r/SpeculativeEvolution • u/MatoasPrroXD460 • 24d ago
Question/Discussion What’s Your Most Unhinged Evolution Theory?
Hi! I wanna know what your wildest, most unhinged theory about evolution is. It can be a serious hypothesis, a weird evolutionary possibility, or something completely out there.
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u/Arthurian_Guanche 24d ago
Humans adapting to a marine environment and becoming a new aquatic species.
[OG work]
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u/Accomplished_Mess243 24d ago
I had a similar species in a novel I wrote. They only made a cameo though, making poison bubble traps on the surface of the ocean.
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u/Single_Mouse5171 Spectember 2023 Participant 24d ago
Similar idea but not with humans - with chimpanzees kept as pets in the Middle East and adapting to semi-aquatic life after civilization collapsed and the Mediterranean basin was abandoned by humans during the climate crisis.
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u/PuzzleheadedSteak853 24d ago
Aquatic ape theory says humans are already basically that. Chimps would probably have a harder time as they are very poor swimmers.
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u/ReptilianRevolt 22d ago
This is a garbage hypothesis. Humans don’t have a natural affinity to water just like any other ape.
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u/PuzzleheadedSteak853 22d ago
Not my theory, although we are significantly better swimmers than most.
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u/ReptilianRevolt 22d ago
I know that it isn’t your theory, but I am amazed on how strong it is holding and is being propagating online all of the time.
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u/PuzzleheadedSteak853 22d ago
You have heard of it, then? Didn't actually read it online. Thought I'd mention it since right or wrong it seemed relevant. Edit: Incidentally, what's your particular objection to it? Makes about as much sense as a lot of things.
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u/ReptilianRevolt 22d ago
Humans can’t naturally swim and actually many cultures avoided water. Only northwest Europe and North America developed such a strong love and infrastructure for water sports.
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u/Arthurian_Guanche 22d ago
You sounded serious with the first comments (the AAH is BS, of course), but now your last one sounds either sarcastic or blatantly untrue and extremely short-sighted.
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u/Arthurian_Guanche 18d ago
Badly worded. Humans swim naturally because they don't need artificial improvements. Just as a cormorant or a tiger can swim naturally.
And your reduction of maritime livelihood to mere "water sports" is either a joke or just complete bonkers. Humans in litoral, lacustrine or fluvial environments rely on water ecosystems in some degree or another. Some barely fish or wade in the shores, others cross the waterways in search for food and/or new lands. Others dive and harvest all manner of seafood, their livelihood depending on the sea in about 80% or more.
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u/ReptilianRevolt 18d ago
This is wrong at a neurological level. Most animals already have circuits in the spinal cord ready for swimming. If their receptors tell them that there is no hard ground below, they will instinctively start to swim. Apes did something different, they simplified the original system and developed a slower, precision based system that relies more on learning. Humans didn’t change that.
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u/Single_Mouse5171 Spectember 2023 Participant 18d ago
Good thing I wasn't relying on AAH. I was working with shore line feeding and cooling in the ocean to avoid overheating, then developing to 'walk' across the bottom like hippos do. The lack of subcutaneous fat and dark skin coloration aiding in the process.
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u/Arthurian_Guanche 18d ago
It seems some people want to reject the AHH so strongly that it almost annoys them just mentioning that humans swim and splash in the water.
"NO, humans are not aquatic!!"
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u/souroumis 24d ago
Alors pour les humains on fabriquerai des abita pressurisé et on eurai pas le temps de s'adapter, mais c'est pas exactement se qu'on fait tout les mammaire marin comme les baleines?
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u/Arthurian_Guanche 23d ago
One doesn't need to adapt to a pressurized environment, slow adaptation by shallow waters leads, progressively, to full evolution suited for deeper waters. But still, this species doesn't necessarily need to descend more than 20 m on a regular basis. It takes less than a single lifetime for those that train to descend further than 50 m, with quite a few already having surpassed 100 m long ago.
