From PBS Digital Studios/“It’s okay to be smart” comes this fascinating video on convergent evolution, and the difference between analogous similarities and homologous similarities. Watch Why does this wolf have a pouch?
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Wow, glad I watched that video. Natural history and animal behavior were my first obsession that involved the library. The thylacine is a great example of convergent evolution. So sad not to be able to observe one live now.
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On the subject of convergent evolution, another interesting example:
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Thanks. I remember reading a very sad article about the great auks and how they were driven to extinction.
Isn’t that the truth? Come to find out, the American Museum of Natural History has a huge collection of marsupial specimens, including thylacines, but these are rarely shown to the public.
My favourite example are flying squirrels/sugar gliders/colugos.
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Fascinating books on this topic include Improbable Destinies by Jonathan Losos (new) and Life’s Solution (2003) by Simon Conway Morris - who I just learned is a Christian.
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I read Life’s Solution years ago and enjoyed it. I believe he even suggested that if we encountered alien life forms, they would probably look a lot like us due to convergence.
Or maybe that was Star Trek.
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Many mammals have (or had) a marsupial counterpart. There are no marine marsupials, though. That’s understandable, because the tiny fetus needs claws to pull itself into the mother’s pouch. And conspicuously absent are marsupial apes.
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