Comments

  1. davidnangle says

    Zoo = Family reunion
    Arboretum = Family reunion
    Butterfly pavilion = Family reunion
    Open sewage treatment plant = Family reunion

  2. anchor says

    And if that isn’t sufficient to stir anyone’s sense of wonder, they’re barking up a dead tree

  3. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    I got the same results! We must be related!

    Well… yes. Yes we are.

  4. Ed Seedhouse says

    Sometime recently I decided to learn how the ranks of cousins are decided. I won’t bore you with that, but I did see that by the rules of cousinship everyone alive today and everyone who ever lived before me and will live after me is my nth cousin n times removed, unless they are a parent or grandparent of mine or a sibling.

    And since we share common ancestors with every being on the planet the rules generalize to them. Therefore we are formally some degree of cousin with pretty well all of them, and all who have ever lived.

    So perhaps to every living being we meet we should say “hello cousin”.

  5. says

    It’s complicated, though, for us eukaryotes. We come by our descent from good ol’ LCA via at least two separate paths (not to mention all those retroviruses). So it’s more than one unbroken lineage.

  6. Rich Woods says

    This reminds me of the quote from (I think) Carl Sagan: “None of your forebears died young.”

    We are lucky, lucky bastards.

  7. What a Maroon, living up to the 'nym says

    We are all the products of a scandalously enormous string of incest.

  8. Cuttlefish says

    Yeah, it’s old…

    I am accident on accident
    And chance on random chance
    I’m the product of environment
    And changing circumstance

    The odds of my occurrence
    Are incalculably small—
    If you round off to the trillionth place
    I don’t exist at all!

    Every atom in my body
    From an ancient star’s collapse;
    I’m a long time in my making—
    Several billion years, perhaps!

    In a corner of infinity,
    A cold and hostile place
    On a tiny blue oasis
    Set adrift in empty space

    I’m a subset of the universe
    That’s learned to look around—
    And which cannot help but wonder
    At the marvels I have found!

    The descendent of bacteria,
    Of annelids, of fish,
    I’m a member of the primates,
    Just an ape-man, if you wish

    Through the engine of selection
    Some would live and some would die—
    “From so simple a beginning”
    Just how fortunate am I!

    And I pass along my molecules
    And take my place in line
    So some distant, future life form
    Will have carbon that was mine

    And perhaps my DNA as well—
    Unlikely, though, my friend—
    I have ridden quite a lucky streak,
    And lucky streaks must end.

    So it is, and so it must be
    When so much depends on chance
    But…
    Since the music plays so briefly,
    Can you blame me if I dance?

    https://proxy.freethought.online/cuttlefish/2012/01/23/an-atheist-is-a-man-who-believes-himself-to-be-an-accident/

  9. methuseus says

    Wouldn’t we be considered apes, not monkeys? I believe the commenter was being facetious.

  10. dianne says

    @5: Isn’t it more like zoo=class reunion, butterfly pavillion=kingdom reunion?