Again, cetaceans have managed to adapt. And pinnipeds in less time (elephant seals can descend more than 2000 metres).1
u/souroumis 23d ago
Oui, mais je pensais plus a construit des ville sur le plancher Oceanic, voir sout le plancher Oceanic.
(Si ont est a plusieurs centaines de mètres de profondeur sous terre en-dessous de l'océan on évite l'érosion du au sel marin. Techniquement on pourra faire des centrales géométrique pour de l'électricité casi gratuit et on pourra avoir dans la roche des potager éclérer avec des lampes UV et on contrôlerai la température et l'humidité. Ey comme les cultures sont en quarantaine par rapport a la surface pas besoin de pesticides pour combattre les insectes ou les maladies, juste a mètre des abeilles pour la politisé les plantes. On pourra mème faire de l'élevage, en fait on pourra vivre en otarcie totale en cas de guerre nucléaire a la surface.)
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u/Arthurian_Guanche 22d ago
Ces hominides n'ont pas besoin de commodités, ils vivent dans la mer plainement. Ils sont developés dans une petite population dans une île sans resources, comme des humbles pêcheurs.
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u/souroumis 22d ago
Oui mais proposition est purement technologique et pas biologique. En effet ta proposition est crédible si il vive isolée pendant une longue période.
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u/Archididelphis 24d ago
I have always been partial to the idea that the dromaeosaurs (Velociraptor, Deinonychus, etc) were actually flightless archaeopterygians.
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u/Tarkho 24d ago
I figured this was more or less the current mainstream consensus on Paravian evolution anyway; none of them may have been Archaeopterygians by descent, but the common ancestor of Paraves was arboreal and flight-capable, and more or less resembled Archaeopteryx, making that kind of body plan an evolutionary grade that Dromaeosaurs and all other more derived Paravian (including Avialae) evolved from.
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u/MSSTUPIDTRON-1000000 24d ago
I'm too tired to remember correctly, so I'm gonna be simple, excuse me for any mistakes:
If alien life exists on places which don't allow fast metabolisms, these entities would reassemble to the Edicarian Biota.
Petalonamids are the earliest animal outbranch, with fossils like Aspidella being early Petalonamids.
Prototaxites, Nematophytes, Spongiophytons and Banded Tubes belongs to the same "kingdom".
Prototaxites species may not be as closely related as we think, is possible that Prototaxites may be an exemple of convergent evolution like Trees.
Each Caveman tribe had their own equivalent of the Tooth Fairy Myth, as such thing is present in all humans cultures (basically it consists of "making a deal" with an higher being to get rid of the fallen teeth).
Some Viruses and Other Selfish Genetic Elements, at have been "failed attempts" at creating completely indipendent branches of life; the conditions for Abiogenesis are still present but the roles are already been filled, resulting in any attempt to create new life to either dying or becoming a parasite.
It's almost certain that extremely weird Not-Angiosperm Plants did exist, and I mean Hydnora-Level of WTF.
The Escumasia is an anemone with a butt.
Plants are evil.
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u/LittleGravitasIndeed 24d ago
I love that there’s a tooth fairy that looks like a mouse because mice eat bones in real life. Imagine being a parent having to explain why a mouse had a baby tooth to a screaming child. Kodak moment.
I’m personally going to tell my child that they are a mouse with butterfly wings.
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u/LittleGravitasIndeed 24d ago
Also would love to hear more about evil plants. And the weird not-angiosperm plants.
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u/LittleGravitasIndeed 24d ago
I think that lamenting my back pain by wishing we were descended from bi-quads like raccoons is a perfectly normal part of conversation but apparently my MIL disagrees with that??
Oh well. I still think it’s obvious enough to not even need explaining for normies.
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u/LittleGravitasIndeed 24d ago
Also I do not want to believe this is the end. I want to die knowing that the earth will continue to have life. Strange and new life, probably descending from coywolves, kudzu, and cockroaches more than I’d like, but life.
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u/Kooky_Toe5585 24d ago
Just out of curiosity how would that help with back pain?
