I don’t usually embed YouTube videos, but a friend pointed me to this talk that features some of my absolute favourite things in life: travels stories, evolutionary biology, Douglas Adams and lemurs!!!
Ninety minutes of the funniest, wittiest and most insightful rant you will ever hear on Parrots the Universe and Everything:
Great find! I remember seeing part of this at UCSB but had no idea it was on the web. It’s even better and more relevant than I remember.
The Yangtze river dolphin is now extinct. Wonder how the lemurs are doing.
Yes, between this talk and his thoughts on the Internet and modern computing, the man said some of the most insightful stuff in recent times, and yet never stopped being ridiculously funny… Hard to believe he died but a week after that talk…
Among the many lough-out-loud funny moments, one of my favourite: his description of the sub-bassy mating call of the Kakapo, whose distinctive feature is the inability to locate its origin… 😀
I remember reading the news relating the official extinction of the Yangtze river white dolphin… Seems the aye aye lemurs are still doing OK (for the time being).
Yes, then after ridiculing the bassy Kakapo, he then tells exactly why things had to evolve that way (otherwise the kakapo population would be wildly unstable). Laugh out loud followed by a serious a-ha moment.