HOW DOES FISHING STILL WORK?
And other observations of (non) evolution.
Over millions of years we believe species evolved. When Darwin came up with his survival of the fittest though, this didn’t just apply to man alone. It applied to everything.
I have to tell you, I don’t know if all the things I’m seeing online are staged, but animals are learning to do some amazing things. From dogs who have learned to speak to their owners by tapping buttons or saying I love you, from beluga whales playing fetch with fisherman, to dolphins interacting with humans from inside their aquarium tanks, to donkeys coming when their owners call them, it seems like animals interactions with humans are evolving to new levels.
And we are realizing that we really don’t know as much about them as we thought we did. Hell, in the last few years alone, I’ve learned more about the octopus than I could ever imagine, and I am fascinated. They hide not just by camouflage but by building little walls around themselves made of shells or whatever they find. They appear to play with other fish, even pulling pranks. They’re just so smart. And just like us, they engage in touch and sensory communication.
My son has fish. We got him a fishtank a few years ago and a few tropical fish. It’s very clear they not only hear but can see through the tank. Even the mirrored sides, if slide over there to look at them, they move away. These fish are like, we know our barriers dude, and we can see you. Your mirror is fooling no one. If I talk to them (which just goes to show how much time I have on my hands) through the front of the tank, they come to check me out. They’ll look me over and just float, seemingly aware that this giant face staring back at them is in no way any risk to their health.
So how is it that fish can’t figure out the worm on a hook thing already? How stupid must they feel in front of their school when they grab an unbaited lure and wham, they’re pulled away. Besides the fact they’re going to die, there’s the embarrassment on top of it. Where’s Tony? Oh Tony fell for the oldest trick in book, didn’t even get a meal out of it.
Where’s the learning curve?
Actually, my son’s fish have the best life. They get fed from an automatic fish feeeder from atop the tank, like manna from damn heaven twice a day. These fish are totally reliant on food from above, so for these guys, if I drop in a lure, it’s totally understandable that they’d get hooked. But wild fish are supposed to have more street cred. With all the damn noise our boats make fish are not conditioned to believe anything dropping in from above can be good.
Yet all it takes, a worm and a hook, boom. Crabs and lobsters walk into the same fisherman traps over and over. Come on guys, you’re letting your species down.
We have pigeons that live in the trees outside our bedroom window, or at least use it as an Airbnb. Now, as I understand it, pigeons have incredible vision, even though they are not birds of prey. They can see 340 degrees around due to their eye placement and can spot something up to 26 miles away. And yet they still slam into our window. What the hell? Keen eyesight be damned, they have the depth perception of a dog on anesthesia. They should be thankful that damn tree is adjacent to our building because it prevents them from gaining enough speed to really hurt themselves. They sure do scare the bejesus out of me at 1:00am in the morning when they have a bad dream though.
Here’s another thing. Cleaning up after youself isn’t new. For all the hundreds of years of parents telling their children to clean their stuff off of the floor or their bed, or every surface they put things where things shouldn’t be, why aren’t kid just born with this preternatural skillset? Like shouldn’t they have just evolved now to know this is something they should do? Maybe it’s genetic defect in my children.
My children were also taught the days of the week at a very young age. They learned very quickly that they would be spending some time away from Mommy and Daddy Monday thru Friday, but that on Saturday and Sunday they were home. As far as I can tell, they kept this knowledge over the years and to this day still understand it. Yet, no matter how hard we try to reemphasize this, they are always tired and never want to get out of bed Monday thru Friday. But on Saturday and Sunday, the days they DON’T HAVE TO BE ANYWHERE, they wake up bright and early so they can get on their ipads or play video games. Doesn’t matter if they went to bed Friday night at midnight, by 8:00am (the time when they can come to our room to get said ipads) our door always opens and in they come. Like their circadian rhythms will implode if they don’t follow through.
But of all things that require evolution, why are men still programmed to see every piece of womanly flesh that passes us by? It’s as if by recognizing those passing legs we are somehow programmed to believe we should go copulate with them. We are incapable of not looking at women wearing skimpy clothing. Women know this by now, right? So don’t try to tell us ladies that you aren’t looking for some attention when you show up to a Starbucks in a tight shorts, a half-cropped tank and heels. I’m not buying it. You show up in a nightshirt and flip-flops, ok, I’ll give you the pass on just being tired and wanting coffee, but you strap the heels at eight in the morning and all bets are off. Men are going to stare. We are still as close to apes as you can get in too many ways.
I hate this part of myself. As comedian Jim Jeffries so aptly put it and I’m paraphrasing, I try every day not to engage in heterosexuality…. Not today, Jim! no not today! Not today, Jim! And the moment a woman walks by in boots i’m like AAHHAHAHAHAA.
It happens to me daily. I can be in the middle of watching a ball game at a sports bar and the waitress can walk by wearing an NFL jersey that is large enough to show her cleavage and short enough that all we see are her legs, and I will completely follow her across the bar. Even if we’re in OT and my team has fourth and goal on the one-yard line to win the game!
But it’s not just the fact a lot of us are walking procreation machines. Many of us think we’re invulnerable. Like if you want to see how stupid we men are, I give you one Jeffrey Liebowitz of South Carolina, a man who back in 2024 believed he could free handle the world’s most poisonous snakes on his Youtube channel and not have any issues. Of course, every legitimate snake owner predicted the outcome, including the ordinance that came soon after, that of no deadly snakes being allowed as pets in said county in South Carolina.
Did he learn anything after this incident? Of course, he didn’t. He then lost his African Serval cat, a wild cat that comes with an advisory ‘not a house pet’ that escaped his parenting course and required the police to seize it.
If you think this kind of thing is isolated, well, it is. But let me point out of the 318 Darwin awards doled out for dying stupidly from the years 1995-2014, 282 were given to men. That’s right, 89 percent went to men. Only 36 were given to women.
Men still can’t keep their hands to themselves. Men still can’t stop harassing women. We are the least evolved creatures on this planet, and it’s mostly because of other men!
Call me a self-hater if you will, but you don’t see many women sex-traffickers do you? You don’t see girls stealing boys off the street to sell into servitude as a laundry boy or housemaid with benefits. There’s a reason the Epstein files exist and that those party lists were full of powerful men. We’re programmed to be cretins, and if we don’t have guidance from parents and peers, we end up being cavemen all over again.
Isn’t it about time that we somehow outgrow this, or maybe find some kind of drug so that once we’re married this kind of instinctual buffoonery goes away? Hasn’t psychology, one of the largest growing fields besides technology and occupational/physical therapy, discovered anything to fix our minds to only react to the person we spent one-fifth of our salary to put a ring on it instead of every strange brunette beauty wearing the wonderwoman outfit at comicon?
So here is a man standing up and saying to other men, evolve dammit. Our hair has thinned out, why the heck can’t our sex drive? Learn to focus it. And when you see or hear other men behaving like disgusting apes, say something to your fellow man about Darwin and apes and maybe jail.
Let’s face it. Evolution takes an inordinate amount of time. If there’s one thing we can look forward to it’s that we humans are evolving such that our wisdom teeth are disappearing. That’s right, up to and over thirty percent of us in some places are born without our third molars. In the future, we can look forwad to less oral surgery. Hurrah!
Let’s just pray the wisdom part doesn’t go with it.
Seen or observed something that isn’t evolving fast enough? Please share in the comments.