.... that there's about 5,500 species of mammals, 10,000 species of birds, 91,000 species of insects, but there's some 250,000 species of beetles. As one great evolutionary biologist observed - "If God exists, he must be inordinately fond of beetles." (Geez, I love that!)
.... that there's 3 tiny bones in the inner ear of humans (and all mammals, and are the smallest we have), and that they were once - in our ancient evolutionary past - part of the jaw bones of our reptilian ancestors.
It appears that all reptiles have a lower jaw of five bones on each side, but these are only weakly fused together. So, because reptiles - lizards all the way through to crocodiles - lie with their jaws on the ground, they evolved to "hear" through their jaws, by picking up vibrations in the ground made by other animals (potentially prey) moving about, which transfers through to their brain as auditory signals.
As mammals (including us) evolved we needed strong chewing jaws, and so we adapted to this by fusing two bones at the front end of our once reptilian bottom jaw into our mammalian bottom jaw. So we could gnaw on stuff. But, the three bones left over at the back of the ancient reptilian jaw were gradually down-sized, and repositioned a little, but went merrily on still used for their original "hearing" function of transmitting sound vibrations to the brain. There ya go! Snake-to-Me in just a few million years. God sure is having fun with all this eh?
(Currently reading a book on Evolution if you hadn't guessed. More on that soon. Cosmology comes next. Just needed a break from fiction and still so much to find out about Life and geez the clock is ticking louder each day and don't stop reading and writing).
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