If Anybody Finds a Pair of Opposable Thumbs, They're Mine.

So far today we've managed to have brilliant sunshine and driving rain. I await the fogs and snowstorms that will make the day complete with anticipation. I like it when we get all our seasons in one day, it shows a level of efficiency rarely achieved by nature.

Nature is so messy; there's stuff growing all over the place with everything from lichen to sequoias jostling for position. Nature is either horribly indecisive or simply makes a lot of mistakes. If a sequoia was what was wanted from the get go then why not stick a wacking great trunk under a bunch of lichen. Chances are nobody would notice the difference. Let's face it, nobody's going to judge nature (except me of course). It isn't as though somebody is going to come around with a clipboard and say things like, "Hmm, I can't help noticing your sequoia looks like somebody just put a really big trunk on a patch of lichen." No, nature can get away with cutting corners so why doesn't it.

Take lions for example. Yes they're impressive and I grant you that the economy of Kenya wouldn't be the same without them but was all that effort really necessary? Nature could have achieved much the same result by putting really sharp teeth on a gazelle. In fact there are a lot of advantages to that approach; whereas a lion has to sneak as close to a gazelle as possible and then charge for a victim while gazelles flee in all directions all another gazelle would have to do is trot up all friendly like and then reveal the fangs.

Then there are humans. If nature really knew what it was about it would just have stuck opposable thumbs on monkeys. Well, alright, that is pretty much what nature did but in which case why do we still have monkeys? Did some of the thumbs drop off? I think nature should be less worried about diversity and more worried about quality control. In any well organised ecosystem you should be able to get away with little more than a dozen, well designed species which you could pack onto one continent. That would leave the rest of the planet free for nature to do something much more interesting.