When the ancestors of the cheetah first began pursuing the ancestors of the gazelle, neither of them could run as fast as they can today.
Interpretation
This quote illustrates the idea of evolution and adaptation through the relationship between predator and prey.
Richard Dawkins highlights how both cheetahs and gazelles have evolved over time in response to each other, showcasing the dynamic nature of survival and adaptation in the animal kingdom. This ongoing process emphasizes the significance of natural selection, where both species have developed unique traits to enhance their chances of survival in a competitive environment.
In practice
In a discussion about evolution in a biology class.
No educated person believes the Adam and Eve myth nowadays, but it's surprising how many parents think that it's somehow fun to pass on this falsehood to their children...I would want to argue that the truth of evolution is more interesting and more poetic
If the history-deniers who doubt the fact of evolution are ignorant of biology, those who think the world began less than ten thousand years ago are worst than ignorant, they are the deluded to the point of perversity.
The population of the U.S. is nearly 300 million, including many of the best educated, most talented, most resourceful, humane people on earth. By almost any measure of civilised attainment, from Nobel prize-counts on down, the U.S. leads the world by miles.
When you make machines that are capable of obeying instructions slavishly, and among those instructions are 'duplicate me' instructions, then of course the system is wide open to exploitation by parasites.
Even if not a single fossil has ever been found, the evidence from surviving animals would still overwhelmingly force the conclusion that Darwin was right.
The bitter hatreds that now poison Middle Eastern politics are rooted in the real or perceived wrong of the setting up of a Jewish State in an Islamic region. In view of all that the Jews had been through, it must have seemed a fair and humane solution. Probably deep familiarity with the Old Testament had given the European and American decision-makers some sort of idea that this really was the historic homeland of the Jews.
Oh, a dainty plant is the ivy green, That creepeth o'er ruins old! Of right choice food are his meals, I ween, In his cell so lone and cold. Creeping where no life is seen, A rare old plant is the ivy green.
The daisy, by the shadow that it casts, Protects the lingering dewdrop from the sun.
Active conservation [of gorillas] involves simply going out into the forest, on foot, day after day after day, attempting to capture poachers, killing-regretfully-poacher dogs, which spread rabies within the park, and cutting down traps.
I love New York on summer afternoons when everyone's away. There's something very sensuous about it - overripe, as if all sorts of funny fruits were going to fall into your hands.
There is continual spring, and harvest there Continual, both meeting at one time: For both the boughs do laughing blossoms bear, And with fresh colours deck the wanton prime, And eke attonce the heavy trees they climb, Which seem to labour under their fruits load: The whiles the joyous birds make their pastime Amongst the shady leaves, their sweet above, And their true loves without suspicion tell abroad.
Measured against the Problem We Face, planting a garden sounds pretty benign, I know, but in fact itβs one of the most powerful things an individual can do - to reduce your carbon footprint, sure, but more important, to reduce your sense of dependence and dividedness: to change the cheap-energy mind.
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