#everything alive carries within it the traces of its ancestors' niches

[approximateknowledge]

once you learn enough about evolutionary biology you start seeing ghosts everywhere

#everything alive carries within it the traces of its ancestors' niches #and also some niches are just eerily *empty* where they were once full #and im not talking like “the megafauna here got eradicated by human intervention and hunting and habitat loss” #i mean it in the “there hasn't been a proper aerial macropredator since the azadrchids went extinct 65 million years ago”-sense #which is something you cannot unthink or unsee #especially in island ecosystems