U N D E R T H E T R E E
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Sunday, May 17, 2026
Saturday, May 16, 2026
Invertebrate
J E L L Y F I S H
Go back 250 million years to the Age of Dinosaurs
and you find jellyfish, not all that different from how
they appear to us today, quietly adrift. Now, go back
another 500 million years in time to discover the most
advanced and dominant animal its the day. The Earth
was mostly covered with oceans whose waters were
warmer than todays. There were many shallow seas,
thick with tropical jellyfish drifting all about.
They have no brain, no bone, no heart, no blood.
They are 98 percent jelly. Gelatinous material
capable of making decisions. They can respond
to visual threats with the speed of a mouse
running under the sofa. They manage
without a resident wizard holed up in the noggin.
Their scattered neural network diffuses responsibility
with no central authority to intervene on behalf
of the whole.
S E A S Q U I R T
What kind of biologically engineered life form preceded
the vertebrates? Crabs? Starfish? SpongeBob?
Nothing makes sense. The creature above is a tunicate,
a static filter feeder found in most any marine habitat
offering a hard surface for its anchorage. How likely
is it that this mindless, limbless, porcelain vase lookalike
would eventually lead to some dynamic, vertebrate form?
The adult sea squirt above is nothing like its
juvenile form. The larva hatching from a tunicate's
eggs looks like a tadpole from a frog pond.
A hollow nerve cord runs the animal's length,
from eyespots to powerful tail. The notochord,
a stiff but pliable precursor to the vertebra,
provides strength. This tadpole phase
lasts no more than 24 hours. The larva's mouth
cements itself to a rocklike surface once contact
is made. The animal reconfigures itself into its
unspectacular adult phase.
What is to prevent a tadpole larval type from
succeeding with this body plan? It's a winner -
sensing light, powerful tail, beginnings of a central
nervous system and vertebra. The basis for putting
on the brakes towards SpongeBob is the process called
neoteny - juvenile features replace adult characteristics
that prove less advantageous to the organism's survival.
The achievement of adult mobility delivers new
incentives for providing even greater improvements
to the animal's performance.
Winners survive.
S T A R F I S H
Starfish eat mussels and clams. Starfish have no teeth.
Their food has protective shells. The starfish has five
strong arms to pry the shell open, revealing a buffet
of tasty shellfish innards. Still the starfish has nothing
to break their food into small pieces and guide these
morsels into their mouth. Crabs, spiders and insects
all have small fingerlike structures around their mouth
to provide this service. That isn't feasible for starfish
because their mouth drags the ground, likely damaging
any delicate mouth fingers.
The starfish solution is to push their stomach
out through their mouth and douse the exposed
tissue with acid. The tissue is dissolved into a
nutrient rich broth that the waiting stomach sops up.
Nature has engineered a truly out of the box
award winning solution.
C R A B
You live your life heavily armored and you spend
much of your time squeezed into narrow rock crevices.
You are not king of your realm. You live to survive
another day in a nasty neighborhood. Crabs like you
come and go. They always wind up being someone's
dinner. A few breed youngsters before they go.
Some crabs among the next generation are running
around with your brand of genetics imbedded
in their being.
And isn't that what it is all about, biologically speaking?
The continuation of life. Protecting life's genetic formula.
Here is a purpose. Is it Nature's or is this merely
humanity's questioning for purpose?
Where is the bottom line?
What is this about?
Why?
S P I D E R
It is a tight fit but this animal appears to have
unexpected problem solving abilities.
How does abstract planning fit into such a tiny brain?
They've had over 300 million years to refine
their mental processes. Three hundred million
generations to attack the problem anew by
constantly tweaking their genetic code.
The incentive is to always improve.
Somewhere among the many competing species
innovation always finds a place that works.
O C T O P U S
How does an octopus keep track of eight arms?
It doesn't need to. Each arm has its own sense for
touch, taste and smell as well as its own mini-brain
to call the shots once it had made sense of things.
Up to a point. Sometimes the organism needs
to be focused as an animal of one.
There is a central authority capable of overriding
dissension when a singular response is required.
