One Step Forward, One Step Back

Today, President Obama took a significant step towards rectifying the sins of the Bush administration's science policy, by reversing a blanket ban on embryonic stem cell research.  Stem cell research has long been at the forefront of the battle between faith and science, and the Bush presidency's stance on the subject was perfectly emblematic of it's response to scientific progress in general: 'not on our watch'.  Any aspect of scientific research that either cut against policy or offended the fundamentalist christian right was denounced or denied.  Climate data was suppressed, environmental mandates were ignored, and across the spectrum, information was massaged and mangled until it supported political decisions which had no true basis in scientific fact.  It was a very bleak eight years, a veritable dark age of the American scientific spirit.  And now, supposedly, a new day has dawned.

The importance of the stem cell reversal should not be underplayed; it is an enormous move in the right direction, at least in one particular field, and possibly for the scientific community overall.  The argument against embryonic stem cell research is reactionary and  superstitious at best, and because of our government's willingness to cave into fundamentalism, the true and daily suffering of individuals was prolonged unnecessarily.  We're effectively eight years behind where we should be as a logical and rational nation, and we must not forget that this course of action has been physically and mentally detrimental to many of our citizens.  Stem cell science isn't a magical fix of course, but the regenerative potential of the cells is also difficult to overestimate.  Who can say what we'd be capable of today, had Bush not chosen the cowardly and illogical route?   

By officially reversing course today, Obama is beginning to fulfill what, to me at least, was the most interesting and important promise of his inaugural speech, the returning of science to its proper stature within the American government.  That single line spoke directly to those of us dissatisfied, outraged really, by years of willful ignorance by both a government and its people.  It let us know that a veritable renaissance was at hand, not just for those who practice the sciences, but also for those, such as my self, who simply appreciate the continual cause of human enlightenment.  Today's executive order goes some distance towards reassuring me that Obama was serious in his commitment.  And yet, at the same time, I'm given pause by other actions of the administration.

In almost the same breath as the stem cell decision, Obama's Secretary of the Interior struck a blow against the environment by upholding a Bush-era policy of de-listing the gray wolf from the ESA in the norther Rockies.  The secretary in question is Ken Salazar, former senator from Colorado, and the de-listing of the wolf places 'management' of the animals in the hands of state agencies rather than under federal oversight.  Such management will amount to little more than controlled extirpation, as cattlemen and ranchers are given free reign to scour the predators off the land.  It's a markedly non-scientific approach, one dictated by fear, hatred, and greed, and has no basis in good environmental policy.  The success of the Endangered Species Act for the gray wolf, years of protection and repatriation, has been undone with a pen stroke.  If what has occurred in Wyoming is and indication, what is to come is wholesale slaughter.  

Ken Salazar's choice to enact left-over Bush policy is indicative of his entire environmental outlook.  Though a democrat, Salazar comes from a frontier-minded, ranching background, and has long been a proponent of extraction based industries in the American west.  His cabinet appointment by President Obama gave many ecologists and environmentalists cause to doubt Obama's true commitment to reform, and the recent wolf decision shows that such fears were justified.  The disappointment of the Obama administration is its moderation.  It's not a surprise, exactly; politics dirties the cleanest of intentions.  But it is discouraging.  It's a sign that even in the most open and rational of recent times, every step in the right direction comes at a cost.   

Sweet and Smokey Venison Chili

Today I have a nice little recipe for a chili I currently have bubbling away on the stove.  I've been fairly interested in non-conventional flavor combinations and using regional ingredients lately, and with this chili I've given a New England spin on otherwise Meso-American basics, using venison and maple syrup (trust me) along with corn, beans, and chipotles.  The use of venison is sort of unique to my situation; I actually prefer a version of this chili made with wild turkey, and the best choice might be pork, cubed or ground, as that would complement the sweetness well.

