Sunday, June 03, 2007

Evolution Continues

I'm sitting in my car eating lunch. It's a nice sunny day and the parking lot is about half full and I watch the world go by as I take in the news that's on the radio. My eyes drift around and take in the familiar surroundings and I spot something hopping around the SUV parked across from me. I focus in to see a small bird, a Finch possibly, hop up onto the front bumper and begin surveying the grill. It then plucks a fat bug from the radiator grill and then flies off. I then notice that there's a small army of birds hopping and popping around inspecting every car for bug-kill and I see that they're ignoring other parts of the car and concentrate on the front grill.

That's because the heat of the engine cooks the bugs.

I think about those birds that hang out on the backs of African Crocodiles picking off ticks and parasites. It makes me wonder how these birds might evolve in the future. I wonder if they will evolve to eventually understand the automobile enough to one day repair them.

I then think about what the impact on these birds will be when cars go the way of the horse. Will their taste for cooked butterflies be such that they cannot go back to regular old insects?
Either way, I think that it's cool when nature figures out a way to live with us instead of the other way around.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I agree, pretty nice when nature adapts to the 21st century. I'm glad they like cooked bugs!!