The shortest-lived creatures on the Disc were mayflies, which barely make it through twenty-four hours. Two of the oldest zigzagged aimlessly over the waters of a trout stream, discussing history with some younger members of the evening hatching. “You don’t get the kind of sun now that you used to get, “ said one of them. “You’re right there. We had proper sun in the good old hours. It were all yellow. None of this red stuff.” “It were higher, too.” “It was. You’re right.” “And nymphs and larvae showed you a bit of respect.” “They did. They did,” said the other mayfly vehemently. “I reckon, if mayflies these hours behaved a bit better, we’d still be having proper sun.” The younger mayflies listened politely. “I remember, “ said one of the oldest mayflies, “when all this was fields, as far as you could see.” The younger mayflies looked around. “It’s still fields,” one of them ventured, after a polite interval. “I remember when it was better fields,” said the old mayfly sharply. “Yeah, “ said his colleague. “And there was a cow.” “That’s right! You’re right! I remember that cow! Stood right over there for, oh, forty, fifty minutes. It was brown, as I recall.” “You don’t get cows like that these hours.” “You don’t get cows at all.”

The fact that nature just overwhelms us with its complexity and may never be fully understood makes me kind of sad but very happy at the same time

Anyone else just find out they are a fruit fly?

I love how much we don’t know. It’s wonderful. It’s exciting. Frontiers all over the place.

Ive not taken the time to verify any of the information in this post, but lets assume for the moment that good science has been done and these claims are legit. Lets also take consider other similar research that has been done in the arena of plant and animal “awareness”. Are we approaching a point in the scientific community where some level of awareness ahould be assumed for creatures beyond ourselves? It seems that every time we look close enough at a product of nature (fungus, plants, etc) we discover some new element of what we would call “awareness”. Hell, I’ve even seen claims that certain plants can be anesthetized, with drugs that work on humans no less.

Say that we discovered life as we know it on another planet, and what that would do to our perception of “life” throughout the universe. Once could be a fluke, twice could be a coincidence, but given the scale of our universe if we were to find any life, in our own galaxy especially, it would drastically change our perception of the rarity of life.

Now, consider that we have primate relatives who show many of the some properties of awareness that we do, and the pile of other research pointing to varying levels of “awareness” for virtually everything we look at, including creatures such as planta and fungi. How this hasn’t led to a general acceptance that every “living” thing likely has a subjective experience is a bit beyond me, but I also am not a trained scientist, so maybe someone here can shed some light.