this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2025
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Mildly Interesting
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I could say that is an impressive evolutionary feat, but instead I'll say: Evolution, what the hell is wrong with you? You do know we all came from the sea, you should know 70% of the earth is covered in salt water, why did you think it was ok to devolve the ability to drink salt water but retain the requirement to drink water? Are you Ok? Do you need Jesus?
Evolution is considered a success if the animal lives long enough to successfully mate and nothing else matters to mindless evolution. At least cats don't have curly tusks that borrow through the skull if they live long enough like that infamous boar species I can't remember the name of.
Success is being better about producing offspring that can grow old enough to produce offspring better* than everything competing for your niech
*Better is the more optimal rate. Overpopulation is sub optimal
kidney disease is one of the most common ways cats die of old age so super efficient kidneys dont come without a tradeoff. Cats have evolved to live in very arid enviorments where saltwater is all that is availible so the tradeoff might have been worth it. ability to drink saltwater only would work without kidneys being prematurely overstressed would be likely if animals had higher normal salt content but that would mean they would need a lot higher salt intake making living inland harder.
IDK man, whales can live over 200 years.
but whales like all sea creatures have high bodry salt content making the osmotic pressure difference small
Ok, so here's an Idea, have more salt in our fluids.
Great idea except we'd need another million years of evolution or more
No, you're missing the point again, when fish first went land diving they drank salt water because of that there body would have already had more salt and so would there kidneys, we evolved the ability to drink fresh water, that is what took a million years.
I didn't comment elsewhere but from this incoherent comment it's clear you don't have the first clue what you're on about, or why I said a million years (evolving a major change like sea to land takes hundreds of millions or billions of years).
Ideas are good, but people contributing ideas that show they don't know anything at all about the topic, while insisting they're right, gets tiresome.
Or maybe you're still missing the point...
irradiated reproductive cells go brrr
if humans would be adapted to that it could work but it would mean without modern technology it would be close to impossible to survive without access to saltwater (most of human habitable land area)
Well we were already adapted for it or at least our ancient ancient fish ancestors were we lost the ability that's my core point, salt isn't exactly rare and other minerals can be used to reduce osmotic pressure, but besides that 40% of all people live near salt water and ~30% of all land animals live near salt water so I wouldn't think that would be enough to lose such a valuable resource as water, I am obviously wrong since we can't drink salt water but it still feels like a miss step.
i guess in the case of humans we would have evolved for a long time to mainly eat fruit that has a high water content with low salt content possibly even being most of needed water intake. after starting to eat meat perhaps there hasnt been enough evolutionary pressure to be able to regain saltwater consumption ability
Evolution is very short-sighted, and not at all good at planning.