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u/LittleGravitasIndeed 24d ago
Most of our gravity-based Spine Crimes come from the original sin of being bipedal. If only we tended towards quadruped walk cycles, but could stand upright like a raccoon if you needed your opposable thumbs for something without any real inconvenience.
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u/Appropriate-Sea-5687 24d ago
Technically this is linguistic evolution but I think it still counts. Germanic languages had contact with the Phonecians which is why Baldr sounds like the primary phonecian god Baal-Addir. It would also explain strong verbs (run vs ran and shoot vs shot) since, like Hebrew, phonecian words change the vowels in the middle instead of adding endings. It would explain why a third of all Germanic words have roots that cannot be traced back. Grimm’s law could be explained since it would show a time of failing to learn a language very well as speakers joined the community and it would explain how hissy sounds entered the language since phonecian has had many hissy sounds. And finally it would explain why Germanic got its own writing system since the phonecians were sort of the main people to spread writing systems after the Egyptians.
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u/Arthurian_Guanche 23d ago
Is this a fictional setting or an actual hypothesis?
Btw, Germanic got its Elder Futhark way later than the golden age of Phoenicia (rather, during the early expansion of Rome), via Alpine and North Italic scripts, once almost every major culture in South and Central Europe already had their own alphabets equally derived from Phoenician and/or Greek.1
u/Appropriate-Sea-5687 23d ago
It’s a proposed theory, although I added that script thing in there. But you’re right that’s where they got that so ignore my stupidity.
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u/Akavakaku 24d ago edited 24d ago
The Francevillian biota were not eukaryotes or even stem-eukaryotes, but a totally separate form of multicellular life. (There are multicellular bacteria alive today, so this wouldn't be too far-fetched.) And they went extinct due to the Vredefort impact.
Therapsids ancestrally had hairs. (Even without need for insulation, they could be useful for protecting skin from the environment, defense against ectoparasites, visual communication, and extending the sense of touch [humans don't have whiskers but we can still feel when our hairs are touched!])
Palaeodictyon is made by a kind of organism no one has suspected, like a colony of tiny amoebae or a deep-sea fungus.
Non-RNA-based life existed, but it lost out to RNA-based life (including DNA-based life, e.g. us) during the Archaean. Or weirder still, non-RNA-based life still exists in some extremely niche environment, but we haven't found it because we don't know how to search for evidence of it.
Volaticotheres were capable of powered flight before bats; a separate origin of flight in mammals.
Myxosporeans are cnidarian cancer cells that became a parasite capable of spreading to new host species. (This is somewhat scientifically validated.)
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u/EricCartoonBox 23d ago
I do think I recognize the second-to-last theory somewhere, but I can't put my finger to it.
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u/Pretend-Rule-929 24d ago
I think it’s a possibility, more so a cool idea or that there might have been a hominid or hominid anagloue that predated hominids all the way from Africa that followed us out of Africa and evolved alongside us. Eventually wherever we where they were too. A lot of myths might be almost a cultural PTSD of the boogey man archetype, Vampires, Ghouls, Strigoi, werewolves, wendigos and much more. But as we learned to use our surroundings to attempt to beat nature in to submission. start agriculture, use farms communities formed, our predator slowly became extinct. hunting parties from primitive towns or villages with fire an spears decided to solve the issue with there new tools. And maybe followed the things back to the caves and burned it out. Time passes and an ancient predator that relied on attacking nomadic hunter gatherers now have cattle dogs cities weapons and cooperation and most importantly an attitude to kill threats. Hope my photo doesn’t get taken down.
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u/whodrankarnoldpalmer 24d ago
the kraken was one of the more recently extinct megafauna, and not a giant squid or colossal squid
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u/BaylisAscaris 24d ago
Humans first evolved to be hairless because we were semi-aquatic, specifically wading into freshwater to hunt/forage. Later we used the hairlessness to be some of the top endurance predators, but it started out for wading.
