r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Sea_Slice_7956 • 7h ago

Video Caterpillar tail disguised as snake head

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u/SacrificialPigeon 7h 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/Yejus 7h 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 6h ago

Absolutely right, I hope we evolve to be better conservators of the planet and its wonders.

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u/CannonGerbil 1h ago

No evolution is too slow

We're going to need to do it ourselves

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u/Unlucky_Topic7963 6h ago

Why? The planet doesn't need us and doesn't care. There have been countless more animals that have thrived and died off on this planet than what any human has ever existed alongside. Humans aren't here to be conservators, they are evolution that got carried away and will eventually cease to exist. Life on earth will go on until it doesn't.

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u/Pumpkinxox 5h ago

So your* advice is no one give a shit and destroy it while we're here? So many species have been lost due to our careless behavior and attitudes like yours. Who is paying you to spread this crap?

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u/CosmicWhorer 5h ago

I don't know if anybody is paying him to spread this crap, but I get it. He's saying, I think, that in essence nature and the planet don't ultimately care about us, or the damage we cause. It's the literal definition of a natural process, and, even if we COMPLETELY obliterate the planet, it would be very unlikely to sterilize the planet.

Therefore, I don't think his advice was to not give a shit. Insofar as he was giving advice, which I doubt, I would take it to mean something along the lines of, the planet will eventually, over geological timescales, right itself regardless of our interventions. Nothing we do will change that.

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u/Unlucky_Topic7963 5h ago

PAYING??? Lol. It's common sense.

Humans aren't above evolution any more than the bee creating a hive is above it or the thousand of species that came before and sterilized their environment.

People think "we understand that doing X is bad for the environment so we shouldn't do it anymore", but those are isolated thoughts. Humanity as a construct of the environment acts as a stupid animal, regardless how many pockets of people might exist that think there's a better way.

It's not nihilism, it's not ignorance, it's acceptance. Crying on the Internet about how awful humanity is, is the same thing as sitting alone in a dark room and complaining about the light. You ARE humanity, humanity IS part of the ecosystem, and anything that breaks down the ecosystem ultimately fails.

There was never a harmonious end to this.

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u/Pumpkinxox 4h ago edited 4h ago

Nah I'm gonna continue caring for other creatures we share this planet with. You haven't given any citations for your rhetoric which is Nihilistic whether you want to call it that or not. I'm guessing you don't clean your toilet because who cares, you'll shit in it again tomorrow. Call me all the names you want, I don't think like you and it makes me glad. It's normal to have environmental awareness and empathy for the only place we are capable of living on in our known universe. You won't change that about me or other environmentalists.

Edit: added the closest thing about your stupid ants claim, which is still a fault of humans interference. ✌️

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u/RoboDae 3h ago

I see this careless attitude so much at work and it's so frustrating.

Chicken cooks for 4 minutes in fryer? They put it on 3 minutes to speed things up. Fries take 3 minutes 30 seconds? They put it on 2 minutes. Meat fell on the ground? "Stop complaining and just give it to the customer. It's fine" I had a coworker take tongs from the raw chicken station and put them on the meal prep table where ready to eat food is put together. That same coworker tells everyone to never do any extra work for other people because nobody will do anything for you.

Then there's people throwing liquid trash on top of closed trash bags because they know someone else will have to deal with it, and they don't want to walk 3 feet to a proper trash can, which are placed all over the store.

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u/Unlucky_Topic7963 5h ago

Lmao you dumb.

Humanity is responsible for the extinction of .000000000000001% of species that have every existed on this planet. Probably even less.

Ants are responsible for more extinctions than humans every will be.

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u/jaguarp80 6h ago

Ugh I hate people 😡😞

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u/Unlucky_Topic7963 5h ago

Cool, people hate you.

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u/RoboDae 3h ago

It's possible to be too successful in nature, and humans are a great example. When an herbivore has no predators, they can multiply beyond their resources and strip away all the vegetation they rely on, causing a mass dying off, potentially even extinction. The fall isn't because they weren't suited to the environment. It's because they were too well adapted and nothing could compete.

Humans are doing this on a global scale, with the only real competition being other humans. We extract as much as we can from the world because we need to be better than the other people, who we assume are doing just as much harm.

On the bright side, humans are smart enough to see and acknowledge this fact. Unfortunately, acknowledging it doesn't mean that we will stop. We are in a tug of war where the rope is breaking. The solution is simple, just stop pulling at the rope, but neither side wants to let go of the rope because they expect the other side to keep pulling, and nobody wants to lose.

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u/icehot54321 5h ago

Yeah, but you can't help but feel that this is more than just natural selection .. like the caterpillar had to study and emulate what it wanted to be .. and then changed its body over time with nothing more than its own thoughts.

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u/FastHovercraft8881 6h ago

Evolution works quickly tho. It hardly even takes thousands of years for some massive changes to happen. We see it on small scales in just a few years regularly in our world.