I'm not a big fan of spicy-ness, but I appreciate enough in a good chili to let me know I'm eating a dish that, by it's very definition and name, is spicy.  I use chipotles, dried and smoked jalapenos, because you get as much flavor with them as you do heat.  Chipotle powder, like a good smoked pimenton, is a fine option, but I've been using chipotles canned in adobo sauce (available in that deserted section of the Stop & Shop known as 'ethnic foods').  The maple syrup, which may seem an odd ingredient, provides sweetness with more depth than honey, giving a fuller flavor to the dish.  In this way, both defining ingredients serve double duty, combining to be spicy, smoky, sweet, and, um...mapley.  One thing to go out of your way for, if you can, is to buy whole cumin seeds, and toast and grind them yourself.  I've been surprised by how much more flavor this gives than stock cumin powder, but I am a lazy bastard at heart too, so at the end of the day I'll understand if you just go with store bought powder.  The corn is a personal choice, cause I like the crunch and have found that Green Giant makes a really great summer fresh canned sweet corn.  Even though it's off season, I find it's a nice touch.  As for beans canned can work, but ideally, dried beans are cheaper and more authentic, adding that gourmet smuggness factor you just don't get from canned.  Pintos or kidneys are fine, but I really like Great Northern, if only because I live in the north, and I am great.

Ingredients:

1 pound ground venison (or turkey or pork)

1 large yellow or vidalia onion 

2 Italian sweet peppers

1 poblano chili

2 cups (or cans) of beans

1 can of sweet corn

4 cloves of garlic

1 large can diced tomatoes

1 can tomato paste

1 heaping tbsp. ground cumin (or more, to taste)

salt & pepper

1/2 can of chipotle chilis (or more, again, to taste)

1/3 cup of real maple syrup 

What I love about chili, like stew, is that it isn't rocket science: soak the beans over night, dice and sweat the onion, brown the meat, put it all together and cook the hell out of it.  Bob's your uncle.  Variations abound, and I'm even thinking now that what this dish may really need is a bottle of pale ale to tie it all together.  In fact, I think I need one too.  If nothing else, I've always found chili is a good excuse to drink.  Bon appetite.  

Water, Water, Anywhere?

I can say without reservation that water will be for the twenty-first century what oil was for the twentieth: source of wealth, source of political unrest, and source of violence.  Already, issues of water scarcity are becoming critical on both national and global scales, and the century has barely dawned.  Things will only get worse, as populations and consumption grow, and the potential for conflict over water far outstrips that over petroleum, given water's absolute and irreplaceable role in life, human or otherwise.  Even in America, land of plenty, we're not being spared the problem; just consider California's current drought, which threatens to plunge the state into fiscal and environmental catastrophe.   

California's drought serves as a crucial example of water usage issues primarily because of the state's role as agricultural superpower.  The three-year drought currently gripping the state has crippled farms and orchards, and it's because of their difficulties that the rest of the state is feeling the pinch.  Even though farms and crop production are in jeopardy, however, California's difficulties are not yet life-or-death.  Rather, they are monetary.  Crop lose is not an issue of survival, but rather of economic downturn; most of the farms suffering are citrus orchards, almond growers, wineries, and other luxury crop producers.  No one wants these growers to fail, but perhaps it's time to examine the cost of letting them survive.  Reducing consumption is a given. Taking shorter showers, watering the lawn less (for that matter re-evaluating lawns in general), and sacrificing bottling plants are all steps that should be taken, drought or no drought.  But how far will California go?  I've read ridiculous proposals online for building pipelines, possibly to Washington, because, and I quote, "it rains so much there anyways".  Worse, farmers are fighting for water diversion away from EPA mandated conservation projects and endangered species allotments.  It's an issue of blood money, ultimately, and whether life is worth more than livelihood.  It's an old fight, and one characteristically American.  Look north, to Oregon's Klamath basin.  There, at the turn of the twentieth century, farmers carved out arable land by diverting river water into otherwise infertile areas.  Now, years later, water rights have ignited a political firestorm, as environmentalists and local tribes seek to prevent farms from stealing away the last free watersheds, and possibly dooming salmon, waterfowl, and other local species to slow extinction.  

In America, however, the lives at stake are not yet human, and therefore still secondary to financial concerns.  Not so in the rest of the world.  Australia has been the victim of a decade long dry spell, devastating the country's agriculture, and resulting in the recent wildfires which claimed upwards of 200 lives.  China has so polluted much of it's rivers that the water is unfit even for industrial use, let alone human consumption.  The difficulties in Africa, however, still stand as the most critical and emblematic of the problem.  The mass starvations in Ethiopia are caused by drought and soil degradation, and areas of southern Africa have long been affected by famine for the same reasons.  The genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan, as much as it is a tribal and religious conflict, was catalyzed by water competition between agriculturalists and herders, and it will continue until water somehow becomes more abundant in the area.  Which it won't.  People will continue to die, in the sand, and in the dust.

