Are we too Stupid to Save the Planet? Part 2 – Beyond Rational Thinking.

From Gambling to God. For reasons that seem inexplicable there's no shortage of stupidity... It's everywhere... In politics, in the pub, even on street corners - out there at this very moment there will be somebody carrying a placard that says, 'The end of the world in nigh'... a person a bit like me perhaps, although my preference is to garner at least a little scientific evidence before making a startling claim. There's a man who stands at a road junction close to where I live, and he carries a sign that says, 'Jesus Comes Soon'. I've been wanting to tell…

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Read more about the article Before We Had Brains 2 – Of Arthropods and Other Things.
Often the size of an insects eyes, give a clue as to how important vision is to them, although it is difficult to imagine quite what an insect see once it has converted the many images that its compound eye sees into something useful.

Before We Had Brains 2 – Of Arthropods and Other Things.

Long before humans developed the brains they have today, a great many other animals had already evolved co-ordinated nerve centres completely effective in directing their everyday lives. In 'Before We Had Brains 1', I considered what might have been our earliest vertebrate ancestor - probably a worm-like creature that lived in the sea; and before that we must have passed through a variety of preceding invertebrate stages - it's been a long road. Almost as extraordinary is that while we were on the evolutionary march from comparative simplicity to our present complexity, many other animals hardly changed at all. Once a…

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Before We Had Brains 1 – The Worm That Turned.

As a child I spent many happy hours watching animals, especially the odd ones that other people mostly avoided... and it wasn't long before it all made perfect sense to me. When I was old enough, I would train as a zoologist. "What will you do with that?" people would ask.  "Work in a zoo?"  Well, not exactly. Rather stupidly, it had never occurred to me to ask how  zoologists make a living - I'd never met one, but I was certain it wouldn't be a total waste of time; and when I finally managed to get qualified I was determined…

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