Talk:Convergent evolution

Convergent evolution has been listed as one of the Natural sciences good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it. Review: January 23, 2017. (Reviewed version).

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Is it appropriate to include such things as agriculture, tool use, and construction in this article? It appears to focus on bodily traits but does have a section on intelligence. Tool use appears to have evolved separately amongst corvids and primates, agriculture with leaf-cutter ants and primates, and construction with beavers and primates. Would these fall under the heading of intelligence if they were included? They might be more instinctual behaviors, but they arose from evolutionary processes convergently. Gibson Flying V (talk) 23:40, 2 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for asking. The job of any introductory article is to give an overview of the main concept, and a few clear examples to illustrate it. Tool use is a possible case, but a complex one, as it is partly learnt, so change during an individual's lifetime overlaps and obscures any evolutionary changes there may have been. That means that any parallels between species are complicated and not necessarily evolutionary, so do not form clear examples of (convergent) evolution. Chiswick Chap (talk) 01:44, 3 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

I am wondering whether it would be possible to include these examples somewhere in the article, as they seem like particularly striking examples of convergent evolution where the convergently evolved animals look incredibly similar. Specifically, old world vultures and new world vultures evolved separately but look and act very similarly. Few would also realise that old world and new world porcupines evolved separately. In the case of river dolphins, Amazon, La Plata and Yangtze river dolphins are more closely related to oceanic dolphins than they are to Ganges and Indus river dolphins, which are more closely related to beaked whales. It is notable that cranes look and act like herons, egrets and storks while not being a Ciconiform, and a similar point could be made about the resemblances between Falconiforms and Accipitrids (kites, harriers, hawks, eagles).

For a broader example, spine growth is a notable example of a trait that has evolved in separate groups (echidnas, hedgehogs, porcupines, sea urchins, catepillars, etc). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.42.31.79 (talk) 14:29, 21 October 2025 (UTC)Reply

Thank you for your interest in this article. However, Wikipedia works entirely from reliable sources; we are not allowed to use observations by readers or editors, however striking, in articles. In the case of this article, we already have multiple and very diverse examples, and there are literally thousands more examples that one could identify in nature. Since the article is not a list, the only function of the examples is to make clear to readers what convergent evolution is; the existing examples certainly do that. Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:42, 21 October 2025 (UTC)Reply