Extinct Bird Re-Evolved Itself Back Into Existence

March 9, 2021 8:23 AM

Once the bird became extinct, it took only 20,000 years for it to return and evolve into a flightless bird again.

via metafilter chat. also via chat.

posted by aniola (18 comments total)

Is this the counterpoint to Carcinization?

And more importantly..... does this mean that over a sufficiently long time horizon, life on earth is just a battleground between the abstract ideas of flightless birds and crabs?

Tag yourself in the evolutionary forever war, I'm on Team Crab.
posted by mhoye at 8:36 AM on March 9, 2021 [25 favorites]

"Re-evolved itself" is a little misleading because obviously none of the extinct population had any contribution to the re-evolved population. It's a cool story that I would call parallel evolution occurring over time. (And if you buy the hypothesis that evolution is adaptive, it makes sense that it would happen in the same location after extinction from a flood!)
posted by little onion at 8:48 AM on March 9, 2021 [14 favorites]

So... Jurassic Park is coming, but very slowly.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:01 AM on March 9, 2021 [6 favorites]

this earth game is super fun, but the spawn rate for new monsters is soooo slow. Team crab seems to have the advantage.
posted by th3ph17 at 9:22 AM on March 9, 2021 [10 favorites]

This is really neat.
posted by eotvos at 9:48 AM on March 9, 2021

This seems a terrible way of phrasing it, especially in terms of confusing non-scientists. The bird didn't "re-evolve", a new bird re-evolved from the same parent species. Which suggests the parent rail species has genes that make it easy to go flightless.

Also, isn't that the theory for a lot of the big flightless birds? That they used to think they all split off from each other, but now the thought is that they are related but all separately evolved their flightlessness from flighted parent species.
posted by tavella at 9:49 AM on March 9, 2021 [9 favorites]

I love how much rails in general just seem to hate and resent flying and will give it up in an evolutionary hot second as soon as they touch down on a serviceable, rodent-free atoll. It's such a pleasing negation of the lazy ways people will try to make animal flight signify something about "freedom" or "achieving potential" or whatever.

A rail, maybe: like, actually it's a lot of work??? and if shit would just stop trying to eat us for one (1) second, we wouldn't do it at all???
posted by wreckingball at 9:50 AM on March 9, 2021 [35 favorites]

I dodon't know, I'm a little cassowary of the clickbait headline. Sounds like a load of kakapo, or at least ostritching the truth. Maybe kiwi should get a second openguin. *shrug emu-ji*
posted by oulipian at 9:58 AM on March 9, 2021 [24 favorites]

"All this has happened before ... all this will happen again."

Fascinating, thank you for this post!!
posted by riverlife at 10:04 AM on March 9, 2021

It's such a pleasing negation of the lazy ways people will try to make animal flight signify something about "freedom" or "achieving potential" or whatever.

birds : flying :: humans : commuting
posted by Reyturner at 10:44 AM on March 9, 2021 [3 favorites]

Jokes aside, have you spent any time observing ravens taking advantage of the thermals along the ridgeline of a steep bluff? They are fooling around and having a blast, that is all they are doing. It's one thing to anthropomorphize and romanticize, and quite another to deny what your eyes and heart tell you. Animals can have fun too.
posted by elkevelvet at 11:21 AM on March 9, 2021 [4 favorites]

Ravens also do it with tall buildings in the wind. Get a flock of juveniles going, and they'll keep at it for a couple hours. Talk about ways to ruin your office productivity, if you have a window facing upwind that lets you watch. Er, not that I'd know anything about that, nope, nosiree, never.
posted by Quasirandom at 11:59 AM on March 9, 2021 [3 favorites]

Well, if the species still interbred for a while I wonder if the trait could've been hidden in what used to be called junk DNA and come back much faster as a result?

Sometimes I wonder if evolutionary traits and DNA can get transferred between species through a viral link. Could there be organisms that are kind of like DNA parking lots for local species? Other avians or tardigrades?
posted by BrotherCaine at 12:36 PM on March 9, 2021 [1 favorite]

Can we please let this discussion sidetrack from Aldabra rails into raven acrobatics so we can joke about the thread going "off the rails", thanks
posted by oulipian at 12:41 PM on March 9, 2021 [12 favorites]

BrotherCaine I read something a while back about language having maybe come from an actual virus.
posted by aniola at 1:46 PM on March 9, 2021

I find it super fascinating that, absent ground predators, island birds keep evolving to be flightless. As fun as it is to soar over thermals, they go for the easy life walking.
posted by Popular Ethics at 2:08 PM on March 9, 2021 [1 favorite]

life on earth is just a battleground between the abstract ideas of flightless birds and crabs?

Looks like the rails win this round…
posted by wreckingball at 4:42 PM on March 9, 2021 [1 favorite]

I enjoyed the 'also via chat' link.
posted by Panthalassa at 5:42 PM on March 9, 2021