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Why Do Things Keep Evolving Into Crabs?

PBS Eons
Explainers
YouTube
1 HN user recommended this explainer1 month2020–2023 score 1.5
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

HN cites it as a clear, well-made treatment of convergent evolution and crabs.

A short PBS Eons episode on carcinization, the repeated independent evolution of crab-like bodies in unrelated crustaceans, and what makes that form so successful.

“Can't endorse their style of science journalism enough.” (HN, 2022)

1 strong recommendations · 3 citations · Explainers

4 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@kjeetgill Jun 2022 Strongly recommends
on HN thread Crabs evolved at least five times from separate groups of crustaceans (2021)
Eons did a great piece on this recently: [this video] One of the things I love about the way Eons cover topics is how they don't just focus on what we know, but also how we know, who figured things out, and what we got wrong along the way. Can't endorse their style of science journalism enough.
Covers how we know, who found it, and what we got wrong.

Citations, criticism and jokes

@yeetman21 Oct 2020 Cites it
on HN thread Coincidence of Noticing Things, in Action
I made a post 11 days ago ( [link] ) about a wikipeida page regarding things evolving into crabs. Then today I see this youtube video on trending ( [this video] ) talking about this very same concept. This is a very niche subject so I am surprised by its relative frequent appearances. This thing has happened to me before, so I finally decided to look up what its called.
Noted as coincidence that the same topic appeared on trending.
@erulabs Jun 2021 Cites it
on HN thread Why is everything evolving into crabs
Funny this came out the same month as SciShow’s “Why does everything keep evolving into crabs?” Video: [this video]
Mentions another video on the same topic released that month.
@jcfrei Feb 2023 Cites it
on HN thread The search for extraterrestrial life as we don’t know it
Counterpoint: Alien life will probably look very similar to life on earth. If you look at evolution then countless species have evolved into something crab-like: [this video] Turns out that their form is pretty good for survival. While biology can take on a myriad of forms, the competitive nature of life will weed out a lot of them. And since the rules for biochemistry are the same across the universe similar traits that are beneficial here will probably be beneficial there.
Used as example of convergent evolution toward crab-like forms.

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

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