They just reached top possible performance for their specific niche. They’re basically perfect, so there is little need for evolution to change anything - random selection keeps selecting the same traits for millions of years because those are the ones that work and manage to get them to reproduce.
I like to think of it as having maxed out one specific talent tree for that environment.
Exactly! They didn’t explore the “aerial flight” or “beautiful colors” tech tree at all, but are maxed on armor and chomping.
They are too made of beautiful colours
That’s not actually necessarily true. Even if we adopt this “top possible performance” thing, which isn’t how organisms work, you can’t guarantee their current set of traits would be this optimal maximum.
Evolution can only work with traits already present, or small additions or deletions. It can’t jump around. Meaning, for instance, perhaps a crocodile capable of shooting a literal stream of acid would be even more optimized for this environment - but such a trait can’t appear out of thin air, and the necessary stepping stones won’t be selected.
Sounds like machine learning with a very small learning rate. You will most likely end up in a local minimum ie. no acid shooting (it would be cool and terrifying)
Another fun fact about crocodiles, and alligators is that they actually have the immune systems that conservatives think they have.
But for real, they are trying to make new antibiotics from crocodile and alligator blood.
They’re kinda scared of hippos, so much so that hippo baby’s use them for teething and they just kinda take it.
Living every rich man’s dream - lie in a pool all day and go safari hunting without a licence. What more could one possibly need??
When you reach max level, you stop leveling.
Boring animal: Chomp!
Chadodile: Chomp Spinny-Spinny!
