NATURE'S OWN SEAPLANES 



By Cabl L. Hubbs 

 Museum of Zoology, Univeraity of Mivhiyan 



Nearly all of the grand, fundamental discoveries and inventions 

 by which man has lifted himself out of his dark animal past were 

 but repetitions of discoveries and inventions which nature had made 

 eras before our anthropoid ancestor first stood erect and looked up 

 into the sky. The arrow by which primitive man gathered his raw 

 meat was duplicated early in the course of animal evolution by 

 the nematocyst — the poisoned arrow of the jellyfish. Fire by which 

 the human progenitor cooked his food and warmed his body was 

 paralleled by animal heat and matched more closely by the warmth 

 produced by decaying matter with which certain reptiles and birds 

 surround their eggs. High-power electricity, often considered the 

 symbol of modern civilization, was long, long before utilized by 

 nature in the electric eel, the electric catfish, the torpedo ray, and 

 other fishes. Light, which opened up the night for man, was a 

 frequent invention of nature — witness the firefly and many denizens 

 of the inky depths of the sea. 



Use of light for distant communication has, no doubt, been prac- 

 ticed for a time so long as to make the whole existence of man seem 

 but a day. Communication by sound is similarly old. Music is one 

 of the most primeval of human arts, but insects and birds made 

 known their presence and desires by song at a far more ancient 

 time. Even the modulation of the voice to produce language was 

 incipiently developed in nature, as by certain birds. Modern com- 

 munication systems in many waj^s fail to equal the marvelous func- 

 tions of the nervous system of animals. 



The cultivation of crops and the domestication of animals, which 

 allowed man to settle down from a nomadic existence, merely re- 

 peated the evolution of analogous habits by certain ants. Slavery is 

 also a fixed habit with some kinds of ants. Many of our social 

 ways are but reflections of the habits of social insects. 



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