It’s been a little while since I’ve had one of these published, but it’s good to be back! My latest Nature Education’s Student Voices blog post is up, and it’s on a topic both close and far from my heart: humanity. More specifically, it’s about how boring, biologically, Homo sapiens is as a species compared with the vast array of fascinating creatures that we mostly ignore every day, and if we would just take a second to appreciate them, we might stop putting ourselves up on a pedestal.
Here’s a little taste:
Whales taunt us from the sea in bodies forced into streamlined forms, and some of them even do so from up to 3 kilometres below the surface of the ocean. And teetering on the edge of mammalian classification, platypuses have ten sex chromosomes (our two pale in comparison), and males have spurs that deliver a shot of venom to anyone or anything that gets too close. The best we humans can muster is a mildly irritating scratch from our fingernails or a moderately annoying bite from our flimsy jaws. Yes, that hyena over there, with its ability to crush bones, is laughing at you, and rightly so. You look ridiculous trying to eat that steak.
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