[HN Gopher] A recent study suggests that insects branched out fr...
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A recent study suggests that insects branched out from crustaceans
Author : Carrok
Score : 40 points
Date : 2025-04-11 20:19 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.smithsonianmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.smithsonianmag.com)
| willis936 wrote:
| I suspect crustacean allergies are actually arthropod allergies.
| I haven't seen much research on this though.
| echelon wrote:
| It's an allergic reaction to tropomyosin, which is found in
| shellfish and cockroaches.
|
| I recall an anecdote of an entomologist who studied cockroaches
| in particular claiming to have developed a shellfish allergy
| from her work.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropomyosin
| saghm wrote:
| If this were a sci-fi movie, it would be because the
| cockroaches were sentient and trying to protect themselves.
| xipho wrote:
| I suspect arthropods are way too diverse to fall under a single
| umbrella of "is_allergic". Millions of years of evolution can
| produce very radically different things for our bodies to worry
| about. Just the fact that there are no marine insects
| (completing their lifecycle within an ocean) tells us something
| about how different their biologies, and therefor allergenic
| "surface" are. Poison pathways from venom can target completely
| different systems in a humans.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| _Almost_ no marine insects.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halobates
|
| Re lifecycle:
|
| > The coastal species lay their eggs close to the water
| surface on rocks, plants, and other structures near the
| shore, while the oceanic species attach their egg masses on
| floating objects such as cuttlebone and feathers.
| ljsprague wrote:
| There is a tree-dwelling shrimp.
|
| https://www.metafilter.com/201489/A-shrimp-that-dwells-in-tr...
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| There seem to be a lot of semi-terrestrial shrimp. The article
| mentions "beach-hoppers" or "sandhoppers", which are this long
| list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talitridae
| AIPedant wrote:
| Woodlice - e.g pillbugs / roly-polies - aren't shrimp, but they
| are crustaceans, probably evolving from something like a
| trilobite.
| dboreham wrote:
| Makes sense: a coastal cave is a great environment where an
| organism can experiment with moving from water to land.
|
| This article also nicely highlights how some scientists can just
| make stuff up, subsequently overturned when someone finds a fact-
| based way to evaluate their erroneous conclusions. See also
| archeology.
| Imnimo wrote:
| I'm so used to seeing the "fish crawling onto the shore" cartoon
| of evolution that I assumed the branching always went that way -
| land creatures are branchoffs of sea creatures. But surely this
| is oversimplified - are there examples in the other direction,
| where a branching occured in land animals and one branch then
| returned to the sea?
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Marine mammals.
| showerst wrote:
| I think all marine mammals fit this, right?
| Calavar wrote:
| Yes. And for a non animal example, there's sea grass, which
| evolved from land grasses.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| And for an animal but non-mammal example, there are
| penguins.
| addaon wrote:
| Sea snakes, as well.
| dcminter wrote:
| Whales are the first example that springs to mind.
| chasil wrote:
| Whales.
|
| https://baleinesendirect.org/en/discover/life-of-whales/morp...
| Qem wrote:
| Sloths (formely): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalassocnus
| nn3 wrote:
| There are also lots of extinct examples like Ichthyosaurs,
| Mosasaurs, Plesiosaurs
|
| Modern examples are saltwater crocodiles, sea turtles or sea
| snakes
| dang wrote:
| [stub for offtopicness]
| carabiner wrote:
| [flagged]
| danielbln wrote:
| I try to avoid having any bugs, sea or land.
| Loughla wrote:
| Honestly if they taste like shrimp, I'm down. Shrimps are
| delicious.
| carabiner wrote:
| I might try roasted palm grubs. I don't know where you can
| find them in the US.
| throwaway-blaze wrote:
| Please point us at the land-bugs with a taste profile like
| shrimp / lobster / crab / other edible crustaceans enjoyed by
| humans.
| ge96 wrote:
| There is a pretty meaty cockroach, maybe with enough butter
| it would be like a lobster tail
| Avshalom wrote:
| Madagascar hissing cockroaches are probably in the 30-40
| size
| soperj wrote:
| 30-40mm?
| Cerium wrote:
| Shrimp are sold by the count per pound. 30/40 is a common
| size.
|
| https://fultonfishmarket.com/blogs/articles/shrimp-sizing
| dboreham wrote:
| Lobster tasting good is a construct. 200 years ago lobster
| was the lowest peasant food that nobody with the money to buy
| other food would touch.
| ziddoap wrote:
| > _Lobster tasting good is a construct._
|
| I'm not really sure what this even means. I enjoy the taste
| of lobster, and the fact that it is no longer peasant food
| doesn't play any part in that.