How do we counter these looming water issues?  First, we need to critically examine how we live.  It takes something like 4,000 gallons of water to bring a pound of beef to the table, and the US annually consumes about 28 billion pounds.  You do the math, cause frankly, I don't even want to.  Now, I love a good steak, but that's ridiculously unsustainable.  And livestock use is the tip of the iceberg.  If I was a Californian farmer, I'd be out picketing every golf course I could find.  The requirements to keep a course green are staggering, and every year they proliferate, even in the arid southwest.  A golf course in Arizona goes against the very rule of nature; it simply shouldn't exist in such an environment.  For that matter, neither should Las Vegas.  The amount of water it requires to operate a city in the middle of the desert is mind boggling, and criminal, and eventually, someone will have to acknowledge the fact that people simply were not meant to live there.  And that's what it boils down to, wherever water is scarce: humans struggling to live where they simply can't.  As sympathetic as I want to be to those starving Africans, I have to look at the larger picture, and it's unpleasant.  They can't continue to live at the population densities they do.  All the relief we care to send not only postpones the inevitable,  but aggravates the situation by momentarily supporting unsustainable birthrates.  The situation is the same in America, if not so dire.  The farmers in the Klamath basin, the citrus growers in the San Joaquin, the blackjack dealers in Vegas; they need to go, or at least be reduced in number to sustainable levels.  As it stands, they are content to drink the water that's available dry, ignoring the harsh truth of tomorrow's coming crisis.  When it comes, and it will, the only thing remaining wet will be the tears.       

In Like a Lion...

No single species, no single image, better symbolizes the resurgence of the Northeaster woodland than the mountain lion, Puma concolor.  It's still a matter of debate, of course, whether or not the cougar has actually even returned to the New England forest, but with more and more evidence and sightings mounting with every year, doubt is diminishing rapidly.  Most state Fish and Wildlife departments long denied the claim that cougars were re-colonizing the east, eager to avoid panic and the need for research expenditures, but recently, even here in Connecticut, environmental agencies are conceding that the big cats are indeed once again stalking the woods.  Some people suggest that the sightings are of individual escapees from private menageries or collections, but frankly this seems far fetched, and even more difficult to believe than the idea that cougars are simply drifting in through Pennsylvania and the Adirondacks, or down from Quebec.  And why shouldn't they?  Ecologically, there's nothing stopping them.  The forests in the region have re-grown to levels not seen since pre-colonial times, providing not only habitat for survival, but crucial wilderness corridors for safe migration.  Whitetail deer, the key prey species of the eastern mountain lion, have experienced an incredible population surge over the past few decades, as have less important prey, such as beavers, porcupines, turkeys, and racoons (not to mention livestock and pets, but more on that later).  And then there is the nature of the cougar itself, its incredible adaptability and survival instinct.  Even with it's numbers reduced through predator control, the cougar (or puma, mountain lion, panther, catamount, or any one of a dozen other local appellations) is the most widespread species in the Americas, save perhaps the introduced Norway rat.  The cougar ranges from the southernmost tip of South America up into the Northern reaches of the Rocky Mountains, surviving on armadillos, vicunas, pocket gophers, desert bighorns, jackrabbits, collared peccaries, elk, and nearly every other possible prey under the sun.  They survive in ecosystems as divers as the Sonoran desert, the Panamanian rain-forest, the Andean mountainsides, and the Los Angeles suburbs, all by being smart, secretive, cautious, and largely nocturnal (in large part avoiding the tragedy of becoming roadkill).  The cougar is a super-predator, a super-survivor, and without the constant pressure of human persecution, there would be nothing keeping the cougar from reclaiming its old haunts but its own inscrutable feline whimsies.  

