51: Carcinization, The Animal Algorithm Mystery, and The Many Lemming Lies w/ Ellen Weatherford

Episode notes

Are we really all destined to turn into crabs?  Why are there so many animal algorithms, and are they all legit?  And just how many times have we been wrong about the lemming?

Things we talk about:
All the Crabs Caroline mentions
The Big List of Animal Algorithms
Boid Video

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Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:04:03) Carcinization
(00:42:00) The Animal Algorithm Mystery
(01:25:38) The Many Lemming Lies
(01:45:27) Outro

We also learn about: Endless forms most crab-like, the 2020 meme boom of carcinization, what is the extent of the carcinization crisis, watch it buddy you already got eight legs, hamburger style arthropod, BOY CAN I CAROLINE I’M GLAD YOU ASKED, it’s like CNN and Fox agreeing on something, crabs have ten legs my dude, vikavolt, crabs and false crabs and true Christians, its all human labels at the end of the day, crab shapes have evolved at least 5 times, the king, masked, coconut, and hermit crab, Ellen’s thinking like a crab, the leaf eating mangrove crab, the crab shape is good for many niches, guard your tasty bits, decarcinization, we should try decarcinizating our market share, I am THE crab researcher and y’all need to calm down, convergent evolution is like video game controller design, the Brazilian Aardvark, Ellen’s uncovering of this dark underbelly, this algorithm list is just a list of sleeper activation words, what is a metaheuristic swarm optimization algorithm? Craig Reynold’s Boids, the lateral line system, “ants aren’t smart, any colonies are”, multidimensional ants, coatis moving in the jth dimension, this is all super niche you can’t use multidimensional ants for every problem, no articles are talking about this this is Defunctland niche, Groth and the 2 Fairies, lots of these papers are not at all based on real biology, “cats do not form swarms”, the bee marriage algorithm is actually good! research for research’s sake is okay, lower your pitchforks but keep your pitchforks at the ready, things are shitty starting out i mean we named everything crabs, political cartoonists went wild for lemmings, we’ve been making shit up about lemmings for year, lemmings falling from the sky, Ole Worm’s pet coati, Popular Science’s lemmings returning to Lemuria, lemming population booms, lemmings are good swimmers, a truck full of the wrong species of lemmings, ALBERTA IS LAND LOCKED, lemmings are fight or fight, lemmings don’t explode, let’s unlearn everything about lemmings

Sources:

TheConversation: Carcinization
Know Your Meme: Carcinization
NPR: Would Aliens Look Like Us?
PBS Eons: Carcinization Video
Natural History Museum: Convergent Evolution
2017 Paper: The Evolution of Eyes: Major Steps.
2019 Paper: A Phylogenomic Framework, Evolutionary Timeline and Genomic Resources for Comparative Studies of Decapod Crustaceans
2021 Paper- How to Become a Crab: Phenotypic Constraints on a Recurring Body Plan
Conservancy.org: The mangrove Tree Crab
Scientific America: Carcinization
1997 Paper: Carcinization in the Anomura – Fact or Fiction?
PopSci: Carcinization
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The Coati Algorithm Paper
List of Animal Algorithms
Craig Reynold’s Boid Paper
Boids in Film
Ant Colony Optimization
Southwest Airlines’ Ant Algorithm
The Amazing Review from Tzanetos & Dounias
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Lemming sources will be added soon! Everyone thank Ellen for being on so last minute!