11 August

I love this picture. I was taught that animals and plants are the most complex of living things, culminating in the supposedly magnificent sentient consciousness of a handful of animals. It's only in recent years that I've learned that this is a load of prejudiced hogwash. There are no levels in life, all life is microbes. Evolution isn't a hierarchy from simple to more complex (bigger) organisms - it's all microbes, re-arranging themselves in different ways. An animal or a plant is a highly simple collection of much more complex microbes. These microbes are immortal, plants and animals are temporary experiments the microbes undertake.