Cosmic Appetite

One of my favorite biologists, John Maynard Smith, was once an engineer like myself. He designed planes in WWII and then decided biology was more interesting. He made a complete and total career change, citing that airplanes were “noisy and old fashioned”. Anyway he still loved flying things, and wrote a really neat essay about the evolution of powered flight. He describes how birds evolved tails first for stable gliding but later began to evolve toward instability as they developed powered flight. It’s really neat.
Birds aren’t the only animals that fly though. I found this awesome video of a fish flying for 45 seconds! It even uses it’s tail to swat the water and develop thrust. It is amazing. I salute that crazy flying fish.

Speaking of flying animals and biologists, the earliest bird fossil is now on exihibt at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. It is called an Archaeopteryx it is about 150 million years old. I HAVE to go see this one.

Archaeopteryx: Tour the Exhibit with Pete Larson from HMNS on Vimeo.

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