Chordata Memes

Forget "return to monke" memes - evolution's playing the long game! This diagram shows how ascidians (sea squirts) start life as free-swimming tadpole-like larvae with a notochord (primitive backbone) but then settle down and basically eat their own brains during metamorphosis. They transform into what looks like a boring filter-feeding blob attached to rocks. It's like nature said "Vertebrate features? Nah, too much work - I'm just gonna sit here and filter water forever." The ultimate career downgrade! These creatures literally evolved to have LESS features. Talk about embracing the simple life!

Behold the magnificent personality quiz of the deep sea! These translucent nightmares are actually sea squirts (tunicates) in their predatory form. Despite looking like rejected alien props from a sci-fi movie, these filter-feeding organisms are our distant evolutionary cousins! That's right—these gelatinous mouth-tubes share a common ancestor with vertebrates like us. I'm personally feeling like a number 7 today—ready to silently judge everyone while looking fabulous in my see-through body. Fun fact: some tunicates actually digest their own brains after finding a nice spot to settle down. Talk about the ultimate commitment to the homebody lifestyle!

Biologists really out here looking at a lancelet, a turtle, and a T-Rex saying "yep, same family reunion" but then freak out if two nearly identical worms diverged last weekend. The top diagram shows chordates (including us humans) claiming kinship with wildly different creatures because they share a notochord at some point, while the bottom shows taxonomists having an existential crisis over minor differences between worm-like creatures that probably couldn't even tell each other apart. The "point of divergence: before the big bang" vs "point of divergence: last weekend" is peak biological sarcasm. Taxonomy is just biologists playing favorites with their classification system while ignoring the screaming absurdity of it all.