Three's A Crowd

 

Three isn't company. Andrea told me a story yesterday about her two pets, Callie the poodle, and Ziggy the cat. As she reached over Callie to pet Ziggy, the dog got her head under Andrea's hand, letting Andrea know that three's a crowd. 

Andrea owns a dog because of her instinct to pet. The dog owns Andrea because of her instinct to be petted. The relationship is mutually beneficial. That is the consequence of ten thousand years of co-evolution. But as soon as Ziggy moved in, things got complicated. Ten thousand years of mutation and selection can't be easily undone.

Three's a crowd: great title for a song. I Googled it and I was right, more than one song and a romcom from the 80s, and the core plot for the movies: Two Men and a Baby, The In-laws, Siblings, Cowboys and Aliens, Oceans 12, and most of the movies waiting to be made. Three's a crowd, don't you know. It's all about groups of people, the church choir and politics and oil companies and logging protests and war and the collapse of the biosphere. After you've got more than one friend, things get complicated very quickly. 

As with the pets, same with people; the way we manage all of that conflict is a result of evolution. That's what our big heads are for. There's good evidence for that. The latest data show that hyperactivity and congenital myopia (short sightedness) are on the increase since the smartphone because those who can text more rapidly with their thumbs have reproductive advantage. 

ROFLOL. I'm pulling your leg; I made that up. But IMAO, it's probably true. Somebody should collect the data so we can get to EDEN as quickly as possible and avoid extinction. EDEN stands for Experimentally Directed Evolutionary Navigation. (You won't find that acronym with Google search; I just made it up.)

Next time I will consider what it takes to get from a group of two or three to everyone and everything.

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Puppies understand humans: Quirks and Quarks, June 2021.

How Dogs and Humans Evolved in Tandem: Smithsonian Magazine, November 2020.

When will fuel become unaffordable? Just Have a Think, April 2, 2023