If you don’t give your body time to adjust, you’ll feel ill. You might feel a bit faint and clammy-handed if you first step onto land. You will definitely feel dizzy and you will feel very sick. That’s how your body changes from the liquid to the solid state. But you can deal with it because it doesn’t last long at all, and you get used to it. Now let’s look at why life on earth is so exciting, and why we humans are so special. Life as we know it is possible because water in life form that can act as a solvent. The chemical name for that solvent is water. It’s in our blood. That’s why it tastes salty, but in our blood it’s salty because it’s so plentiful. Water makes animal bodies strong. Water prevents us from getting crushed by pressure under the ground. Water is in our lungs. It’s in our blood. Water is life for us. And water can’t just be part of an earthly life. Life in the water is the basis of all we know. It’s amazing that this little drop of life in the ocean, from our perspective, can make life on this planet possible. It’s even more amazing that even tiny life forms are possible in the absence of water, and that they can make oxygen with a little help from rocks and plants. And this oxygen is even more amazing. It allows life in general to continue. Oxygen itself is so incredibly important that it is probably the most important gas in our atmosphere. Without it there would be no life as we know it, not just humans, not just animals. Not just single cells, but no living creatures at all. Without it our human bodies could not survive even the slightest bit. That’s right. And that’s because oxygen is such a powerful element. Just a milliliter of oxygen can sustain one liter of water in the presence of light over a long time. It’s that powerful. It’s oxygen that helps oxygen containing molecules grow, even as they react with other elements. That is what makes water life for us and makes oxygen life for us. It’s the same with ozone. The ozone layer in our atmosphere protects us from harmful UV rays. We might think this water oxygen cycle is just a part of life, but it is the basis of life. It’s the origin of our atmosphere. All of our life on earth is dependent on oxygen and water that originated here on the surface. [Audience member] But I don’t understand why it’s called oxygen, it’s the same thing. The answer is important. Not only is oxygen the same chemical element as water, but that combination of oxygen with hydrogen in water makes water into an incredible solvent, which means that it’s the same thing as water. The most important chemical reaction on earth has always been oxidation of metals, that means combining one metal with oxygen to make a new metal. And from oxidation you get water. This combination of hydrogen and oxygen to make water is the one most important reaction on the planet. It also is a source of all other reactions, like reduction or the combination of metals into alloys. These reactions also change all forms of matter to a greater or lesser degree. That’s why life on earth is so exciting, but it is also the reason for a lot of sadness as well. I now have two big questions. What is the most interesting kind of life on earth and why would that life be interesting? But I’m not done yet. Question 4: You mention animals as being in a very primitive state, but most people regard them as a highly advanced stage of the evolution of life on earth. I don’t think animals are so primitive. This book is full of examples that animals that are a lot simpler than humans also have incredibly complicated brains and the same kind of memories and learning processes as we have. And in fact, I’m going to give you a couple of slides about animal intelligence. These are things that we don’t usually think about because it isn’t in the mainstream thinking about how life on earth evolved, because it’s easier to consider simpler creatures when explaining life on earth. [Audience member] You are going to talk about animals intelligence. That’s why I wanted to have my question. I understand that animals have brain, but the problem with intelligence is that, there are so many different kinds of intelligence. You can’t compare a cow and a snail’s intelligence to a human intelligence. I agree that you can’t make comparisons, but I think you can find similarities in animal brains, and I’m going to show you some slides. If you think about, for example, what I call a generalizing intelligence, the kind of intelligence you find in monkeys and dolphins and chimpanzees. The brains that perform this kind of intelligence are quite similar to our own. In fact, my work in recent years has shown me that, in the brain, I do not find differences between animals and humans. So in that respect, we are both the same. We are both creatures that have the ability to recognize and learn from patterns and generalizing those patterns. But even in animals, the parts of the brain don’t fully explain their overall intelligence. It turns out that an entire brain is really difficult to map, and most brains are very, very difficult to fully map. But I think there is another kind of intelligence that is more complicated and much more complex, and I think that all animals have this kind of intelligence in varying degrees. You have seen it in your cat and your dog. It’s kind of like the human intelligence, but a little more basic. That’s all I can say. The kind of intelligence we have that is like a computer, that has many, many kinds of processing going on at the same time is pretty complex. And you don’t really see this type of intelligence anywhere except in humans and perhaps apes. And most animals have it to a greater or lesser degree. But remember, even with this type of intelligence you can’t really compare animals and humans. We can say that chimpanzees have the same type of intelligence as us, and most of them live in social groups, or you can’t say that they have any intelligence at all. So it’s difficult to make comparisons. But these animals can learn from experience, they can recognize patterns, their brains can remember events. We can see their thinking. They learn by doing. A lot of people have thought that was a human ability. And a lot of people have thought it was a sign of self-awareness. We know now that’s not the case, even chimpanzees are able to do that. Even if they have more difficulties with that, which is not the case. We know that in the last decades it has been proven that there are many complex mental skills that are shared among animals in many different places. And I will talk about some of those in a second. But even in the most primitive animals, there is still this type of intelligence, and that is really important. So my second question is, why would you say that animals are more primitive? What did you mean by that? I’ll give a quick example. We think of human intelligence as really interesting and advanced. It’s so advanced that we think it must have come from a divine creator, and in fact, if you look in the beginning of Genesis the bible, it does talk about the beginning, how God created animals and humans. And in the bible it says that humans were made in the image of God, but animals were not made in the image of God, which seems kind of reasonable. We want to do more important things than just eat and walk around. So the bible says animals are less intelligent than humans. But I will show you that animals are more intelligent than what the bible thinks, more intelligent than humans. And as I said, some of the information you need is in this book, but I want to also briefly explain to you about other life forms. So let’s go to other animals. And also I want to talk to you about where primitive means simple, because a lot of times, when people are asked to give an animal name, they often give the name they use to describe the animal. Sometimes the name they give is very insulting. For example, the word monkey is actually a very insulting word. It’s not a really good choice. I think it might be better to use some other words. But for the sake of comparison I still use this label monkey. It doesn’t really tell you anything about that animal except that it’s small. It doesn’t say anything about intelligence or the