Along with the cougar, however, come a whole host of difficulties particular to human-animal co-existance.  The primary source of conflict between pumas and humans has historically been livestock predation, and although this issue is mitigated in the Northeast simple because farming has radically diminished, the specter is still there.  Cougars will kill sheep, cattle, and horses, eventually, and it is the human population that needs to adapt to this reality.  Reparation payments for lost livestock will have to be a necessary compensation.  But people rarely have strong attachments to their stock; not so with their pets.  When people lose cats and dogs, a different sort of reaction is engendered, one often fueled by hate.  There's no easy solution for this conflict, no one wants their beloved lab made a meal of.  Again, perhaps it's now people's responsibility to take better precautions with their pets, keeping them on leashes, restricting their wanderings.  There is an upside to this issue: feral cats and dogs, themselves incredibly detrimental to the ecosystem, could be held in check, as could coyote populations (who are more notorious pet predators than cougars).  However, this is all secondary to the very real threat of an attack on a human, or even a killing.  Human predation as become an all-too-real danger over the last decade or so, as human habitation in the west has encroached on cougar habitat, and cougars have expanded into the marginal spaces left by suburbs and sub-divisions.  In Southern California in particular, there have been a number of high profile cougar attacks over the past few years on joggers, hikers, and bicyclists. Though fatalities are exceedingly rare, and statistically it's more likely to be struck by lightning, the fear of becoming prey is a primal one, and people react harshly to wildlife attacks.  Almost always, it's the beasts themselves who suffer, as the culling of trouble animals is an imprecise thing, as likely to result in the death of innocent creatures as it is the intended target.  Again, ideally, it's up to humans to change their behaviors or take extra precautions, as much to save cougars lives as to defend their own.

With all these attendant threats, it's difficult to lose sight of the true blessing the cougars' return is for those who care about the Northeast.  Though by its very nature the cougar can be dangerous, it is also a beautiful and bewitching creature, the most charismatic of charismatic megafauna.  It's a gorgeous example of evolution and of grace, tawny, lithe, as fluid as warm honey, as exacting as a knife.  It is perfect in it's own way, balanced by nature into a tool of its own survival, studded with sharp, hunter's eyes of deepest amber...it's too easy to wax poetic when describing such an animal, burning bright in the forests of imagination.  Yet it's more than simple aesthetic appreciation that makes the mountain lion such a fitting symbol of the rewilding of the North woods.  Scientifically, the mountain lion is a valuable part of the ecosystem , controlling deer populations and keeping trophic levels in check.  The mountain lion's return is also a sign of the overall health of the environment; severely unbalanced or degraded ecosystems would not be able to support such an apex predator.  That cougars are returning is a signal that the Northeast is once again becoming a whole and healthy region.  More importantly, it means we're doing something right.  It means that, through accident or effort, humans are making up for some of their past transgressions, righting some of their past wrongs.  The mountain lion is not invading, nor wandering haplessly in, but rather coming home, because we now have allowed its home to exist.  Even on a cold March day, with snow in the air and the wind roaring so lion-like outside, thats cause for celebration.    

Everyday Darwinism

I feel like I'm one of the last people in America to discover this fact, but let me state here and now, for the record: The Wire may very well have been the best show on television, ever.  Honestly, it's just that good, and I'm something of an aficionado of the medium, sadly (oh, wasted days).  I'm currently knee-deep in the third season of the show on dvd, about mid-way through the five season run, and every episode strengths my certainty that I'm watching something special.  For the uninitiated,  The Wire was an HBO series focused loosely on a misfit unit of the Baltimore PD, yet more broadly based on the culture and intricacies of life in the city itself, especially the prominence of the drug trade.  More than anything, it's the realism of the show that makes it memorable; the very stink of urban decay practically seeps off the screen.  But why am I bothering to write about a television show on a blog like this?  Well, as I was watching an episode last night, a line of dialog made me sit up an take notice of a certain subtext to the struggle being played out.  I can't remember verbatim, but the line was about the dealers adapting to new technology, from pagers to cell phones to disposable phones, all to stay a step ahead of surveillance.  For some reason, that behavior sounded familiar.  It sounded somehow natural, surviving by adapting to the situation.  It sounded, in short, like evolution.  Hmmm...

Social Darwinism is certainly nothing new, though the concept is fairly out of fashion these days.  Too often, Social Darwinism has been used as a justification for unbridled exploitation or discrimination of individuals or social classes.  As such, our modern, reactionist, PC sensibilities have tended to decry Social Darwinism as an evil in itself.  But, fundamentally, the theory is strong.  Perhaps the greatest example of the logical extension of the principle is Dawkin's concept of the 'meme': the idea that ideas function within human cultures in a way similar to genes (ie. struggling to replicate and survive).  When you understand that the concepts of fitness and selection can be applied, or at least superimposed, on social systems, then, well, things can get interesting.  Lets look at the grim and gritty world of The Wire.

