Evolution of Unuseful Things

1. Over-sized nib pens.


2. Vaulting horse.
Notice progressive loss of spines as the species is domesticated and loses the need for defenses from its predators. Notice also how the circular crushing mouthparts persist even in the non-feral variety [bottom], revealing the phylogenetic relationship to Anomalocaris canadensis.*

* The Gazoogle does not reveal the particular 25-year-old image of Anomalocarid mouthparts I want from a 25-year-old NZ cartoon, so may have to do some scanning tomorrow when sober.

3. Novelty Christmas cracker on wheels.

The small rocks do not seem to be evolving much from one epoch to the next.

4. Go home Evolution. You are drunk.



UPDATED with bonus bogusity (or perhaps vice versa).
A survey of popular culture (for we at the Riddled Institute for Higher Obscurity sometimes descend from our ivory tower to engage with the broader culture and to chivvy away the 7th-Day Adventists from the front door) reveals a widespread misunderstanding of the capabilities of the Riddled Evolvamat. Case in point, Piers Anthony:

Trahison [left]; Clerisy [right]

Mr Anthony will be hearing from our legal representatives Trahison and Clerisy (solicitors and commissioners for oaths). He has misrepresented the whole business of recapitulating phylogeny, as well as eliding the fact that the vast majority of our experimental subjects survive the procedure.

A second example comes to us from Davies and Lineweaver, who are doing their best to demonstrate the rule that physicists should not meddle in the ways of cell biologists... unless they are part of the Riddled Research Laboratory where WE KNOW WHAT WE'RE DOING. They have a theory (and it is theirs) that the cellular misbehaviours we know as "cancer" are driven by fossilised genes -- left over from the early stages of multicellular organisation -- awakening from their eon-long slumber.

Their theory earned Davies and Lineweaver the ridicule and opprobrium of real oncologists. Its shortcomings include the scarcity of tumours creeping around the body on a layer of ciliated cells in the manner of placozoa,* or pumping fluids through their pores with choanoflagellate-like collar cells. Evo-devo biologists do not rate for the prospect of discovering the true nature of edicaran biota of the late Proterozoic Eon by studying their atavistic genes in contemporary cancers.

But did they list Altered States (Russell, K., 1980) in their citations? Or mention the need for an isolation tank when inducing somatic regression to earlier phylogenetic stages? DTB-R.

* When tumours do move around the body they turn out to be an octopus that somehow entered the patient's body and took up residence in the colon. This always happens (it must be a tradition, or an old charter or something).