"Our selves emerge from a complex tangle of relationships only now becoming known."
“The authors of a seminal paper on the symbiotic view of life take "Our selves emerge from a complex tangle of relationships only now becoming known."
“The authors of a seminal paper on the symbiotic view of life take a clear stance on this point. “There have never been individuals,” they declare. “We are all lichens.”
“A mycelial network is a map of a fungus’s recent history and is a helpful reminder that all life-forms are in fact processes not things. The “you” of five years ago was made from different stuff than the “you” of today. Nature is an event that never stops. As William Bateson, who coined the word genetics, observed, “We commonly think of animals and plants as matter, but they are really systems through which matter is continually passing.”...more
“I believe that the best way to create good living conditions for any animal, whether it's a captive animal living in a zoo, a farm animal or a pet, i“I believe that the best way to create good living conditions for any animal, whether it's a captive animal living in a zoo, a farm animal or a pet, is to base animal welfare programs on the core emotion systems in the brain. My theory is that the environment animals live in should activate their positive emotions as much as possible, and not activate their negative emotions any more than necessary. If we get the animal's emotions rights, we will have fewer problem behaviors... All animals and people have the same core emotion systems in the brain.”...more
"Animals don't exist in order to teach us things, but that is what they have always done, and most of what they teach us is what we think we know abou"Animals don't exist in order to teach us things, but that is what they have always done, and most of what they teach us is what we think we know about ourselves"...more
"Why do we find it so much more difficult to understand plants than animals? It’s because of the history of evolution, which split us off from vegetat"Why do we find it so much more difficult to understand plants than animals? It’s because of the history of evolution, which split us off from vegetation very early on. All our senses developed differently, and so we have to use our imaginations to get even the slightest idea of what is going on inside trees." ― Peter Wohlleben...more
“In a mere 15,000–30,000 years the selection imposed on dogs by their association with humans has caused evolutionary alterations never experienced in“In a mere 15,000–30,000 years the selection imposed on dogs by their association with humans has caused evolutionary alterations never experienced in the canine family during the previous 40 million years.” ― Richard C Francis...more
"There's more than one way to wire a clever brain"
Lessons from The Genius of Birds: 1. It’s not about how big your brain is. Well, not entirely. 2. Only"There's more than one way to wire a clever brain"
Lessons from The Genius of Birds: 1. It’s not about how big your brain is. Well, not entirely. 2. Only humans are better at using tools than birds, chimps don’t stand a chance. 3. Good birds copy, great birds steal – some birds have a great sense of art. 4. Birds forms a pair bond during the breeding season to helps ensure the young will thrive, but, they are not monogamy.......more
“Dinosaurs had been around for over 150 million years when their time of reckoning came. They had endured hardships, evolved superpowers like fast met“Dinosaurs had been around for over 150 million years when their time of reckoning came. They had endured hardships, evolved superpowers like fast metabolisms and enormous size, and vanquished their rivals so that they ruled an entire planet… Then, literally, in a split second, it ended.”...more
"What we observe is not nature in itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning." —Werner Heisenberg (1958)"What we observe is not nature in itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning." —Werner Heisenberg (1958)...more