Begin with the basic world of the street level drug dealer, some young kid like Wallace or Bodie or Poot, who takes to slinging because it seems like his only choice for survival, or at least the easiest and most glamorous.  You can basically couch this young hopper's existence in life or death terms: life means he stays out on the street and fathers a few shorties on some hood-rat, death means that, literally, he catches a nine milli slug to the dome, or, figuratively, he gets arrested and sent to prison.  To break it down, this little dealer uses his innate assets (his skill dealing and the quality of his product) to attain resources (straight up skrilla, yo), while competing with rivals for those resources, and avoiding predators (the Baltimore PD, or my man Omar).  It's a primal existence, no doubt.  Now, if you just look at this one dealer's life, it's a straight win or lose situation, like all life is.  But if you widen your scope a bit, and look at the give and take of many people playing the game over the course of months and years, things get positively Darwinian.  Look at the use of technology as a survival strategy.  Players start with house phones to make deals, but house phones are easy to tap.  Some dealers get arrested, some learn better and start using pagers and public phones.  This is a mediocre way to get by at best, as you can still get picked off all too easily by a wired land-line.  Cell phones come along, and they work great; the dealers who adapt to the new tech succeed like gang-busters, till cells start getting tapped too.  When it's apparent that cells can be hacked, the smarter dealers hop on disposable, pre-paid phones, for the moment surviving like that, while the slow and unluck hit the clink.  And so it goes.  Technology is the social adaptation equivalent of longer legs, better ears, keener eyes; it allows survival, momentarily, until the big, blue, predator figures out how to one-up this latest evolutionary step.  Of course, things aren't as simple as this straight-forward cat and mouse scenario, because many factors are in play and many survival skills are being used.  One is a little something known as 'predator satiation'.  It involves countering predation with sheer numbers, feeding them till they can eat no more.  Caribou do it, wildebeests do it, passenger pigeons once did it; reproduce so much that the carnivores can't possibly get everyone.  And that's essentially how the drug trade survives, by being so lucrative and widespread that not even the most well funded or organized force in the world can stop it, much less the BPD.  It's a Darwinian means of survival with a high attrition rate, but it certainly seems to be working.

Yet natural selection alone does not an organism make.  How prudish of me would it be to ignore that oh-so important sexual selection?  Sexual selection is perhaps as equally important a shaping force as natural selection, leading species to evolve everything from feathers to pheromones in the attempt to get that booty.  In some species, sexual selection even trumps survival instinct: elk and other cervids expend massive amount of energy to annually grow giant racks of antlers, all to fight and win harems, and the love songs of frogs at night allow them to be pin-pointed  by owls and other predators.  Yet, again and again, sex is worth the risk.  And one of the appeals of the gangsta lifestyle, or so all those new-fangled rap videos tell me, is the bucket-load of tail that comes with it.  Power and status consistently equal reproductive rights in the animal kingdom, and dealing and running with a flash crew means at least the illusion of power and status, and certainly that all important bank.  For a dealer on Baltimore's west side, cash means cloths, wheels, rims, all the accouterments of a thug lifestyle.  Spinning mag-rims are the equivalent of a peacock's feathers, and just like a peacock's feathers represent a serious handicap is escaping predators, so do the rims attract un-do attention from rivals, jackers, and the fuzz.  In fact, the life of a dealer is so inherently dangerous, dying young is a bit of a given.  But the sexual success while alive counters the early dirt nap; better to have a few fun years (and leave some progeny) than have a long and lonesome lifetime.  In the third season, Cutty, straight out of jail, faces the dilemma of whether to take the high road, or go back into the game.  All it really takes is one good house-party and two loose women to suck him (pun intended) right back into the Barksdale crew, and all the dangers inherent.  Hell, I guess I can see the appeal myself...  

It's possible that I've simply got Darwin on the brain, given the old man's recent bicentennial, and it's certainly possible that I've been watching too much of The Wire lately (it is like visual crack).  But like The Dark Side of the Moon and The Wizard of Oz, things are synching up of their own accord, and I'm simply the messenger.  Try it yourself: see if you can spot social or scientific principles at work in your own favorite tv programs.  Perhaps feminism in 30 Rock.  Or island bio-geography in Lost.  Or eugenics in Sesame Street.  It's fun for the whole family.     

 

Happy Birthday Chuck!

