Usually choanoflagellates are considered the nearest non-animal protist to animals. These guys aren't so far off, and maybe shared an ancestor capable of multicellularity, but they're probably not ancestors of animals. So my non-expert guess is that this pattern of embryo-like division is convergent. If not, the evolutionary tree is about to get shuffled big time. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choanozoa" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choanozoa</a> and the containing group, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holozoa" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holozoa</a><p>Edit: folks, there actually is some interesting science here if you can avoid getting hung up on the silly title.