Biology evolves ...

The great evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, scourge of creationists, was attending a conference in America. At the concluding banquet  he illustrated what is arguably his greatest contribution to biological science, that natural selection operates at the level of the gene, with a limerick.

An itinerant selfish gene
Said "bodies a-plenty I've seen
You think you're so clever 
But I'll live for ever
You're just a survival machine"

When I was at university, studying Zoology as it happens, religious thinking still resisted the concept of natural selection to some extent and tried to find holes in it. It has always struck me as ironic that Darwin was a devout Christian and Mendel an abbot. So to me:

The essence of science is doubt
There's a lot about which we know nowt
Belief is OK
At least in its way
But it stops us from finding things out.

My principal tutor was an authority on snails, as well as carrying the torch for natural selection. I notice from a recent magazine that they are still being studied, some 60 years later.

For years we've been studying snails
They're a lot more convenient than whales
Having only one foot
They mostly stay put
And when moving they leave you some trails

The other everlasting research animal is undoubtedly the fruit fly, about which by now there can hardly be anything wholly mysterious. Apparently we have now got round to investigating its motivation.

Now we know the genome of the fruit fly 
We can find out the code that it lives by
Its easy to feed 
And willing to breed
So what does it think we could next try

There was a ...

Now for a set of traditional "there was a ... " limericks from me. 

There was a young glutton from Hayle
Who ate all his food from a pail
Said his mother "Just wait
There's enough on the plate"
Said he "I could still eat a whale"

There was a young Pole came from Stettin
Whose fiancée objected to pettin'
"Stop being a prude
You look great in the nude
And anyway I'll see what I'm gettin'"

There was a young lady called Nancy
Who no one when sober could fancy
She was built like a tank
And what's more she stank
So getting up close was too chancy

And finally a Nantucket one:

The was a young girl from Nantucket
Hit hard on the head by a bucket
As her head rolled away
All her boyfriend could say
Was "you should have tried harder to duck it"

A happy New Year to everyone