From snowflakes to sunflowers, starfish to sharks, symmetry is everywhere in nature.
From snowflakes to sunflowers, starfish to sharks, symmetry is everywhere in nature. Not just in the body plans which govern shape and form, but right down to the microscopic molecular machines keeping cells alive.
Although there is a larger collection of asymmetrical forms in the natural world, symmetrical patterns seem to occur more often than you would expect if due to sheer random chance.
It is tempting to assume that evolution is looking at the advantages of simple modular and symmetrical shapes just as engineers, architects and Swedish furniture designers do.
Biologists, however, will point out that evolution works one generation at a time – rather than making adaptations for future benefits – and there needs to be an immediate evolutionary advantage for a mutation to stick.
Read more at University of Oxford
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