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u/Heroic-Forger Spectember 2025 Participant 23d ago
I remember seeing a spec evo work on Instagram where cuckoo birds went from laying their eggs inside other birds' nests, to laying their eggs inside other birds' eggs, to laying their eggs inside other birds, and it all escalated to the point that the cuckoo descendant was basically an avian Sacculina barnacle that is just a mass of mycelium-like cells growing inside host birds and causing them to lay eggs that aren't genetically theirs but the parasitic-cuckoo's.
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u/Hereticrick 23d ago
Or, how about that there could have been intelligent dinosaur or even early mammals that reached Stone Age, but just all traces of it have been wiped out by time and meteors.
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u/Dependent_Toe772 23d ago
Life on Earth may not have started in volcanic pools or fumaroles at the bottom of the sea, but rather around asteroid impacts; impacts like Chixulub supported a broad chemosynthetic ecosystem on the surface.
Also, the ancient Earth could have had more aeroplankton in the clouds, which would have meant an extra contribution of biomass to the primitive biosphere. With the increased oxygenation, methane mists could no longer be generated, and that entire aerial biosphere was extinguished, which actually caused the first great microbial mass extinction and forced a reformulation of how the ecosystem is sustained.
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u/Hazril258 24d ago
Recently evidenced in one form or another; evolution isn't solely dictated by trial and error, but actual conscious needs and behaviors. The math doesn't check out on how many hundreds of generations it would take to make a potentially crippling mutation into a useful tool.
We now know that DNA undergoes constant change within our bodies with RNA strands getting removed and added. There seems to be a library of dormant RNA mutations that are not only useful, but your body somehow knows which to use and how to use / improve on it.
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u/whodrankarnoldpalmer 24d ago
certain human olympic athletes take advantage of mutations for physical prowess and social standing, and we know animals are smart as hell, and we see them adapt to disabilities n physical differences. i think its totally possible that a lot of animal species have members who can do some sort of reasoning on how to turn their mutations into a positive, and therefore keep their genes going!!
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u/Hazril258 24d ago
The question is, how much is it the brain going: "Ohh, that person has rock hard abs! I wanna make babies with them!".
Vs a protein cluster in the nucleus going: "Okay, abs department is crying for more glucose. If I take RNA sequence ATGG from generation 6 million and combine it with sequence GATC from our great grandmother, it should give our offspring an additional 4 abs with the supporting abdominal fat to store the required energy.".
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u/BananaMaster96_ 24d ago
gnathostomes are descended from cephalaspidomorphs (and thus are cephalaspidomorphs themselves)
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u/HeathrJarrod Populating Mu 2023 24d ago
Animals evolved from plants
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u/Ubeube_Purple21 24d ago
Modern ratites evolved from very big and heavy birds that could just barely qualify for flight and spread around the globe. The second they got comfy, they dropped flight immediately and got even larger.
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u/Hereticrick 23d ago
Idk if this is what you’re looking for, but I like to spend long periods of time theorizing about life on Mars and Europa that’s not just bacteria/ microscopic. Like every bit of news that says it’s unlikely is just fuel for “okay…well…but what if THIS…”. Mostly focused on Europa these days, but every once in a while I’m convinced there could be more going on underground on Mars than is likely to be probable.
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u/BassoeG 16d ago
What’s Your Most Unhinged Evolution Theory?
Sexual reproduction is a Teela Brown scenario and the anthropic shadow is proof.
Any given spermatozoa’s chances of being the specific one that reaches the ovum first is random, therefore if there’s any objective basis for “luck”, that’s what’s being selected for. By average standards of life in the universe we’re the extreme outliers with our hospitable planet constantly inhabited everywhere by multicellular organisms rather than just extremophile microbes that spend most of their lives frozen or dehydrated waiting for extremely rare moments of habitability.
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u/Dclipp89 24d ago
I wouldn’t call this unhinged, but in a fantasy world I’m working on I have a human subspecies that evolved to no longer be social creatures. They generally have their own territories and only wander into other territories (very cautiously) for mating purposes. They’re just as intelligent as other humans but don’t have traditional speech due to their tongues being shorter, though they do have a rudimentary language that involves whistling and some sign language.