Much more recently I heard on QI about how medieval people, not knowing about migration, believed, through a lot of leaps, that it was ok to eat barnacle geese at lent. Worth investigating if you are curious :)
Medieval Science was Baffled by Birds - CuriousCabinet123
Makes me wonder what the world was like before this last great extinction.
[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-19248-8
I sometimes think about the selection pressures that lead to complex life cycles, like fig wasps. I find myself thinking about it naively, like one existed and the other grew into the niche. But, realistically, everything is changing (slowly) all the time. I just notice it for, say, influenza because their cycle time is so short.
rbanffy•3h ago
arduanika•1h ago
adamlgerber•58m ago