First off, a shout out to the English teacher who made me learn the word “onomatopoeic” at school because I’m about to use it in a real sentence – for only the second time in 62 years. Ready? Here goes: We all know about the cuckoo, whose onomatopoeic name derives from its well-known call. Interestingly, the cuckoo only ‘cuckoos’ here, in Britain. It’s a mating call, and the bird doesn’t use it for the rest of its year in Africa. …
Tag: evolution
Odd things, knees, when you think about it. At some point in evolutionary history, nature decided that instead of walking on a single, rigid stick, life would be better if we broke the stick in the middle and made it floppy, and then had to have a complicated system of muscle and tendons and ligaments to make it all go straight again. Why? If a straight leg was too long, surely the answer was just to make it shorter. But …
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