Back To The Lobster
I'm quite enamored of lobsters as some of you might know
Because I found out
This just blew me away when I found it out
Just exactly how much continuity there was in the neural chemistry of human beings, and the neural chemistry of animals
Absolutely staggering
It's the sort of thing that makes the fact of evolution something like self evident
Random mutation, natural selection is the only way you can solve the problem of how to deal with an environment that's
Complex beyond your ability to comprehend
To generate endless variance, because God only knows what the hell's gonna happen next
They'll almost all of them die because they're failures and a couple will propagate
And you know, the environment keeps moving around like a giant snake
You never know what it's gonna do next
And so, the best you can do is say, “Well,”
“Here's 30 things that might work” and
You know 28 of them are gonna perish
Anyways, back to the lobsters
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Back to the lobsters, back to the lobsters, back to the lobsters
Back to the lobsters, back to the lobsters, back to the lobsters
So these creatures engage in dominance disputes
So it really is the toughest lobster that wins
And what's so cool about the lobster is that
When a lobster wins, he flexes and gets bigger
So he looks bigger because he's a winner
It's like he's advertising that
The neurochemical system that makes him flex is serotonergic
And you think, "Who cares? What the hell does that mean?"
I'll tell you what it means
It's the same chemical that's affected by antidepressants in human beings
So like, if you're depressed
You're a defeated lobster, you're like this
I'm small, things are dangerous
Defeated lobster you're like this
I'm small, I don't want to fight
You give somebody an antidepressant, it's like up they stretch and then they're ready to take on the world again
Well, if you give lobsters who just got defeated in a fight serotonin, then they stretch out and they'll fight again
Like we separated from those creatures on the evolutionary timescale somewhere between 350 and 600 million years ago
And the damn neurochemistry is the same
And so that's another indication of just how important hierarchies of authority are
[Chorus]
Back to the lobsters, back to the lobsters, back to the lobsters
Back to the lobsters, back to the lobsters, back to the lobsters