How would a starfish wear trousers? Science has an answer

Starfishes are weirdly shaped animals. Scientists have long puzzled over how a starfish body equates to the more typical animal arrangement of a head on one end and trunk or tail on the other. Humans wear trousers on the bottom of their trunks, so you could extrapolate out from that to suggest solutions to the 'trouser question' for dogs, horses, spiders and even slugs. But what about a starfish? Now there's a new possible answer based on the expression of their genes...
Read the research paper here: www.nature.com/articles/s4158...
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[@RebelSee]

Pretty clever way to explain complex content. Interesting, informative and educative. ❤

[@Dandelion--]

Fascinating. And so cleverly - and beautifully - presented!

[@amrendrapandey8952]

Once, I was looking at the Ernst Haeckel drawings of sea creatures and realized the astonishing association between the emergence of bilateral symmetry and the evolution of eyes.

[@claudiaortiz5043]

My daughter (11) and I enjoyed this educative video very much! Thank you!

[@douglasharley2440]

great video!...i loved the paper cutouts style, it is really good at conveying the somewhat-complex ideas around the topic. 😎👍

[@sorzin2289]

Star fish wouldn't wear pants they would wear hats. As they are nothing but head.

[@jonathanloh1205]

The trouble with echinoderms is they're all mouth and no trousers

[@OmkarDeole]

वाह. किती सोपे करुन सांगितले! धन्यवाद

[@Biped]

Asking the real questions

[@FourBearable]

Brilliant video - buildup, breakdown and analogies. Love it!

[@MikiM89]

Thanks science :)

[@iamdigory]

If a starfish wore pants, it wouldn't wear pants, strange but true

[@unvergebeneid]

If they framed it like this in the paper, I smell an Ig Nobel Prize incoming ;)

[@fel001]

I started the video thinking I wasn't going to be impressed. I am impressed.

[@jimpeter3453]

Wow, informative and charming! Regards from Baltimore

[@diracio]

Brilliant video - thanks! And thanks to this month's Scientific American for sending me to this video! Trousers are a great, simple way to explain this. Presumably there will be further work on the developmental stages given starfish larvae are bilateral...?

[@michellehu562]

This will be how future generations of PhDs look like😂

[@Navarro1030]

Great video!

[@MrAyrit]

What a pleasant video. Thank you.

[@StoneStoryHenriZ]

Naw this finding only became weirder when you realize that starfish is a head that both eats and poops..😂😂😂

[@mrtienphysics666]

so its many legs are on its head?

[@shagunsharma2812]

Amazing 🤩

[@jamdc2000]

Nice

[@zeefy9606]

Patrick is a lie 😢.

[@soumyakundu5152]

Patrick would disagree though😂

[@ExplicitPublishing]

Why would any body plan wear pants on its arms?! BTW I believed this to be a serious discussion of starfish pants. Instead, I find a ruse leading to biology education, a singularly UNpopular topic among bilateral body plan types.

[@emilydavis771]

Tunicates/sea squirts are another group of bilateria that lack bilateral symmetry (or any symmetry?) as adults, though the larvae are tadpole-like. Do we know how they'd wear pants? Supposedly they consume their own brains in the process of development, so I'd assume they're all trunk with no brain segments.

[@footfault1941]

Exceptionally peaceful, stress-free life is that of scientists! That's said, to settle this conundrum may rack their brain surely. Personal pick is an idea shown early on. Put them on the bottom side. Being especially interested in animal locomotion, functional convergence is preferable, although as clear here, there'd be alternatives.

[@srgkzy1294]

❤

[@user-wr2wx2tr5y]

🙀

[@burrito-town]

This video is too quiet. Your team needs to learn how to properly export video for KZbin. You’re clearly not using the right settings.

[@WhosWhointheZoo123]

This is what "science" spends govt grants on........ let that sink in.

[@nobelphoenix]

Now scientists need to study the reason why you made that comment even though you've been watching Nature's videos on youtube! This topic is truly fascinating and even more perplexing than bilateralism!

[@UteChewb]

@@nobelphoenix and it is a brilliant way of explaining complex ideas in just 4 minutes.

[@oberonpanopticon]

If any government money went into making this video, I suspect it was probably less than a seconds worth of tax dollars. Even the most monetarily mismanaged multi-billion dollar space missions and particle colliders are about as expensive as an aircraft carrier.