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.
What’s funny is how absurd this is. Most flowers don’t look like birds and they’re fine.
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.
looks at user name
Sounds like something a BIRD would say!
Squaaawk, you got me!
I don’t think photoshop is needed to find the right flowers and photograph at the right angle.
Wow you’re right.
It’s more like “look at this blossom that looks a bit like a bird” rather than “look at this type of tree that makes bird-like blossoms”.
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.
…But birds pollinate flowers. How is a bird not landing on this (particular, too) flower going to help it survive?
Maybe they’re tree scarecrows to keep bugs away
Sir, I believe those would be scarebugs.
If they keep bugs away then I’ll take a dozen.
Right, but what about the mimic plant? It mimicks whatever plant is near it. And it can mimic plastic plants. https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/2022/11/30/23473062/plant-mimicry-boquila-trifoliolata
Should be a pretty trivial experiment to replicate
“Appear to look like”…
I wonder what they look like if you manage to ignore the appearances.
My guess would be Yulan magnolia blossoms.
Animals are something plants invented to help spread their seeds around.
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.
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.
Life in general is most likely something the universe invented to speed up entropy.
Life is a natural part of entropy for sure.
There’s a nice theory about how it looks like the goal is actually to produce photons more efficiently.
Edit: my source is French astrophysicists and science popularizer David Elbaz https://inis.iaea.org/search/search.aspx?orig_q=RN:53012702
Why do plants know how birds look
The potatoes told them. (Potatoes have eyes)
deleted by creator
“…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.
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
We will never know what the tweet author intended lol
I typically assume it’s a non-native speaker with things like this, but I’m not sure in this case.
I too try to give the benefit of the doubt when reading stilted text that basically conveys the meaning but the syntax is janky.
I’m in southern Ohio so there are quite a few people from the hills and hollers around here.
Methany definitely talks exactly like how that is.
Did you understand what was being communicated? Yes? Congratulations!
Because, really, that’s generally all that’s necessary.
MY PARSER BROKE
No they’re asking how do birds look like the way they do. In which case the answer is that a bird’s body evolved to be streamlined and lightweight in order to fly more efficiently. /s
Multi-track drifting
No one cares mate.
It’s fine to correct the grammar of children in your care, but not really in other circumstances.
More evidence birds aren’t real
The evidence is building, I can no longer deny
There are a lot of weird flowers out there
Evolution is wonderfull
The lizard vine is a fake
The fruit is, but not the plant, scientific name: Tetrastigma voinieranum, common names: Chestnut Vine, Lizard Vine, Wild Grape
My aunt had one of these but she watered it too much and it drowned. lmao
Annihilation vibes
I rewatched Annihilation recently. That fucking bear scene still haunts me. Great film.
If you’re into books, it’s also the first book in the Southern Reach Trilogy. The movie was good, but the books really flesh out the situation. I was sad they didn’t continue the movies with the rest of the books.
Just looked it up and it seems like a movie me and my wife would love. I’m surprised I’ve never seen or heard of it… do you have any more movie recs?
Guess it depends on what you like. I would say that Annihilation is a good starting point for cosmic horror, and Event Horizon - I feel - falls into that. Prolly Sphere, too.
My favorite sci-fi films are Bicentennial Man, The Matrix, Interstellar, Arrival, The Man From Earth, and Another Earth.
The best Halloween film I’ve seen is Trick r Treat.
Thank you!
droning sounds intensify
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.
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.”
Plus the first flower might feel a bit jealous if it finds out
Why are people so unfathomably dumb, like, I’m afraid.
Yeah, some people can’t even recognize a joke.
Right, anytime anyone fucks up it’s sarcasm, anytime anyone is dumb, it’s a joke, nothing is real, everything is a cake.
Irony poisoning
That sounds serious
Fe-real
i like cake
Are you trying to suggest that your use of punctuation is sarcastic?
“Science memes”
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.
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.
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.
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”).
I mean you just gotta use that big ass evolved brain of yours to understand evolution. No more extra evolution necessary at this point.
*gestures broadly*
How do you know it’s not a bird trying to look like a plant? Y’know to evade predators and all…
What’s if it’s a bird-plant pretending to look like one of those plant-birds
There are plants that cam see, so you are rightly afraid.
Still looks like a fake
Looks fake as hell. I’d be more afraid of falling for stuff like this. Cute as a Photoshop challenge though
I thought you were being too cynical because plenty of plants evolved this technique but then I realized because of AI I have absolutely no idea if they’re real or not, unless I spend time that I don’t have on researching it.
Seems like it’s a touched up fake. The white duck head one is especially obvious. https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/52975/does-the-yulan-magnolia-flower-bud-look-like-a-bird
