We’re First & Foremost Assholes - Literally!

I knew all along about the subjective fact that most sapiens are assholes. But I never knew we were assholes objectively as well and we have cousin species - Starfish!

It’s strange to think that we have this close connection to starfish because starfish themselves are very strange. They have no brains, just a ring of nerve cells encircling the central mouth and extending up the arms. At the tip of each arm, bunchings of light-sensitive cells serve as rudimentary eyes—starfish effectively see with their fingertips. The individual arms are surprisingly autonomous. The body follows whichever arm is most excited by what it sees or senses with its tube feet—in addition to serving as fingers and feet, these hydraulically-powered wonders are exquisitely sensitive organs of touch, taste, and smell, as well as accessory gills. This decentralized organization makes starfish remarkably regenerative. Not only can individuals regrow severed arms, but in some species, severed arms can regrow new bodies.

Our connection to starfish is most evident in the way the gut is formed. When you’re designing a body, the most important question is where you get your energy from. For most animals the answer is a digestive tract: you take in matter through one orifice, pass it through a gut that extracts the nutrients it needs, and expel the remaining waste through another orifice. The digestive system begins to take shape in an early stage of embryonic development called gastrulation. What starts out as a simple ball of cells forms a cavity at one end that folds in upon itself making a bowl shape. That bowl-like cavity deepens until it goes all the way through, turning the embryonic bowl into an embryonic donut. The donut hole becomes the digestive tract. That first hole—the one that makes the bowl-like cavity—is a different orifice for different animals. Most animals—ants, octopuses, and the rest—form the mouth first. These are the protostomes. That alternative evolutionary pathway that starfish and humans followed makes us deuterostomes: We’re first and foremost assholes.

Contemplating your cousinhood with starfish, you can see yourself the way Mother Nature sees you: not as a soul shimmering with intelligence but as one solution to the problem of metabolism. Different animals have found different ways of passing food through their guts. Starfish developed their eversible stomach and tube feet loosely coordinated by a decentralized nervous system. Chordates evolved a more linear body plan around a central spinal column or notochord. Some of those chordates grew four extra appendages that helped them to move about in search of food and central brains to coordinate that activity. But from an evolutionary perspective, those legs and arms and brains are all latecomer accessories to the digestive system. You might think you eat to feed your body and mind but Mother Nature sees it the other way around: the body and mind are there to help you feed.

Now that we are focusing on assholes, a unique word I learned this week which has become my favorite - 'unasinous'

'unasinous', a 17th-century spin-off of 'unanimous' that means 'united in stupidity' and which means literally, 'one ass'. 

I will let you unleash your imagination on the effects of unasinous and current pandemic.