Fascinating facts

[bugly's]

Fascinating facts

How often have you looked into something and thought wow, those moments when we understand we are not the most complex things on earth. What has inspired, confused, or left you completely awe struck in our natural world?

My one from yesterday;
Dull horrible weather, walking Brandon marsh turned corner and bang a vivid orange / yellow brain fungi. I know little about this group of organisms. But it strikes me;

Fungi live as mycelium in some form of substrate, threads no thicker than hair, no brains, no collective intelligence, no external sensory organs. Yet every now and then they produce fruiting bodies. How? this means they completely change the type of cell they build, the equivalent of humans being able to grow a second head, they organise resources building this structure that they haven’t built for some time or might be the first time, they consider environmental constraints and opportunities, and even better they all do it at a similar time. It’s a blob of jelly! And we don’t even know why it is yellow. Mant humans struggle to make simplistic decisions and cannot collectively do anything for long.
I totally understand the environmental pressures and natural selection forces that produce an organism and its characteristics etc but sometimes you just look and think wow!

Over to you list your moments.

[loripo]

Not a moment but more a growing awareness of the complexity of say a ladybird larva pupating then reducing to a mass of cells that reorganise into a living insect with wings. How did that happen?

[thebeard]

yes, metamorphosis is quite an astonishing process!

[Monkey Orchid]

Originally Posted by bugly's

Many humans struggle to make simplistic decisions and cannot collectively do anything for long.

Maybe the more complex something is, the harder it is to get anything done!

More seriously, a good thought-provoking thread. I was thinking of the first time I saw and held a weaver bird's nest. I looked at the intricate basketwork and predator-baffling design and thought, Wow - imagine building this with just a beak and no opposable thumb.