This South African flower, whose gorgeous red tubular flowers blossom close to the ground, looks upside down.
In a sense, it is. The type of birds that typically polinate the plant are relatively scarce in the western portion of the country, and they avoid the ground, where they make easy prey for predators.
As a result, natural selection favored the versions of this low-lying plant that featured stems shooting upwards from the ground — skittish, ground-shy birds would perch on those plants to feed, and the pollinated upside-down plants outlived the non-pollinated stemless plants.
How do scientists know this is evolution at work and not simply some weird-looking plant?
In the East, where there's a bigger variety of birds looking for potential sources of food, the stalk has receded over many generations, a process scientists call relaxed selection. As a result of this process, traits that were once useful gradually fade away in subsequent generations as they lose their utility.