Not to be crude, but Mariska Hargitay is yummy.

Homo sapiens sapiens
I was thinking about evolution today, and from a biological stand point, I don't think we make any sense. I mean, let's look at the cheetah. Millions of years ago, some prehistoric cat was able to produce more progeny because he was a little faster than other cats and thus better able to run down prey. Now, the same princicple holds true for the prehistoric ungulates this cat likes to eat; some of them can run a little faster than the others, and so they live long enough to breed and pass on their quick genes. This arms race continues on and on, day by day through the generations and the millennia until you arrive at the present day: the cheetah and the gazelle. A gazelle can run at speeds up to 40 mph; a cheetah can sprint at 70 mph. Sure, the gazelle is giving up a ton of speed, but it can also maintain it's top speed far longer than the cheetah, which can only sprint for 200-300 yards. So, an alert gazelle can react while the cheetah is still too far away to make up the distance, and enough of them are alert enough to perpetuate the species. By the same token, enough cheetahs are stealthy enough get close with enough gazelles to contiue making little baby cheetahs.

But, if a 70 mph cheetah can catch some gazelles, surely a 90 mph could catch even more. So, why don't cheetahs sprint at 90 mph? The short answer: because they don't have to. Despite the amazing variety of life on our pleasant little planet, and nature's charming way of filling every tiny little niche and habitat (there are creatures living in the volcanic vents on the ocean floor, for Pete's sake!), evolution is an inherently lazy process. It doesn't make creatures as fast or strong or agile as they potentially could be, it makes them as fast and strong and agile as they need to be. Thus, my original problem. The crocodile has not changed in millions of years. It has not changed because it does not need to change; a modern crocodile is perfectly capable of killing anything it needs to kill in order to survive. Nature only makes creatures as formidable as they need to be; so, why are we as unbelievably fierce as we are?

We may not look like much - dull teeth, no claws, chimpanzees are way stronger than us - but Home sapiens sapiens is the most lethal animal the Earth has ever produced. We are so lethal that it can fairly be said we have no natural predators. Lions. Wolves. Eagles. None of these creatures hunt men unless they are desperate. We are the only predator that lives in environments as diverse as the Yukon and the Sahara, Tahiti and the Falklands, Afganistan and Argentina. We are the only predator so deadly that we take steps to preserve other predators (we have limited the hunting of wolves and various birds-of-prey). We are the only predator that hunts for pleasure rather than necessity. As a species we are so deadly that we spend most of our time on politics and art and keeping lesser predators as pets (hi, Sammy!); how many lions waste their nights blogging? Our lethality comes not from our physical prowess, but from our gooey brains. The opposable thumb is fantastic, I'm a huge fan of the opposable thumb, but we'd be absolutely sunk without our enormous heads and the brains they protect.

But the thing of it is, our brains are so smart that they more than compensate for our relatively harmless bodies; we are much smarter than we need to be to hold our ground. We are smart enough to be the top of the food chain, undisputed masters of all we survey. And that's what I mean when I say we don't make any biological sense. Every other creature is what it needs to be in order to survive; we are much more than we need to be. (We are not everything we could be, but that's what all the art and science and striving is for.) Our intelligence makes us much better at killing than simple biological necessity dictates. I suppose my question here is: how in the hell did that happen? Why in the case of this one species did nature provide more than was necessary?

Crap
Macy Gray

H-A-D
Have a night.