21 October

The secret to everything is bacteria. Learning about them changed my life; they are the most complex living things, don't believe a word of the biology you learned that says humans and other animals are the most complex creatures. It's part of a huge misunderstanding we have about big and small. We think big things are more complex than little things. That's backwards, little things are much more complex than big things, and it gets more complex the smaller you go. "One legitimate answer to the question "What is life?" is "bacteria". Any organism, of not itself a live bacterium, is then a descendant - one way or another - of a bacterium or, more likely, mergers of several kinds of bacteria. Bacteria initially populated the planet and have never relinquished their hold...Closer to life's original structures, bacteria do not live as we live, toward death. Banning an unfortunate accident, a mutation, or a gene-trading encounter with another bacterium, a single bacterial 'cell' can "survive" essentially forever in its original form..." Margulis and Sagan, "What is Life?"