Mammals Evolved into Ant Eaters 12 Times Since Dinosaur Age, Study Finds
28 comments
·July 17, 2025hammock
ants_everywhere
> aka there are a lot of ants
This is true
nvader
And easier to predate on at scale than humans.
ants_everywhere
I was thinking maybe that's why the evolved stingers, but it turns out ants evolved from stinging wasps not vice versa.
null
perdomon
You may not like it, but this is what peak mammalian performance looks like.
conradev
an aardwolf can hunt up to 300,000 in a single night
harimau777
At the end of all things, when evolution has reached its inevitable end, all that will be left is a war between ant eaters and crabs.
0cf8612b2e1e
Ant eating crabs.
washadjeffmad
Crab eating ants.
We'll kill the ones that eat us and eat the ones we kill.
znyboy
Crabs are already quite susceptible to ants, due to ants being small enough to swarm and attack the joints and gaps of the crab's carapace.
bokchop
I can see the shear abundance of ants tilting the scale of evolution's nonlinearity.
Reminds me of Mitch Hedberg, ~"[Ants are] great if you're ever really hungry and want to eat 2000 of something."
juancn
A bit like [carcinisation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation) for crustaceans
icambron
Another one is, believe it or not, trees: https://eukaryotewritesblog.com/2021/05/02/theres-no-such-th...
o11c
Trees really aren't a good example of convergent evolution. The evidence tends more toward "all plants have woodiness genes, and sometimes those genes can be activated/deactivated".
Fruits are, though.
anticensor
And then you have trenacisation for transportation systems.
Qem
Did any anteater dinosaurs exist before that?
frutiger
Ant eating dinosaurs exist today: https://learnbirdwatching.com/birds-that-eat-ants/
konstantinua00
how many times things evolved into sharks?
ichtiozaur, dolphin/orca
anything else?
The weight of all ants on Earth is roughly equal to the weight of all humans- aka there are a lot of ants. And can be found everywhere mammals are able to live. So they make sense as a food source