Genes which allow females to be less inhibited leave fewer copies of themselves than genes which persuade them to remain highly selective. Among males, the best strategy is exactly the opposite one. The maximum advantage goes to those males with… — Lyall Watson Copy Share Image
The limits of sensory evolution in fish are defined very largely by their habitat. Water is physically supportive, carries some kinds of odour well,… — Lyall Watson Copy Share Image
“We are in tune, and given the chance, we do things tunefully. We dance.” — Lyall Watson Copy Share Image
Smell is stimulating. It stirs things up and makes us nostalgic - a wonderful word which literally means 'ache for home' - which serves… — Lyall Watson Copy Share Image
It is a fascinating and provocative thought that a body of water deserves to be considered as an organism in its own right. — Lyall Watson Copy Share Image
We share our planet quite naturally with a permanent aeroplankton; a buoyant ecology too soft to hear, too small to see, but heavy with… — Lyall Watson Copy Share Image
Smell was our first sense. It is even possible that being able to smell was the stimulus that took a primitive fish and turned… — Lyall Watson Copy Share Image
“He was his usual philosophic self and tried very hard to explain to me that although life was stained with agony, this was necessary. That scars only concealed, and finally helped to reveal, an essential peace. He said that what we, who pass so swiftly, experience as songs of love or cries of pain are only overtones to a single… — Lyall Watson Copy Share
Breathing air is a liberating experience. It freed our ancestors from the constraints of staying wet or having to remain within easy reach of… — Lyall Watson Copy Share Image
If elephants didn't exist, you couldn't invent one. They belong to a small group of living things so unlikely they challenge credulity and common… — Lyall Watson Copy Share Image
“It is a truism among researchers into smell that all human subjects behave as if they themselves do not smell like humans, because all… — Lyall Watson Copy Share Image
If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn't. — Lyall Watson Copy Share Image
