The Goldfish's Logbook

Today I finished "The Third Chimpanzee" by Jared Diamond. It was the only book of his that I hadn't read yet. In general, it's about our differences from (and similarities to) our closest primate cousins, which permitted us to evolve to our modern forms and dominance on the planet. As with his other books, I mistakenly assumed I had a solid grasp of the topic and didn't expect to learn anything new. Boy oh boy was I wrong. Pretty much anyone will agree that big brains allow us to make tools which allow us to create technology which allow us to rule the planet. But that's an over-simplified synopsis of our evolution. Our brains not only increased our abilities, but also limited, altered, and imposed changes on our bodies. For example, brains are responsible for why human women go through concealed ovulation. What other primates do that? Also, it shapes us into a (nominally) monogamous species with a fairly long life span. Or something like menopause which seems counter-productive for evolutionary survival, is really an efficient mode of survival due to our human peculiarities. Our intelligence-based existence has ramifications on social structure, child-rearing, rate of aging, etc. Also, the book goes into animal precursors for behavior that we consider uniquely human, such as art, language, drug abuse, and genocide. It's really interesting to see how animal behaviors transform and manifest in a creature that is increasingly removed from nature.
The only thing I didn't like about the book was the pessimistic environmental message that kept popping up. But it was his first book so I can overlook it. Overall, it's a very interesting book and kinda shifts how you look at things and people and our role here on earth. Pretty good.

But now I've got to find a new author to read. Boo.