Phylogenetic facts ranked in order of how disturbing they are
- Birds are dinosaurs: Comforting, joyful. Accepted and liked by most people. A little tartness in your sweet.
- Trees are a lifestyle, not a clade: Mildly unsettling. Generally tempered by how plant evolution is impossible to understand. The slight pleasant bitterness of a good cup of coffee.
- Snakes are lizards: Of course they are. You know this in your heart already. Nobody is bothered by this. A squeeze of lemon on fish.
- Tuataras aren't lizards: Only disturbing to a very specific kind of person. Like finding a dog-ear in a library book.
- Mosasaurs are lizards: A delicious little morsel. Fun for the whole family. They're varanids! They're big monitors going for a permanent swim. The crackling sensation of a Pop Rock.
- Insects are crustaceans: The New Coke of phylogenetic facts.
- Horseshoe crabs are chelicerates, not crustaceans, and thus most closely related to spiders and scorpions: The Pepsi of phylogenetic facts.
- Barnacles are crustaceans: Ohoho. Hohohoh. Now we're getting a little spicy. Now it's a little hot in here.
- Echinoderms are bilaterians: As in, starfish are part of the animal group characterized by having two symmetrical sides. Their embryos curl up in a complicated and impractical way to grow their entire radially symmetric body out one side. This is spicy, but rarefied, like a little horseradish in your sandwich.
- Echinoderms are more closely related to vertebrates (and their close relatives) than to anything else: Fairly messed up. The big division among complex animals is "do you develop asshole-first, or mouth-first"? Starfish live with us in the asshole-first clade. A slightly-too-generous dab of slightly-too-hot sauce.
- Fungi are more closely related to animals than plants: Anything having to do with fungi is inherently unsettling. The tartness of sour candy.
- Sharks have been around longer than trees: Not a phylogenetic fact, but it hits in a similar way. Like szechuan peppercorns to hot peppers.
- Tuna are more closely related to humans than to sharks: Like going into a corkscrew on a moderate rollercoaster. The world falling away a bit as your perspective gets twisted around.
- Whales are ungulates: Squirming, unpleasant, dry in the mouth. Inexplicably much more offputting than "mosasaurs are lizards." All the wasabi for your sushi meal in one hit.
- Salps are chordates: You are more closely related to a gelatinous colonial organism than to 95% of animal species on earth. A wasp's sting while you're trying to eat a fig.