Adaptation

Today I had a good Skype chat with Joe.  Almost as far away as he could be on another continent, experiencing a lifestyle as different from mine as I could imagine, yet joined by technology. An extraordinary list of physical endurances over the last week - tired, but pleased with his progress and no injuries.  I am enormously proud.

Speaking of endurances, just been watching 'Africa'.  Today it was the Sahara, and creatures that had the endurance to survive temperatures of 53 degrees Celsius - well for a few minutes at least.  Like SciFi heroes on a distant asteroid, these little silver ants in their space suits have 10 minutes to get out and find some food before they start to fry.

They find a fly with heatstroke and with moments to spare get their booty back into their underground home.  These, we are told, are the hardiest creatures in terms of heat in the world.

So who is filming them?  Cameras set up automatically to operate in heat of the midday sun?

No, people.  Specifically a jolly bearded young man in a t-shirt and chinos, kneeling on the sand to manoeuvre his camera along a steady track, head protected by a wide brimmed black hat, grinning with delight under his sunglasses.   The hardiest and most adaptive species on the planet.

A little later the crew set out to check their dune cameras, which have been recording the restless life of these ever-changing phenomena - I never realised how much they shifted, and that when they do they flow like water into different shapes, 'singing' with a bizarrely tuneful hum as they do. ANYWAY, the crew go to inspect the cameras and inform us that they have been VANDALISED overnight.  In the middle of the Sahara!! By what, you may ask?  What species could be out vandalising in the middle of the Sahara?  Humans, of course - and not because it helped them survive, provided them with anything to eat or improve their lives in any way - purely malicious.

Took the old car to Sainsbury's today.  She has been looking a bit of a mess with dirt and there are some Eastern European persons who run a little hand car wash operation in the car park.  Guy comes over, runs a wetted finger over the top of the filth, revealing shiny paintwork underneath.  How much? I enquire.  £9, he says.  I get my bags out and think to myself - well it's really filthy and he only washes cars in a car park for a living...  Offer him a tenner to restore her to her sunny disposition after a year of accumulated filth.

Returning with the trolley the green paintwork was indeed gleaming, although the 'keyed' scratch all along the side showed up very badly.  Said I couldn't understand why people had to do things so casually that were so malicious and pointless.  The carwash man said he sympathised. The very large, very silver, very expensive motor to our right was in fact his - and had indeed been keyed all along one side. Very expensive commute he has to work, he says (remember, this is Sainsbury's car park, this is a car wash man) - he could do with a nice little runner like mine if I was selling it.  Costs him over £20 just to get to work each day...  Well, I say, she's 15+ years old but only done 42,000 miles...  Yes, he says, he noticed when he was cleaning it - in very good condition too...  I thank him and say I will consider it if I am interested in selling...  So much for helping out those less fortunate than myself - looks like these particular migrants have adapted well to their new environment.

Got a nice roast chicken for dinner.  Talking to Joe about his unpleasantly tedious diet and lack of meat made me think of a nice hot roast chicken.  He's a bit fed up with the repetitiveness of his diet and interestingly that's something we humans find hard to adapt to.  More variety - we love it; just look at all the variety in the supermarket.  My Sainsbury's has just introduced a new section of houmous like preparations - from the non-standard alphabet I guess some sort of ethic variation on the theme. None of them low fat, unfortunately.

Now this evening Brian Cox is on the TV.  Really nice series but also interesting how the Physicist has adapted to becoming a biologist and zoologist as well.  A good move - he now gets to travel all over the globe to the most exotic of locations to talk about the wonders of adaptive evolution - today the adaptation of the senses; for example how the bones in gills of fish have adapted over millions of years to become the tiny bones in the ear.  "All evolution of senses has taken place to allow us to survive."  Well I haven't got one of them (luckily not hearing or sight) and I reckon I'm lucky that I've been born at a time in human history when we have adapted our environment so well that the senses are not the most important requirement for our survival. Now that is a really impressive adaptation.