NEXT UP: # 6 seed Red Fox (Vulpes vulpes) vs # 11 seed Ring-tailed Vontsira (Galidia elegans)! #2021MMM Red Foxes are found all over the northern hemisphere in North America, Africa, and Eurasia. Generally a woodland dweller, this clever canine has taken advantage of human expansion, and has become quite the city dweller too! #2021MMM

Aight, I don’t want to just complain about it, so here’s a simple explainer! Convergent evolution describes when unrelated populations of living things independently evolve similar traits in response to similar pressures in their respective environments. (1/9) Some of my favorite examples of convergence are between marsupial and Eutherian (“placental”) mammals. The two animals here, a marsupial mole and an African golden mole, haven’t shared an ancestor in over 100 million years (!) but have evolved strikingly similar body plans. (2/9)