libera te tutemet ex machina, and shitpost~~

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Cake day: December 7th, 2023

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  • nifty@lemmy.worldOPtoMildly Interesting@lemmy.worldHummingbird plant
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    2 years ago

    There are examples of biological mimicry that result from natural selection pressures, leading to the evolution of such an organism.

    Heres one thought experiment on why this plant’s evolution to mimic a hummingbird is not that unlikely (keeping in mind that mutations are random, and whatever ends up succeeding due to natural selection pressures doesn’t necessarily imply a deterministic process):

    -hummingbirds select to drink from plants that other hummingbirds visit, leading to

    -plant reproducing more because hummingbirds drinking from one flower to another helps with pollination, leading to

    -plant evolving to look like other hummingbirds drinking from it so real hummingbirds drink from it

    We can’t know for sure without doing research of course, but we have enough understanding of natural selection and evolutionary processes to reason about such mechanisms for existing organisms :)

    Edit: doesn’t matter if plant native to Australia.You know continents were joined at one point, and evolution takes hundreds or millions of years at times. Also, I don’t mind being mistaken for chat gpt, I am shit posting anyway lol.