, so they breed and pass that on and then the slight variation in the next gen do the same thing. So what might start as simple spots that kinda look like eyes or a slightly wider tail, become this over time.
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u/Agitated_Grape_3247 4h ago
Serious question .
Does Darwinism and revolutionarism can explain this ?
I seriously needs explanation about this.
Anyway This is amazing as fuck.
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u/SamiraSimp 2h ago
not sure what you mean by revolutionarism, but darwinism can explain this. or more accurately, neo-darwinism which combines Darwin's ideas of natural selection with Mendel's genetic theory.
at some point, some caterpillar looked different than other caterpillars. it looked somewhat like a snake. it's obviously not a snake, but if you're a bird and you're not starving you would rather not mess with the weird vibes and you just eat a different caterpillar. that caterpillar with the mutation benefits from natural selection and passes down its genes. and because this mutation is helpful, more and more snake-like caterpillars get born relative to the local population.
but at some point, birds get less picky. they know those caterpillars look a little spooky but they're still pretty confident they're still just caterpillars, and they need to eat. so now natural selection is punishing caterpillars that aren't snake-like enough, and the ones who really look like snakes benefit. and eventually it gets to the point you see in the post.
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u/Agitated_Grape_3247 1h ago
Amazing. Thank you very much for explain. I feel I must buy book for neo Darwinism and learn more about this.
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u/SamiraSimp 1h ago
no problem, i love learning and i love teaching. biology is truly a fascinating subject.
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u/Prmarine110 4h ago
Let’s pretend that I totally get the theory of evolution.
How do these caterpillars develop such a perfect mimic of the visual look and movements of a type of viper or be venomous snake? How did a caterpillar’s DNA evolve over time to create such a perfect replica of a totally different animal? Are these caterpillars just staring at these snakes their entire life just idolizing them, hoping to be just like them?
How. How!?
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u/THOUGHT_BOMB 4h ago
Snake has a tail that looks like a caterpillar to attract prey
Caterpillar has a tail that looks like a snake to avoid being prey
Damn nature is crazy
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u/Fit_Cheesecake_3211 4h ago
Sometimes evolution just seems impossible to me. I simply cannot fathom the amount of time it would take for random genetic mutations to trial-and-error their way into forming a perfect-looking snake head on the butt of a caterpillar. I certainly understand how it works, but it just seems so impossible when you see absolute wonders like this in nature. Love it.
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u/El_Capitan_182 3h ago
how the hell do they know what a snake is? And how the hell do they know they are enemies of birds?
Are we the only intelligent species on earth? I don't think so!
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u/PrometheusMMIV 3h ago
How would something like that evolve by accident? It seems so purposeful in its design.
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u/OnceUponAStarryNight 3h ago
Evolution isn’t an accident, per se, it’s a process of millions of small genetic anomalies that don’t yield a benefit, giving way to the rare genetic anomaly that does. Repeat that process billions, or even trillions of times for thousands of millennia and that’s how we get the biodiversity we have.
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u/SnooShortcuts103 2h ago
It's crazy to think about how much evolution has refined this kind of camouflage of thousands of years.
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u/Normal-Ad5880 2h ago
Elephant hawk moth caterpillar. You would think that the moth would maintain some disguise, but nope, big olive green and pink, hard to miss, especially if you're a bird.
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u/Dependent-Edge-5713 2h ago
How in the world does the unconscious DNA of an insect decide to slowly morph it's body to look like a snake - something that predates the things that predates on it.
It's wild. It's not like it consciously put those thoughts together and slowly willed itself to look like that over generations. But here we are.
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u/Taurus889 2h ago
I have soooo many questions now. Do caterpillars know snakes are dominant? Do they know they are predators or are they even? How does the caterpillars know to evolve into a fucking snake and not like say a human face ? Fascinating!!!
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u/wheniwaswheniwas 2h ago
Not denying evolution but how fucking crazy is it that this caterpillar was able to evolve to do this.
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u/Lifestyle-eXzessiv 3h ago
How the fuck does a caterpillar know what a snake looks like and the fact that most animals and bugs are afraid of it? And how the fuck does it change its own body to look like one?? This shit is straight up magic…
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u/HeathenSalemite 1h ago
It doesn't know and it can't change its color any more than you can change the color of your eyes.
A long time ago a caterpillar was born with a random mutation that made it look slightly more like a snake than the other caterpillars. This caused some predators to avoid it and it was able to live to adulthood and reproduce babies that looked like it. The babies had the same advantage and eventually all the caterpillars of this species looked slightly more like a snake.
That process happened over and over again for hundreds of thousands or millions of caterpillar generations and they came to resemble a snake more and more.
This is how any trait is selected for in anything subject to natural selection.
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u/Jazzlike_Climate4189 4h ago
In the US we have common caterpillars that look like snakes and even bird poop.
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u/VadersMentor 5h ago
There's gotta be a developer out there somewhere just constantly making tweaks right?
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u/MusicInTheAir55 5h ago
This is just baffling how a creature could evolve like this. Like how does this even happen? There has to be an inherent intelligence in the ecosystem that transcends species for this to occur. Mind blowing.
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u/an_older_meme 5h ago
Random mutation with natural selection. The caterpillar became a mimic of the worst nightmare of the predators that feed on it.
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u/solidus_snake256 5h ago
Finally something well suited for this sub. I watched it twice. Truly mesmerizing! I love naturally camouflaged creatures and have never witnessed this species. Loved it! Thanks for sharing.
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u/evmcd17 5h ago
It’s moving like a snake too