"We are not fighting! Just head butting for fun!”

"We are not fighting! Just head butting for fun!”

This post has two pictures: one, a photo I waited to take for long to get the opportunity; two, I scanned from a magazine that I am almost a regular reader of. Each of these pictures tells me a story that, in my opinion, goes towards establishing in my mind more firmly the truth of Evolution by Natural Selection.

Some background. I am an unabashed votary of Evolution by Natural Selection, not necessarily as propounded by Charles Darwin. My introduction to it was through Richard Dawkins’ The Blind Watchmaker, the author’s second book. Then, I went to his first book, The Selfish Gene, and there has not been a single moment since of my looking back. Books by Stephen Gould, Daniel Dennett, and others set me ever more firmly on that terrain.  Afterall, Darwin would not mind his theory (if theory is what it is) go through evolutionary changes! There are a number of biologists, zoologists, statisticians who have added to and/or subtracted from what Darwin saw as the reasons for variations in the kingdom of life.

The photo−one of four I clicked as it shows the fight-dance clearly against the backdrop of the white of the rear legs of the goat−shows two young male goats(kids, they are called, and kids they will be in this post) butting heads, neither too seriously nor too playfully (my judgement). The two kids are likely to have the same mother and our servant maid agreed, despite the difference in the pigments in the ears, and in the lower legs. How can I say they are not too seriously engaged in a direct duel? The eyes of the kid on the left do not indicate an aggressive mood. Additionally, the maid said that in a fight, the horns of the two would be against each other, and not sideways shifted as it appears to be. I came to my unjustifiable position that this was a practice session for the two kids for future real life combats. Let that be.  

The mother goat was around foraging for food and did not seem to care about siblings’ fight. Is this the way the mother allows the kids to learn about, yes, I am going to say it, survival, and consequently one of them being victorious in the gene-stakes? Let Richard Dawkins answer the question.

Now, I come to the next instance, again a picture shown above), scanned from a magazine that shows a tiger cub being in a playful mood(my judgement) and the mother tiger slurping water from a pond. Anyone who has seen at least a few episodes of Wild Animals would note how, after taking down its prey (be it a large wild boar, a fighting bison or a hapless deer), the dead animal’s back is where the hunter digs its teeth; the ribs you know, the thing you order in a restaurant! To my mind’s eye this is precisely cub is seeking. It is learning its art of survival and the mother offers its own back to its offspring as the latter’s classroom! How the mother would teach the cubs to stalk their preys, I haven’t the foggiest. But, there must be some way. 

I have been to the Kaziranga National Park and did not realize that an elephant was close enough to our fortified van, so skilfully hiding among the elephant grass, to scare the driver. He knew what to do and we all fell silent and escaped. I have seen the movie Hatari ages ago not to be scared.

Darwin’s big idea is so simple and one should wonder why it needed a Darwin and his sailing to the Galapagos Islands. That is science for you. Now, we are going billions of years backwards to find out how a star started to shine and how long ago it started.

Astrophysics has its own Darwins. And, just like Darwin, these too face religious resistance.

That is a pity, isn’t it? I am not sure. Think of the resistance as something that one needs to bring clarity to one’s own theses, their own anti-theses to settle on syntheses! I am prone to look for the silver lines in the cloud.

Raghuram Ekambaram