Today marks an auspicious date: the bicentennial birthdays of both Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin.  It's no surprise, really, who gets the attention here in America and who get's short shrift; Honest Abe has been the belle of the ball lately (even Bush tried to invoke him in the waning days of his term), and poor Charley, well, let's just say some folk don't kindly take to his thinkin.  It's a shame, honestly.  Not that Lincoln is garnering so much attention, but that Darwin is garnering so little.  While, admittedly, there's no grounds for it, if the two men were to be held up in direct comparison, Darwin's star should far eclipse Lincoln's.  Though Lincoln's impact on the course of American history is difficult to diminish, what, at the end of the day, did he really contribute to the greater cause of humanity?  He begrudgingly ended the institution of slavery in the US, but this was effectively playing catch up with the rest of the civilized world.  And, he couldn't do so without plunging the nation into it's bloodiest and darkest period.  While that says more about the nation than the man, it doesn't exactly take take the stink off. Ultimately, Lincoln was a skillful orator with enough bravery to tear the band-aid off.  He was a good man, maybe a great man, but when push comes to shove, he was merely a footnote in the greater scheme of history.

What, then of Darwin?  If anything, the man was a less impressive specimen of an individual, portly, balding, wracked with anxiety, exuding about as much raw charisma as the barnacles he so dearly loved.  But beneath that beetling, neanderthal brow, true genius percolated, the informal, unpretentious genius than drew wisdom from the world at hand.  What we today call the theory of evolution in shorthand was the brainchild of a humble country naturalist, and perhaps no other scientific principle is as important or as influential.  There's a well worn quote by Theodosius Dobzahnsky that goes: "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution".  It's very true; without the guiding principle of evolution by natural selection to shine a light on the intricate workings of life, one would be forced to resort to ridiculous and preposterous make-believe explanations, like suggesting the world was 'designed' by some 'intelligent' 'god-like' individual.  Oh, wait...

Of all the slew of unaccounted for flaws that embarrasses me about being an American, none rankles me so much personally as our good, old-fashioned, religious-fueled ignorance.  I spent about two hours today casually perusing a high school biology textbook (the glorious life of a substitute teacher) and was struck by how much sense everything made, how much exquisite, well-formed sense the whole biological process made.  I'd hate to think that the entire, delicate system of life as we know it could be negated with one well placed sentence ascribing credit to some divine designer.  It's disgusting.  It's the antithesis of intelligence, but it's the goal of innumerable individuals across the country, eager to insert their religious beliefs into the body of scientific education, at a time when our nation already trails the rest of the industrial world academically.  We should all be embarrassed, not just me.  

So as I kick off this week of evolutionarily themed posts, I bid you to take a moment and, after giving Abe his proper congrats, give Darwin a little much needed love too. 

 

Spare a Moment for Wonder

If you pay attention, the world will continually astound you with it's miracles.  Consider 'Henry'.  Henry is a tuatara, a distinct type of lizard native only to the islands of New Zealand.  Henry is 111 years old.  And now, Henry is a father.

The specifics of tuatara sex are for the tuatara, and the tuatara alone.  But to further the stature of the venerable little guy, know that Henry successfully reproduced only after having a tumor surgically removed from his genitals.  That's a lot for anyone to go through.  But then again, Henry is a member of quite a remarkable species.  111 may seem like a ripe old age, but for a tuatara, it's merely the middle of the road: the lizards can live up to 250 years.  Of course even calling them lizards is a bit of a misnomer.  The tuatara, though a reptile superficially resembling a lizard, exists on its own in the taxonomic tree of life.  The two species of tuatara belong to the order Sphenodontia (cone tooth), and are nothing more than cousins of lizards and snakes.  In truth they are more closely related to the ancestors of the reptiles than to modern reptiles themselves; they are essentially living fossils, lingering on in a lone corner of the world since the days before the dinosaurs.  

There are signs that point to this ancient lineage, most notably the tuatara's 'third eye'.  That's right, a third eye.  It's only visible in newborns, being subsequently covered by skin in adults, but it's there none the less: a distinct bundle of photosensitive cells with a proper retina and cornea, all in the center of the tuatara's forehead.  It's called a parietal eye, an evolutionary anachronism linking the tuatara to the distant past.  On the face of it, this would suggest that the tuatara is merely a leftover from a bygone age, a relic too primitive to evolve.  Yet new genetic evidence suggests that the tuatara has actually evolved faster than almost any other living creature.  The changes have been on a molecular rather than physiological level, but they have been comparatively rapid, faster even than Homo sapien's own DNA evolution.

So there you have it: a super-evolving leftover dinosaur with a third eye that lives to a ridiculous old age on a single island in the southern hemisphere.  Henry the tuatara is a bit of a miracle, and his children will be miracles too.  Small miracles, old fashioned miracles, ugly little miracles maybe, but miracles none the less.  Such is nature.