How much thought do you give to the importance of seeds? Unless you’re a botanist or a horticulturist, you likely give as much thought as I do – not much. Oh – like me – you might give quite a lot of thought to the plants that grow from seeds, but not the seeds themselves. However after reading just the first chapter of Thor Hanson’s “The Triumph of Seeds…”
“In addition to acorns and grains, pigs happily devour that which most disgusts us – rotting garbage, feces, carrion, even human corpses. Of all the animals commonly eaten by humans, the pig is the only one that will return the favor.”
Try to think of a bird and not imagine feathers. It’s impossible. Even a a plucked chicken in a supermarket shows evidence of it once having been surrounded in feathers. And this is as it should be; for as Hanson clearly (and most entertainingly) explains, the very evolution of birds as a Class is inextricably interwoven with the evolution of the feather itself.