Mammals have evolved into ant eaters 12 times since the dinosaur age – study (2025)
55 points by MaysonL 13 hours ago | 23 comments
  • havblue 13 hours ago |
    Source: YouTube https://share.google/XA0msyff8lybu47FK

    "Expert Wasted Entire Life Studying Anteaters" -The Onion

  • scalemaxx 12 hours ago |
    Sounds similar to the multiple evolution paths to crabs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation
    • lelandfe 4 hours ago |
      Another interesting fact I learned from HN:

      “Two randomly selected trees are not likely to be more closely related than any two other randomly selected plants. They're not a family but rather a strategy that evolution has rediscovered several times separately."

  • themafia 12 hours ago |
    "Ants are great if you're really hungry and want two thousand of something."

    - Mitch Hedburg

    • Y_Y 12 hours ago |
      "I used to evolve into an anteater, I still do, but I used to too"
  • wtcactus 12 hours ago |
    This makes sense. The biomass of ants is enormous. It's about 10% of all present livestock on earth. It's a huge source of energy and protein.

    So, it stands to reason evolution took animals down the path of taking advantage of that source several times.

    • Lord-Jobo 12 hours ago |
      In other terms, the most populous, widespread, and consistently available plant-eater makes for an ideal carnivore target.

      Long after humans spread out across the stars, maybe the perfect human consuming predator will emerge.

      • Qem 12 hours ago |
        > Long after humans spread out across the stars, maybe the perfect human consuming predator will emerge.

        It already emerged. Corporations.

        • WesolyKubeczek 11 hours ago |
          > It already emerged. Corporations.

          It's more like people are corporations' gut bacteria that are always in dire health because the organism loves junk food of all kinds so much and sometimes is doing drugs too.

    • d-lisp 12 hours ago |
      It's strange to think we chose to hunt or raise large animals; and to perform all that such a choice implies i.e. growing plants to feed them and more generally farming, when we could just raise ants and plants.
      • dlisboa 12 hours ago |
        It's not strange at all. We grow what we eat, humans didn't start by eating insects. Plus growing plants specifically to feed livestock is an extremely recent development.

        Plus ants can't provide all the nutrients we need.

        • jy14898 11 hours ago |
          Humans eat insects, current and past
          • dlisboa 11 hours ago |
            Much like dogs eat grass.
      • asdff 11 hours ago |
        Not really. Go outside into the woods and try and generate sufficient biomass to feed yourself off ants. You can't do it. You will starve before you figure out a solution. Or, you chuck that stick at that 200lb deer and you now have like 100,000 calories worth of venison to live off of.

        Animals are expert foragers. A deer can get to 200lbs or more eating what a deer tends to eat just fine. You will struggle to forage like a deer in that same environment, but you can coopt the deer's superior foraging abilities by simply eating it. And if you have a herd of animals you shepherd, not only are they making use of biomass you can't yourself make use off, but they are acting as a store of biomass keeping it fresh and available until you decide to cull some of the herd.

        • Finnucane 11 hours ago |
          There's a pretty wide gap between 'eats insects' and 'eats only insects.' Other primates eat ants, and there are human cultures where ants and other insects are routinely eaten. Other food may also be involved. Hunting large animals doesn't preclude eating other things. HUmans will eat anything they can get into their pie-hole.
          • asdff 10 hours ago |
            This is true, but we are still better adapted to take up a stick and take down that deer than we are to come up with an ant farming system off the cuff that will generate calories at the same rate. That is all I was suggesting to the point of "why do we eat large animals." It is advantageous to do so is the reason. We are not the only animals to eat other large animals after all.
            • Finnucane 10 hours ago |
              Hunter-gatherer societies got a lot of calories from seeds and nuts, which are about the same calorie content as insects, and we did come up with a farming system for them.
          • mjh2539 10 hours ago |
            Except, as a rule, Jews, Muslims, and some Hindus.
        • dham 6 hours ago |
          > Go outside into the woods

          I think I can live off just the fire ants in my yard. Not to mention all the neighbors. Even with constantly baiting them, it's hard not have at least 1 hill active at all times during the summer, as the neighbors are dumb and just spray. So they just end up moving.

      • AngryData 11 hours ago |
        Well most large animals we raise or hunt either eat 95% grass and green foliage or eat rotten scrap food that we won't eat. Large herbivores also shit out fertilizer we need for growing human edible crops, and many crops we can grow to feed such animals produce even more fertilizer within their root systems, like alfalfa.

        It is also much easier to capture and butcher a cow than the equivalent mass/protein of ants.

    • ratg13 9 hours ago |
      As a person who is uneducated on this, I’ve always wondered if it isn’t also something to do with large objects that have collided into in the past .. these things would essentially wipe out most everything on the ground planet and force things to re-evolve again and that is why we see similar patterns .. like Carcinisation [0]

      [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation

      • mcv 2 hours ago |
        It's not asteroid extinction that's causing convergent evolution. All those crabs, anteaters and trees still exist. They're simply very effective forms.
  • ChrisArchitect 11 hours ago |