Cousin Trout

One of the joys of reading a book like Richard Dawkins' The Ancestor's Tale is learning new and unexpected truths, especially the kind of truth that makes the world make greater sense. It's counterintuitive that the hippo is more closely related to the whale than it is to the pig - more closely related to the whale than it is to any other living animal, in fact. It's perhaps slightly less surprising that crocodiles are closer to birds than they are to turtles, but for me, more surprising that people are closer cousins to trout than trout are to sharks.


Appearances can be misleading.

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