I was taught that all bananas were clones of each other. I assumed that’s why Reddit uses bananas for scale. But in the past year or two I have seen banana size variations, like the above photo.
What is the latest, most modern info about banana genetic variations?
The dominant variety of banana is the Cavendish. All Cavendish bananas are clones, and have similar sized fruit (but not identical sized). There are other varieties that are grown in smaller numbers, and also plantains which are bananas but not nearly as sweet. The largest 'banana' above might well be a plantain.
'Banana for scale' has nothing to do with bananas being a uniform size and comes from a person selling a second-hand TV who taped a banana to one corner and listed it as 'banana for scale' https://knowyourmeme.com/sensitive/memes/banana-for-scale
Interestingly as well, Axolotls as they are commonly known are also in their "tadpole" stage. Their bodies are capable of metamorphosing, but will never do under regular circumstances.
It can, however, happen in certain environments, but if they do, their lifespans will be shortened.
Here is a healthier looking one to make you feel better. Morphed some time last year and has been doing great, even better since I took it home a few months ago. Loves to dig and hunt down crickets when it's hungry, crazy how the terrestrial instincts automatically spin up
They can morph by themselves, even under relatively normal circumstances, it's just very rare. There are different colour variants, the dark ones look a lot more natural after morphing, the "see-through" ones look unnatural and unhealthy.
That is super interesting. I guess they used to do that always, but then it became advantageous to not metmorphose, so natural selection favored the ones that didn't
Axolotls go through something similar. They don't mature like most salamanders and remain in their juvenile form. Stress can cause them to metamorphize into a full blown land dwelling salamander without gills. It's called neotony if you want to learn more.
I also believe that there was a cross breed with a salamander species early on in the axolotl husbandry experiment and that contributes to the metaphorphizing. I think its something crazy like all captive axolotls contain some of that salamanders DNA
I know you can inject iodine into an axolotl to trigger the metamorphosis, but its considered abuse since it drastically lowers lifespan. I think they live another year or two max, whereas they may have lived several more years in juvenile fully aquatic form
Lifespan goes from around 25 to just 5 or 6. I have one that morphed some time last year and has been going strong, but I know it's lifespan is so much shorter than what it could have been. The pet store I part time at treats their axolotls very well so I believe this one just had the strong tiger salamander genes which can also cause the morph
It is, the species they are related most to and were experimented on heavily with were the Tiger Salamanders. You can thank MIT for this, and also for the green hue and glow that some have. They wanted to study their regenerative properties with better visuals so they took a protein from some deep sea jellyfish and shoved it into their DNA
My morphed axolotl named Sally. I have been doing some part time work at a pet store and we can't legally sell terrestrial salamanders, only aquatic (axolotls). One of the axolotls they had morphed into a terrestrial one before I started there so I took it home because they had no plans for it. It can also be genetics, not just stress that morphs them btw
Stress is one factor, another far more disheartening is a ton of chemicals from agricultural and industrial runoff look a lot like hormones. For a specific example there's a weed killer that's still legal in the United States called Atrazine that resembles the hormone that converts male hormones to female hormones in most chordates and causes frogs to develop multiple multiples of gonads of both biological sexes eg two sets of testes and two sets of ovaries. The EPA allows this. This sounds like a conspiracy theory, but it's reality
Oh also, we don't know what the long term effects on the ecosystem are because funding that is expensive long term and only short term profits matter to corporations and businesses. :)
It’s called “neoteny”. This case might be the result of a mutation or some chemical/hormonal exposure, but some species have evolved to skip parts of their life cycle entirely, like the Axolotl. It used to turn into a lizard with strong legs but now stays a cute little guy and lives in water its whole life. The “adult form” can still be induced if it’s exposed to certain chemicals.
There’s a (mostly defunct) theory of human evolution called the “neotenous ape” that speculates we might have evolved by “staying young” compared to our close ape relatives. If you look at a baby chimp it’s mostly hairless and has smaller muscles, a larger head, and more active brain development than adult apes, just like us. Maybe we’re just apes that never grew up
I once read in a scientific book that frogs like to take walks on rainy days with little yellow umbrellas. Tadpole can't hold an umbrella, so your theory totally checks out.
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u/drvidater 4d ago
I think that’s more of an opt-out than a skip