this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2024
878 points (97.4% liked)

Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 97 points 5 months ago (1 children)

They dont. It just happens that natural selection favored flowers that looked vaguely bird like and over time, flowers that looked more and more like a bird outcompeted the ones that looked less like one.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 5 months ago (2 children)

What's funny is how absurd this is. Most flowers don't look like birds and they're fine.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 5 months ago (3 children)

This has nothing to do with natural selection. It's just a coincidence that the buds very shortly and from a specific angle vaguely look like birds.

Most of the images shared are probably photoshopped to enhance the effect too.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 5 months ago (1 children)

looks at user name

Sounds like something a BIRD would say!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

Squaaawk, you got me!

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 months ago (4 children)

It's about tiny percents.

A bird will land on a flower.

A bird will not land on a bird.

So every one in a million time a bird mistakes a flower for a bird, that's a flower that survives.

All you have to do is wait a couple million years for the odds to turn in the bird flower's favor.

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[–] [email protected] 57 points 5 months ago (1 children)

"Appear to look like"...

I wonder what they look like if you manage to ignore the appearances.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 5 months ago

My guess would be Yulan magnolia blossoms.

[–] gravitas_deficiency 37 points 5 months ago (3 children)
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[–] [email protected] 37 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Animals are something plants invented to help spread their seeds around.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Know what's wild? For millions of years nothing around ate trees, so when a tree grew and died and fell it was permanently there because there was no rot. Which is how we got petrified forests.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

From my readings, I don't think this is the case. Lignin degradation evolved rapidly with terrestrial plants. Coal and petrified wood is more due to geological events and swamps for example. Evolving ligninases is trivial for bacteria and fungi.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Life in general is most likely something the universe invented to speed up entropy.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

Life is a natural part of entropy for sure.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

Why do plants know how birds look

The potatoes told them. (Potatoes have eyes)

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 5 months ago (6 children)

"..how birds look like.."

Just one of many issues with the English here.

  • what it looks like
  • how it looks

You need to pick a lane.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I typically assume it's a non-native speaker with things like this, but I'm not sure in this case.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

I'd read this with commas around 'like', rather than with a period after it: "... how birds look, like, I'm afraid" works as a sentence while "... how birds look like. I'm afraid" is both wrong, like you point out, but also sounds much more serious than the jokey tone I'd expect from a message without punctuation and capitalization

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Did you understand what was being communicated? Yes? Congratulations!

Because, really, that's generally all that's necessary.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago
 MY PARSER BROKE
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[–] [email protected] 25 points 5 months ago (2 children)

There are a lot of weird flowers out there

Evolution is wonderfull

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

My aunt had one of these but she watered it too much and it drowned. lmao

[–] [email protected] 25 points 5 months ago (1 children)

More evidence birds aren't real

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

The evidence is building, I can no longer deny

[–] [email protected] 23 points 5 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (4 children)

I rewatched Annihilation recently. That fucking bear scene still haunts me. Great film.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

droning sounds intensify

[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

That question below is honestly a good way to demonstrate how bad people can be at understanding what would be called materialism without it being explained to them first

Easy to assume the shape of that flower is due to decisions made by the plant itself instead of the more accurate way of understanding its shape being the result of external conditions and pressures acting upon the plant and its flower growth over a long time

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Doesn't this imply that the flower is polinated by bird cocks. Think about it a bird fucks one flower or starts to before realizing, and then later he fucks annother flower thus spreading the pollen of the first flower.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

No, it just implies that it was adaptive to look like a bird.

It could be for any number of reasons, including because aliens exist and years ago they were like "let's screw up all the plants in this area for generations" until the leader's kid saw one that kind of looked like little birds and threw themselves in front of it and said "wait, no, spare this one."

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

Why are people so unfathomably dumb, like, I'm afraid.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, some people can't even recognize a joke.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (4 children)

Right, anytime anyone fucks up it's sarcasm, anytime anyone is dumb, it's a joke, nothing is real, everything is a cake.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago
[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

i like cake

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

“Science memes”

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[–] can 35 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

People don't get the timescale of an evolutionary feature like this. And how long it was only kinda bird like.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Intuitively understanstanding evolution is something most people dont need so i cant really fault people for it. But yeah either trolling or actually stupid who knows.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I do wish that the personification of evolution wasn't such a thing. People so often attribute reasoning or intention to the process, when there is no such thing.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

Wait until they advance and start thinking about things like, how did plants find out what bees like to eat. This will spook them to mind-blown town.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Intuitively understanstanding evolution is something most people dont need so i cant really fault people for it.

LOL, how meta ("people haven't evolved to understand evolution").

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

How do you know it's not a bird trying to look like a plant? Y'know to evade predators and all...

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago
[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

There are plants that cam see, so you are rightly afraid.

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