Life on earth is such a good story you cannot afford to miss the beginning... Beneath our superficial differences we are all of us walking communities of bacteria. The world shimmers, a pointillist landscape made of tiny living beings.
To romp along the connected rooftops and fire escapes of Chicago's second city of garages was my young life's passion.
Body concentrates order. It continuously self-repairs. Every five days you get a new stomach lining. You get a new liver every two months. Your skin replaces itself every six weeks. Every year, 98 percent of the atoms of your body are replaced. This non-stop chemical replacement, metabolism, is a sure sign of life.
I was taught over and over again that the accumulation of random mutations led to evolutionary change - led to new species. I believed it until I looked for evidence.
The urgency to mate persists in all people as in all other mammals because of the evolutionary drive to continue the species, the inborn imperative for genes to reproduce and hormonal differences that evolved over millions of years.
Of course, the plea for respect for nonhuman life goes far beyond the scientific delight of familiarity with our planet mates. The nonhuman forms of life with which we 6,000 million talking, upright apes share this finite planet are directly or indirectly connected to our well-being.
