July 28, 2006

Cephalopods are really cool

Why? Well, among other things, they have extremely complicated and sophisticated eyes, nervous systems (including brains), and manipulatory equipment -- it's fair to compare them to cats or birds of prey. And yet they evolved these features pretty much completely independently of terrestrial animals, so they give us tons of examples of convergent evolution.

For example, despite having no rigid skeletal structure, cephalopods eat the same way mammals do: they bring the food to their mouth using a (quasi-)articulated, multijoined arm.

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