this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2026
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Science Memes

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[–] zqwzzle@lemmy.ca 82 points 1 day ago (4 children)
[–] socsa@piefed.social 4 points 1 day ago

Hey buddy fuck you too

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 18 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yeah, it's not the leg that's a finger, it's the hoof-part. The legs are legs, but instead of ending in 5 digits they end in 1.

[–] iocase@lemmy.zip 19 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Most of their leg is a finger look closely. Count the joints. The hand begins 3 joints up (one is hidden in the hoof so it's not as obvious. Count down from the shoulder works too.) The wrist is 4 joints up, elbow 5, shoulder is the last one at 6 total. They have the same number of joints in the same spots that we do, just like a giraffe has the same number of neck bones as a rat.

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 day ago

At least 80% of the leg, by length, is arm/leg, not finger/toe.

Compare that to a bat wing, where the bones really are long fingers:

bat wing anatomy showing the fingers

[–] Redjard@reddthat.com 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The lower leg is the palm, not a finger.

[–] iocase@lemmy.zip 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] Sylvartas@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

Wait, their "knee" is actually just as messed up as our wrists, with the little bones and everything ? I thought evolution would at least have fused them back into fewer moving parts.

... And people say human knees are badly designed

[–] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (5 children)

Why didn’t nature ever learn to evolve fewer bones?

Like in 100 million years how much worse is the situation going to be?

[–] applebusch@lemmy.blahaj.zone 16 points 1 day ago (2 children)

because it was never vital to survival to have fewer bones. evolution is a term that does a ton of conceptual heavy lifting but has sadly been warped by ignorance and a lack of understanding of the nuance of what is really happening.

somehow, life existed. we dont really know how it got started but it did. due to the laws of physics and thermodynamics, some life died and some life lived. that went on for a long ass time until today we see the stuff that has survived to now. evolution just says life changes over time because some life dies without reproducing and some life reproduces before dieing. thats it. its a statement about the effect of survivorship bias over the long term existence of life.

so why didnt animals evolve to have fewer bones? because it never mattered enough to happen. things kept on surviving with the number of bones they have. we can look at them and say their body would function better with more or fewer bones, or different chemistry, or different soft tissue, or whatever you like. but none of those things mattered enough to happen, or if they did happen they werent better enough to change anything at the time. but also animals do have different numbers of bones, just not so different.

i wish i could describe this better, but evolution isnt an active process. if you have to think of it as a thing, keep in mind that it produces only what barely works. every adaptation we have was developed by the deaths of countless individuals, so we only have it because at some point it was necessary, or so benefitial it couldn't help but propagate. having way less bones was never either of those things.

[–] hirihit640@sh.itjust.works 2 points 15 hours ago

Though it's crazy that there can be such dramatic variation in bone structure and shape (eg humans vs horses vs bats), yet such homogeneity in the number of bones and their connections (arms connect to shoulders, which connect to spine, etc).

Perhaps the genetic code for the number of bones and their connections, is more resiliant to mutation?

[–] ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Tl:dr = Because they haven't. Yet. Maybe. As far as we know.

I think you've described it quite well. That's just evolutionary biology. Any adaptation requires some kind of pressure behind it.

[–] WildPalmTree@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Not pressure, just absence of negative effects. Pressure might help but is not required. And I use "absence" quite loosey-goosey.

[–] ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago

Yes, and 'pressure' is used similarly. Think atmospheric pressure. It can lower and heighten, so a lack of pressure is low pressure, not the absence of it.

[–] MohamedMoney@feddit.org 2 points 1 day ago

Whales have a tiny remnant of a pelvis left

[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Once you've evolved it, one more or less is basically free *. Might fail sooner in old age, but everything after procreation is an afterthought.

* my aunt has a long neck, 3 vertebras more.

[–] mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

* my aunt has a long neck, 3 vertebras more.

Apparently it's really rare for mammals to evolve that without getting somthing else that's really nasty like cancer. There was a recent video about it on SciShow or HanksChannel

[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 2 points 4 hours ago

I'm not trying to invalidate your experience. Just pointing out it's apparently really rare. It's theorized to be one of the pressures that results in all mammals having only 7 neck vertebrae, including guraffes

[–] kazerniel@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Evolution is not an intentional process. It's just statistics compounding over time. Simplified example: By random chance this bird grew a 5% longer beak than its peers, which means it can catch 5% more food and raise 5% more chicks than the others. If its descendants have similar success, over time it means that their long-beak trait will become more and more prevalent in the population, and projected over thousands of years, the whole species will end up having this long-beak trait, simply because those who had it, had more kids grow to reproductive age than those who didn't.

[–] Evil_Incarnate@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 day ago

Meanwhile somewhere in the same time, worms that the bird feeds on start to die more because of that beak, except for those that were genetically wired to burrow a bit deeper.

[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 day ago

Because evolution doesn't "learn" anything.