Mammals have evolved into ant eaters 12 times since the dinosaur age – study (2025)(phys.org)
60 pointsby MaysonL19 days ago7 comments
  • wtcactus19 days 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.

    • ratg1319 days 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

      • mcv18 days 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.
    • d-lisp19 days 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.
      • AngryData19 days 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.

      • dlisboa19 days 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.

        • jy1489819 days ago
          Humans eat insects, current and past
          • dlisboa19 days ago
            Much like dogs eat grass.
      • asdff19 days 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.

        • Finnucane19 days 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.
          • asdff19 days 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.
            • Finnucane19 days 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.
          • mjh253919 days ago
            Except, as a rule, Jews, Muslims, and some Hindus.
            • Finnucane18 days ago
              In evolutionary terms, that's a pretty recent development.
        • dham19 days 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.

    • Lord-Jobo19 days 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.

      • Qem19 days ago
        > Long after humans spread out across the stars, maybe the perfect human consuming predator will emerge.

        It already emerged. Corporations.

        • WesolyKubeczek19 days 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.

    • metalman18 days ago
      except for the fact that while evolving towards eating ants is inevitatable, then something? happens and extinction follows, This disscussion troubling, and others like it are exclusivly about trying to sell the advantage to eating bugs as some good and natural optimisation couched interms like efficiency, but ignore the nastyness of eating bugs, and the very strong likelyhood of our devolution and extinction in the long run. The ants remain, where did those 12 species go? is the important lesson.
  • themafia19 days ago
    "Ants are great if you're really hungry and want two thousand of something."

    - Mitch Hedburg

    • rajnathani17 days ago
      The OG quote by him is about rice. Nevertheless, very funny!
    • Y_Y19 days ago
      "I used to evolve into an anteater, I still do, but I used to too"
  • havblue19 days ago
    Source: YouTube https://share.google/XA0msyff8lybu47FK

    "Expert Wasted Entire Life Studying Anteaters" -The Onion

  • scalemaxx19 days ago
    Sounds similar to the multiple evolution paths to crabs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation
    • lelandfe18 days 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."

    • UtopiaPunk18 days ago
      Ant eating crabs when??
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