Place a tightly-screwed jar containing a tasty
crab in front of a hungry octopus.
Nice try. No problem. The octopus has
crab legs for brunch. Quick cognitive reasoning.
Certainly more than instinctual, stimulus-response.
It is not a grass-munching cud chewer. They have
free time but little curiosity. An octopus has both
the free time and curiosity to be clever.
Imagine intellect among the invertebrates.
Most underrated problem solver:
The answer is b. fruit flies
* * * * *
© Tom Taylor
OVER EASY
Sunday, May 10, 2026
Saturday, May 9, 2026
Cell
C E L L O R G A N E L L E S
Here is a dynamic, complicated world and you can
see it only by looking through a powerful microscope.
A cell needs protection from anything that might
disrupt the intricate process of staying alive.
A membrane separates the cell from everything else.
It also determines what to let in. The various nutrients
vital to the cell's well-being are good. So are messages
from other cells. The membrane is more than a wall.
It makes decisions that require sensors for detection
and authentication of objects foreign to the cell.
Approved molecules are provided a gateway for passage.
In addition, this guardian membrane is able to
constantly update the nucleus on its status.
There are many such complex processes being
performed continuously in order to sustain life
in the cell. And what is it life employs to maintain
this operation? Molecules, dynamic and self-driven
in the performance of their task. This entire
enterprise to support life is accomplished
through the coordination of molecules in
purposeful animation.
N U C L E U S C O M M U N I C A T I O N
The nucleus monitors vital aspects of the cell's status.
Something is always in need of repair. The outer wall
is always in need of replacement protein gateways.
Environmental changes may call for adjusting the cell's
metabolic rate - turn up the heat in the cold and
reduce the caloric burn when things get warm.
All this requires reliable communications between
the nucleus and the relevant cell component.
Some forms of messaging are faster than others.
Putting a protein message in a vesicle is snailmail
compared to direct messaging using the membrane.
E N D O P L A S M I C R E T I C U L U M
Here is the cell's heavy industry. The cell's proteins
are assembled by Rough ER. Spherical Ribosomes
collect on the ER's surface, passing along instructions
from the nucleus. Smooth ER synthesizes lipids,
enabling the cell to distribute energy on a convenient,
tablet form basis. They make for great storage units
and they are available in a variety of sizes.
Smooth ER also provides environmental detoxifying
much like an animal's liver.
A well-regulated ER is vital to cell welfare, so it is no
surprise to find the Endoplasmic Reticulum is in direct
contact with the nucleus membrane. You can't get
anymore immediate molecular communication
than this.
G O L G I A P P A R A T U S
Shipping and Receiving.
We get the finished proteins and lipids
from ER and prepare them for shipping.
Certain modifications first need to be made
before the actual packaging. Once the item
is packaged it is stamped with its destination
zip code, provided a vesicle for transportation,
then sent on its way.
C E L L M E M B R A N E
The cell membrane is high maintenance.
Routine exposure to outside adversity takes
its toll. Structural proteins require constant
replacement. The wall itself is made of a double
layer of fatty lipids. Each lipid molecule is bipolar,
attracted to water at one end and repulsed by it
at the other, its tail end. As a consequence, the
molecular tails always face inwards, creating an
efficient and relatively simple seal against water.
M I T O C H O N D R I A
This capsule is an absolute dynamo,
providing over ninety percent of the cell's
chemical energy. It is a vital guest
to the operation because it brings its own
DNA. Mitochondria has an ancestry
separate from the rest of the cell,
yet extreme interdependence induced them
to become one and the same.
Lichen is a symbiotic relationship between
plant and animal where algae lives its life
within the confines of an animal cell.
The animal provides a protective environment
for the algae. The plant, in return, feeds the
animal through its photosynthesis of sunlight.
DNA, the formula for life.
Highly adaptable.
* * * * *
© Tom Taylor
OVER EASY
Sunday, May 3, 2026
Saturday, May 2, 2026
Vertebrate
O S T R A C O D E R M
J A W L E S S F I S H
We have to go back 450,000,000 years to find
our first sign of an animal having a vertebra, or a
close likeness. Prior to that there were plenty
of jellyfish populating the oceans as well as
assorted animals of the kind you find in tidepools.
