Every living organism on Earth is in some way related to something else. This genetic web gets larger and weirder the more scientists look at it. Finding new relations is a fascinating genetic puzzle where the most unexpected creatures can turn out to be cousins. It is also the ultimate tool for learning about evolution. The more creatures are linked to each other, the more they reveal about the history of themselves as individual species, their family group, and the progression of life on earth
SCORPIONS AND TICKS
Many people believe that ticks are insects, but they are not. They are true arachnids, closely related to scorpions and spiders. It’s an ancient lineage; one gene study tentatively suggested that these creatures were here before the dinosaurs, already crawling around the surface of the Earth 400–450 million years ago.
For both ticks and scorpions, the next meal is primarily found by their excellent sense of smell, and they can only survive on liquid food. Ticks live on a diet of blood, while scorpions have a multipurpose venom that both paralyzes and liquifies their prey’s insides, which they then proceed to drink. Of the two, the scorpion is better adapted to survive the lack of nutrition and can go without eating for up to a year by adjusting its oxygen use and lowering its metabolism. Due to a lack of useful fossil evidence about the history of these arachnids, the same genetic study that placed them in primeval times also used their test results to support a theory that they hark back to a common, ocean-dwelling ancestor.
JELLYFISH AND CORAL
One swims like a fish, and the other grows like a plant, but in truth, both are actually animals. Jellyfish and coral belong to the family group called cnidarians: bell- or tube-shaped animals that can deliver a burning sting with their tentacles. Despite this, they certainly don’t appear to be related. Jellyfish sting swimmers and pulse themselves through the water, while corals appear to be twig-like bonsais that do nothing.
It comes down to body build, however. Cnidarians are sac-like creatures with a central opening around which the tentacles grow. This is more obvious with jellyfish. The coral frames often found in novelty stores are not the animal itself but a limestone coating built by them for protection and anchoring to a reef. The tiny individual corals are simplistic in design. They are cup-shaped sacs and have one opening that doubles as a means of both eating and excretion. They suck calcium carbonate from the ocean to build the branches that most people mistakenly see as coral. Thousands of minute coral animals stay around their limestone tree, using their tentacles to search for food.
HORSESHOE CRABS AND SPIDERS
Horseshoe crabs were misidentified as crabs hundreds of years ago. Granted, they spend most of their time crawling over the sea floor and have a crab-like shell roughly resembling a horseshoe. However, they are grouped with arachnids.
Horseshoe crabs date back 500 million years as a species. These prehistoric survivors, who perhaps never evolved to flourish on land like the rest of their cousins, can grow up to 0.6 meters (2 ft) and use their long tails as a tool to dig for food or to right themselves when upside down. Even more remarkably, the horseshoe crab has 10 eyes on its back and sides, can replace lost body parts, and has blue blood. The blood is medically valuable and is used to detect bacteria, for cancer research, and diagnosing leukemia as well as vitamin B12 deficiency. Sadly, a great number of horseshoe crabs are caught for their blood and also by the bait industry.
KOMODO DRAGONS AND ALLSAURUS
Nothing matches the cool factor when it comes to the largest lizard currently scaring the planet. The Komodo dragon looks intimidating, has toxic venom, and hunts prey bigger than itself. Now, raise this 3-meter (10 ft) reptile on its hind legs, give it horns, make it dinosaur-sized, and say hello to its cousin, the allosaurus.
One shared family trait is rather startling: These two super-predators have surprisingly weak jaws for their size. The Komodo’s chomping power falls in the range of the domestic house cat, and the ferocious allosaurus most likely had to hack and strip meat out of its living victims, rather than deliver crushing bites. However, dainty jaws weren’t a disadvantage during hunting, since evolution endowed them with specialized skulls, strong neck muscles, and cutthroat teeth. In short, they became lethal slashers.
Causing prey to die from large wounds and blood loss is called inertia eating, and the Komodo also uses this tactic, along with poisoning its prey during bites. The Komodo, whom researchers recently discovered originated in Austraila as opposed to the Indonesian island of Komodo, even has a mouth with snake-like flexibility, allowing it to cause traumatic damage to a bigger area. Unfortunately for the extreme pet owner, neither is up for regular adoption. The dangers of keeping a Komodo ensure that dogs won’t be replaced anytime soon, and cousin Al left the scene around 150 million years ago.
MEERKATS AND CIVET CATS
They may have similar names and superb, feline-like agility, but neither meerkats nor civet cats are remotely related to cats. These African carnivores are related to mongooses and weasels, noted for their long, elastic bodies.
Meerkat and civet mothers both give birth in underground dens, but their commonalities end there. Meerkats believe that it takes a village to raise a pup, but civets are single mothers who only group together with others during mating season. Civet babies are born rough and ready for the world, fully furred and able to move around. Meerkats are born naked and without their senses.
Meerkats, who are noted for scanning their environment while standing on their hind feet, as well as a degree of immunity to scorpion venom, are smaller and dull-colored. The nocturnal civet grows more than three times a meerkat’s length at about 1.4 meters (4.6 ft) and is a beautifully patterned animal with a bandit face mask and a jaguar-like pelt, which unfortunately makes it a regular hunting target. Meerkats can live up to 13 years, and Civets can live up to 20.
ANTS AND BEES
If bees were to attend some kind of taxonomic family reunion, they wouldn’t be hanging out with wasps but rather ants. The family line was rearranged when scientists sequenced the insects’ genetic material to answer an old question about how they evolved as a group. This group, called the aculeate (stinging) Hymenoptera clade, holds bees, ants, and stinging wasps. The results refuted the belief that ants were more closely related to certain wasps and only a far-off cousin to bees; the reverse turned out to be true, with the exception of digger wasps and mud daubers.
This new family tree now allows insect-loving scientists to study with more accuracy how reproduction, feeding, and social behavior have evolved within this stinging group, as well as their differences as separate species. The discovery also clarified a fossil that had been hard to place and, as it turned out, was wrongly classified. The Cretaceous Cariridris bipetiolata was thought to be the world’s most ancient fossilized ant, but with a new and better understanding of these insects’ family placement, it was reassigned as a type of ancestral wasp.
PRAWNS AND WOODLICE
Woodlice are small, armadillo-like bugs sometimes kept as pets. Only, they’re not bugs at all. They are the land-bound cousins of prawns and crabs. Around 3,500 different types of woodlice scuttle around the planet, making them almost literally a fish out of water—a successful crustacean on land. All they have in common with insects is a tough exoskeleton and that their 14 limbs are jointed.
These “penny pigs” still need constant moisture to survive, perhaps because of their aquatic origins. That’s why they are so often found in rotting plant matter. Most species are herbivores, but sometimes one might snack on its own shed skin and excrement, or that of other shedding woodlice. Like most crustaceans, woodlice are edible and have been consumed alive by people who believe that they help with liver diseases. They also contain quite a large amount of calcium carbonate, which makes them a gross sort of antacid if the pharmacy’s closed and you really need some.
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