“What unlikely cousins are there in the animal kingdom? (looking at elephants and the hyrax.)”
Didn’t…you just answer that a little…? Hm…Well, I’ll tell you what: there are MILLIONS of “unlikely” relatives in the animal kingdom. Or at least, they LOOK very unlikely, but for a variety of reasons (most of them evolution….all of them evolution), it does make sense that they now seem so different. With regards to the hyrax and the elephant, they are one another’s CLOSEST living relatives. Which means they had other, closer relatives, but they’re all gone now (to Florida, maybe?). To get from the small, furry hyrax to the gigantic, wrinkled elephant, millions of years of divergent evolution occurred. There was an accumulation of different traits between populations of their common ancestor that led to different species. As these different traits were selected for and emphasized with evolution (ex. Animals evolved bigger and bigger or smaller and smaller as it proved advantageous), the descendant species came to look more and more different. Eventually, some species’ traits proved deleterious; they were selected AGAINST and at an increasingly severe disadvantage in terms of survival and reproduction. These species are the elephant/hyrax’s relatives that are currently extinct (or in Florida).
My point is that if you go back far enough, EVERYTHING has some hella unlikely cousins. These cousins seem particularly unlikely when you no longer can see the gradient between X and Y species. Is this a downer? Hell, probably. Am I making evolution less mysterious? God, I hope so. The elephant and hyrax may not look like they belong at the same family reunion, but the fact that they who are SO different remained while the rest of the family kited off to Florida, is damned impressive.
The State of No Return
So I know this is not the answer you’re looking for, but in researching this, I realized a few things: 1) there are several ways to answer that question 2) one of the ways I could answer that would be very hard for me to personally determine 3) I did not know what a hyrax was (apparently, not a type of goat). I could list off things that are closer to one another than to other things that make more sense (which I can still do, cause hey! It’s fun), but again, evolution ruins the party because those “close” relatives are millions of years of evolution, and many closer relatives apart.. I could personally determine which animals’ closest relatives are such and such surprising thing (as with the elephant and hyrax), but that research would take time that I do not have. Conversely, I could look at existing lists (which I will link to), but I’d prefer to be original here. Also, I think I was confusing hyrax with ibex. THESE ARE VERY DIFFERENT THINGS.
You can tell the difference thusly: this bro is cute and twee…
…while you can tell by the eyes that this guy WILL push you off a ledge. That one. That ledge. Avoid that ledge.
And now, a list:
- Shrimp and potato bugs (aka pill bugs, aka sow bugs, aka woodlice, aka the bug I tracked into the apartment yesterday &etc) are more closely related than potato bugs and millipedes or centipedes. That’s because they’re both crustaceans and the blanky-pedes are not (they’re myriapods).
- Cephalopods (squid, octopods, cuttlefish) and snails and slugs and oysters Rockefeller are all Molluscs.
- After decades of debate, scientists have decided that pandas are less like large, greyscale red pandas and more of an “aberrant bear”. A-BEAR-rant, right? Ha ha…ha…
- Hyenas, despite looking like hairy, ‘roided up pit bull/wolf hybrids, are more closely related to cats and have stinking ADORABLE pups.
- Sea pigs are related to sea cucumbers. Sea pigs exist. They exist and just…WHY. THEY ARE GOO WHAT WAS EVOLUTION THINKING.
WHY
Sources
Laidler, Keith. 2009. Animals: A Visual Guide to the Animal Kingdom. Quercus Publishing Plc, London.
Zweifel. 2002. “Hyraxes”. Encyclopedia of Animals. Barnes and Noble Books, New York.
Two separate CRACKED articles about unlikely animal relatives
Daily Science (blog) 