marja-leena – Yes, it would be hard for a person to imitate the Arctic tern – though not impossible!

Harry – The Science magazine article about the genome sequencing made that very point.

Ah, to be able to turn oneself completely inside-out like the sea urchin’s relative, the sea cucumber! I think our ancestors took an evolutionary wrong turn to miss out on that feat.

leslee – Good point about the similarity with the log-end photo – I didn’t think of that.

You should try the poetry prompts. There are some top-notch writers in that emerging community. Three of the people behind the site have been published or have work forthcoming in qarrtsiluni.

The new futon will be the kind you have to pull out to use, lounger style, for space reasons; I won’t fit on it sideways. So I’ll probably end up saving it for guests.

I like these poetry challenge responses – they seem like good prompts, too. I should give it a try – but then I have little time to spend…

Sorry about the insomnia. I can empathize. Maybe the new futon will help? (prolly not, but you can think about how comfy it is while you’re lying awake…)

We humans are more closely related to sea urchins than to bees or snails.

I find that remarkable because although we are unimaginably distant from insects and molluscs, at least we share a symmetrical body-plan with a head at one end and an anus at the other; sea urchins and their relatives seem so much more alien. But I guess that’s why you don’t trust intuition.