| jamster02 wrote:
| The fact that it is no longer peasant food doesn't
| _consciously_ play any part in that.
| ziddoap wrote:
| I ate lobster maybe 100+ times (and enjoyed it) before I
| learned that it used to be peasant food.
| suriya-ganesh wrote:
| I think what the parent comment is saying is that,
| lobster was likely introduced as an elite/rare dish to
| people in the current century increasing the appeal
| cortesoft wrote:
| That is exactly the point they are trying to make... that
| you enjoyed it BECAUSE you thought of it as a delicacy
| and not as peasant food.
|
| I think the point is a little overwrought, really...
| while our expectation is part of what makes it taste
| good, it doesn't completely change what we think... there
| are a lot of foods that are considered delicacies that a
| lot of people don't like.
| ziddoap wrote:
| > _that you enjoyed it BECAUSE you thought of it as a
| delicacy and not as peasant food_
|
| When I was a child, I didn't even know the word
| "delicacy" let alone have any concept of whether what I
| was eating was a delicacy or not.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Like I said, I disagree with the person's overall thesis,
| just pointing out what they were trying to say.
| IOT_Apprentice wrote:
| Does that mean JD Vance will consume it? :)
| saghm wrote:
| I think the point is that given the right social
| dynamics, some bugs that already are edible today could
| probably be considered fancy and tasty in a century or
| two. I might be the wrong person to ask though because I
| already find pretty much all seafood nauseating.
| saghm wrote:
| As usual, there's a (somewhat) related xkcd for this
| https://xkcd.com/1268/
| tester457 wrote:
| Therefore with the right preparation some bugs might become
| delicacies.
| cortesoft wrote:
| I think lobster tasting good is mostly about the amount of
| butter used.
|
| Really, though, a lot of it has to do with food
| preservation technology - lobster only tastes good fresh,
| and goes bad very quickly (which is why you will often see
| them alive in tanks at the grocery store, and they are
| often cooked alive). Before we had the tech to either keep
| them alive before cooking or refrigerate immediately, they
| didn't taste very good.
| burnished wrote:
| No, we cooked it like shit. It gets rubbery and unpleasant
| real quick.
| maxerickson wrote:
| It was also wildly abundant.
| burkaman wrote:
| I think this is sort of a myth. There was a relatively
| brief period of time in the US when lobster was considered
| poor people's food, but in the rest of the world and the
| rest of history it has generally been very popular and
| often associated with the upper class.
|
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobster#History
|
| I also think it's pretty common for historical "peasant"
| foods to be popular today, like tacos or potatoes for
| example. If anything, "poor people love it but rich people
| won't touch it" is probably evidence that the thing _not_
| tasting good is a social construct.
| carabiner wrote:
| Palm grubs?
| lysace wrote:
| The colder temperatures of their new environment might have
| made them tastier to us. Also, salt.
|
| I find shrimp from the cold north sea (Pandalus Borealis) a
| lot more tastier than the much larger shrimp found in more
| temperate seas.
| LPisGood wrote:
| I think the biggest problem is how small land-bugs are. They
| don't have a large chunk you meat you can yoink out and
| grill; you have to eat the shell.
| flysand7 wrote:
| Shrimp are mostly tasteless though, aren't they? If you bite
| into a shrimp and really pay attention to the taste, you'd
| notice that it's not really a "taste" that you're feeling,
| but mostly the soft texture giving the illusion of tastiness.
| kupopuffs wrote:
| And the fat. there's some shrimp with a lot of fat. Which
| is really just a platform for other great flavors
| Zardoz89 wrote:
| Shrimp taste. Go net some shrimp, filet them alive and eat
| them, guts removed. Report your finding.
| airstrike wrote:
| Why do they have to be alive while you filet them?
| panarky wrote:
| Shrimp and lobster are really just delivery devices for
| butter, garlic, lemon, etc.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| I've seen people claim that they actually do taste very
| similar if you can isolate the insect's muscle, but usually
| insects are eaten with their exoskeleton, which changes the
| flavor.
| belorn wrote:
| Is there insects with a similar tail muscle of a shrimp?
| The muscle is evolved to push water in order to create
| propulsion. The only thing that I can think f that seems
| similar would be snakes.
| jliptzin wrote:
| Smithsonian funding must really be drying up if they have to
| assault me with 40 pop up ads per sentence
| dang wrote:
| " _Please don 't complain about tangential annoyances--e.g.
| article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button
| breakage. They're too common to be interesting._"
|
| It's not that these things aren't annoying--they of course
| are. But that's actually why we have that guideline.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| anigbrowl wrote:
| [delayed]
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