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Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Of Cockroaches and Evolution Theories

I cannot remember if it was my college buddy Lucas who proposed the ludicrous theory that human beings evolved from cockroaches. According to him, cockroaches have walked, or rather crawled, this planet for millions of years and have purportedly survived the catastrophes that had pushed the dinosaurs to extinction. He claims it is the only species that will survive a nuclear explosion. Frankly, the whole idea was stupid but I have to give the guy some credit for being idiotically creative.

Why can't humans have possibly evolved from cockroaches?

I will tell you why.

One, the fact that humans are vertebrates, class mammalia makes us fundamentally different from cockroaches which are classified as invertebrates, class insecta. The disparity is too great to suggest an evolution link. That's Biology 101 for you, Lucas.

Two, no one in his right mind would insult his own taxonomy by saying human beings owe their DNA to a bunch of creepy-crawlies generally classified as pests. Such insinuations are preposterous.

Lucas can get mad at me for all I care but I can assure him it's not his great-grand uncle Dodong I just smashed with my gray Islander slipper.

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