Post #2698905
2026-05-13 20:52 UTC
Replies (2)
-
@datarama@hachyderm.io 2026-05-13 20:56
Which of the following pair of animals are more closely related?
-
@datarama@hachyderm.io 2026-05-14 22:14
I could actually have chosen any pair of birds here, and the answer would still be the birds. An ostrich and a hummingbird are more closely related to each other than sea turtles are to land tortoises. The last common ancestor of all birds was a small dinosaur that was actually a near contemporary of the last common ancestor of crocodiles and alligators, about 90 million years ago. Sea turtles diverged from the lineage that led to both modern tortoises and freshwater turtles about 120 million years ago. All modern sea turtles have a common ancestor that was also a sea turtle, but the leatherbacks are the "odd one out" - all other sea turtles are more closely related to each other than any of them are to leatherbacks. However! Falcons and parrots have an even closer common ancestor than the aforementioned ur-bird, diverging some 50 million years ago. Surprisingly, falcons are actually much more closely related to parrots and songbirds than they are to eagles and hawks. They even have a distinctive anatomical trait in common with parrots, namely the sharp single "tooth" at the end of the beak. In parrots this has adapted to crack open nuts and the skins of tough fruits, in falcons it's used for severing the spinal cords of prey.