The earliest vertebrate species were simple
in plan and may have looked like oversize worms
wiggling through water. The specimen above has
two dorsal fins to stabilize the animal, behaving much
like a sailboat's keel to keep it upright.
The animal leads with its armored head,
flattened and taking the shape of a shovel blade.
The eyes are new, as is a distinct and enlarged
neural center that becomes the individual's brain.
The mind discovers light, quickly learning it is
the best and most reliable source for information,
far more than either touch or smell delivers.
Now the animal can identify something from a
distance, know its size, its headed direction
and know whether it is food or foe.
P L A C O D E R M
30,000,000 years later and we enter the
Devonian Period - The Age of Fishes.
The basic body plan of a fish is revealed
with the Placoderm. The name means
Plated Skin in Greek, referring to the animal's
armored head. Vertebrates now have a
lower jaw and with it, the ability to bite
like a true carnivore, capturing its prey using
fangs.
Then, after 60,000,000 years of life's further
development, a global environmental catastrophe
occurs, killing off most living species on Earth.
The Placoderms disappear from the fossil record.
S H A R K
20,000,000 million years have passed.
The land is now covered in thick forest.
This time of great plant abundance is
know as the Carboniferous Period, a later
source for stored energy in the form of
its buried oil, coal and natural gas.
The first animals capable of dwelling on land
would find these vast forests a never-ending
buffet.
Sharks appear in the fossil record.
Their skeleton made of cartilage makes them
lighter, faster and more maneuverable than bony fish.
The shark pictured above sports an anvil-shaped,
front dorsal fin. Its bulk hinders swimming but
the flat-head fin is a male display device important
in courtship.
A C A N T H O D I I
S P I N Y F I N N E D F I S H
Every fin attaches to a spine, except for the tail.
Its skeleton is cartilage but the head is bone.
Bone makes for a stronger helmet.
Cartilage is used to boost performance while
bone provides strength for protection.
How is it the two separate developments of
cartilage and bone, manage to combine
in one group of vertebrates?
The spiny finned fish succeeded for millions of years.
It ended with an environmental catastrophe that destroyed
most of life on Earth. The spiny-finned fish were swept
from the fossil record along with the placoderms.
O S T E I C H T H Y E S
M O D E R N B O N Y F I S H
Over 95% of all vertebrate species
in existence today are fish. They are found
most everywhere life can exist. Fish have
an exceedingly adaptable genetic makeup.
Some notable features:
M. Gills for respiration. Exchanging gases
with the surrounding water. They can't breathe
without water constantly moving over the gills.
A shark must continually swim in order to breathe.
A modern fish has an operculum, a bony gill cover
that flaps while the fish is hovering, enabling the
animal to breath while standing still.
E. Swim Bladder for buoyancy.
It gives the fish neutral buoyancy, enabling it to
hover in the water and not sink. It is a thin walled,
gas-filled sac that has proven highly adaptive.
Some species of fish that live in stagnant ponds
are able to supplement their gills with using their
swim-bladder for respiration when water becomes
oxygen deprived. Lungs replace gills for respiration
as the fish's gas bladder fulfills a new purpose.
I. Nostrils for smelling, only.
As yet they have no roll in breathing.
They are sensors that detect chemical cues
in the water for feeding and navigation.
This is a vital sensory organ behind the salmon's
remarkable journey home to the stream of their birth
for the purpose of reproduction.
A C T I N O P T E R Y G I I
R A Y - F I N N E D F I S H
Fins supported by thin, bony rays provides for
superior responsiveness and overall performance.
The design is powered by competition and
responses to continuing environmental changes.
Somehow the code to life was written.
It's instructions have been coded in molecular
verse and passed from individual to individual
for hundreds of millions of generations now.
The mystery only deepens with the additional
knowledge we gain. It's a principle of science.
* * * * *
© Tom Taylor
OVER EASY
Sunday, April 26, 2026
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