What's the coolest adaptation in an organism that you know of?

[Hikiko]

I just want to hear the facts you keep in your pockets.

Lily-of-the-valley essentially kills itself in the summertime to avoid high temperatures (which is kind of a mood, to be honest.) It's susceptible to what is in essence plant sunburn, so it destroys its leaves to save itself. However, it's not truly dead and will come back in the fall.

 

[Clementine]

Cuttlefish are capable of changing their skin color and texture to camouflage themselves better than any other animal, and some species can use their color-changing ability to make repetitive moving patterns to hypnotize their prey.

 

[Lepus alleni]

Boquila is a fascinating plant that mimics the leaves of other plants. Not only is it a plant that actively mimics other plants, which is incredible in of itself, but the reason its special is how it mimics other plants. Boquila does not need to make contact with its mimicry target to mimic the shape of its leaves, in fact its target doesn't need to be a real plant at all! That's right! Boquila can mimic plastic plants! Researchers aren't entirely sure how it does it, but currently the most likely answer is ocelli! It's a plant that can see!

 

[Red-in-Tooth]

This one I offer at times now and again as it is directly relevant to myself but it is really a telling and fascinating function of evolution based upon recurrent adaptations over many generations that were highly favorable.

Among the machairodonts, thus the many, many sabertooth cats, two primary adaptations arose to solve the same sorts of problems; "dirk tooth" cats, the kind we all know and the likes of which sabertooths are most famous for, and the much less spoken about "scimitar tooth" cats. The latter here is extremely unique and in part actually some of the reason we see so few canids in the Americas (in particular) and even Europe, because scimitar tooth cats were much more generalized with their less pronounced, less flattened exaggerated canines, but also had longer limbs and a number of species were cursorial hunters - all traits that put them in direct competition with species such the various wolf species. This is all on top of "conical tooth", thus Pantherine, large cats that are still extant today. But once upon a time, it was so common a case there were many more species of cats, that there was virtual out-competition of every other predatory land mammal on the entire planet and had been increasingly that way - just thanks to tooth shape in large part - over tens of millions of years.

Things have only changed in the past fifteen or so thousand years, predominantly due to natural changes in planetary temperature with the end of the last ice age, then the following rapid expansion of humans with the Agricultural Revolution.

 

[Slash Pine]

Holly is a very neat plant! Over here in North America deer love the taste of holly leaves. They are also relatively low to the ground and rounded so they are easy for deer to consume. But the moment the deer begins to eat the holly the plant recognizes that it is being damaged and will over time change its leaves to be spiky so they will be painful to eat. Here is a Science Daily article that explains it better than I can.

 

[axol_alterhuman]

axolotls can litteraly regenerate almost any limb or organ. sometimes they'll even grow two more limbs in place

 

[Plague Bringer]

The anglerfish dazzles its prey like Edward Cullen. As ridiculous as it sounds, it is a strategy that works.

 

[Hanami]

Asian honey bees utilize a defensive technique called "heat balling" to defend their hive from threats like hornets. By surrounding the enemy and vibrating their thoracic muscles, they can generate and maintain fatally high temperatures (around 46°C/115°F) for 20 minutes or so. The bees themselves can withstand temperatures up to 50°C/122°F.

Goldfish can (and should) eat a far more varied diet than just fish flakes, including but not limited to: peas, kale, spinach, and live or freeze-dried prey (like brine shrimp or blood worms).

There is a type of bacteria (Ideonella sakaiensis) that has evolved to eat plastic.