Andrewsarchus: A Profile In Degeneration

DISCLAIMER: A lot of my friends don’t believe in evolution. If that’s you, it’s no business of mine to say otherwise and I promise I’m not here on behalf of Satan. Just humor me for a minute.

Andrewsarchus himself. Image: Scienceblogs.com

That said, I’d like to introduce you to one truly badass beast: meet Andrewsarchus. Feel free to say howdy, but try not to look him in the eye. He’s the size of an adult polar bear with teeth as big as your forearm, and he can easily bite you in half with a single chomp. Probably will too, if you get too close to his dinner.

Lucky for you, he’s extinct. Andrewsarchus had his heyday in the Eocene period, some 40 million years ago. He prowled the beaches of his prehistoric world, feeding on mollusks and turtles (literally biting through their shells like sandwiches), and devouring flesh-and-bone any whale unlucky enough to wash ashore. His formidable bite and exceptionally mean temperament made him an apex predator, (or scavenger if he liked the smell of what his neighbors were having), and no other creature of any size ever dared get between him and his chow. He was, quite literally, invincible.

Now flash forward to a more modern and civilized era, and meet his direct descendant, a bad-ass in his own right: the common sheep. What?

Yes, you read that correctly. Andrewsarchus, a match for any imaginary carnivore in the history of fourth grade art class, spent the last 40 million years living the hard-fought good life without a care in the world, and as a result of his complacency he devolved into a sheep. Baaahh.

But how could such a travesty occur? How can the sheep turn out so unlike his proud ancestor, and yet seem oblivious to his own staggering decline?

It didn’t happen all at once. Somewhere along the line, he stopped eating meat, because someone told him it was unhealthy, or because the other prehistoric animals finally got through to him that he had too much and should spread the wealth. He stopped hunting because he was now a vegetarian and grass was so much easier to catch, not to mention better for the environment.

Since he no longer needed to chase away his competitors, he took on a kinder, gentler disposition and eventually became loved and respected by his brother beasts. After a while he even came to see competition itself as a barbaric and antiquated practice. He thanked his fellow animals for helping him find his place as an equal in the community of species, and he rejoiced in his newfound feeling of validation as an enlightened member of prehistoric society. This point, he emphasized to his children with the utmost sobriety.

Once carnivorous size and cunning were no longer necessary, his brain grew smaller and so did he. Eventually, he forsook the beaches altogether and wandered into the pastures, grazing pleasantly until his violent past was nothing more than a distant memory.

He was grateful for his new life. Sure, one of his family members would get eaten by a predator once in a while, but it was an acceptable trade-off for living a new cultured existence of relative abundance. Actually a part of him felt it was just, in a way, as his kind had deprived those other species of so much for so long.

Now, his worthy heir the Sheep grazes the pastures of human agriculture, contentedly paying for the privilege of fenced boundaries with his wool, surrounded by beautiful lady sheep and happily oblivious to his eventual day of slaughter. The man is nice and treats him gently, and the dog patrols the fence line to keep the predators at bay. It’s a great life. He rejoices in the freedom his ancestor fought so hard for, and is grateful he doesn’t have to do any fighting himself.

Sometimes though, he secretly pines for the old days – he realizes he must be a pervert because somewhere deep in the back of his mind, the idea of taking a nice chomp out of a turtle…

Of course, he wouldn’t dare say anything in front of the other sheep, because he’s afraid they would call him a violent extremist and ostracize him from the community. He would hate to be an outcast, because in spite of himself he can’t help but feel deeply concerned about what others think of him.

Ah, well. Such is life.

It’s a pity what happened to such a proud race. Developments this tragic take generations, but represent the sum total of many small and seemingly insignificant concessions, rationalizations, and little white self-deceptions. But after so many millenia of incremental compromise, it’s now too late for Andrewsarchus. His fate is sealed as an example for the ages, and we’re all really thankful that nobody we know would ever think of following such a sad trajectory, from greatness into mediocrity.