mickeytea

If something like meditation practice can affect the relative sizes of different portions of the brain over the course of a lifetime, I suppose the amount of abstract thought we engage in probably means our modern brain differ slightly from those 20,000 years ago, but is the change at a genetic level? I know very little of epigenetics. Could the acquisition of language have caused changes at a genetic level? If you're interested in an attempt at a unified theory describing the evolution of consciousness, check out Ken Wilber's work. He's a brilliant philosopher with a background in biology who has now gone a bit nutty.

Heh, if anybody here's played MASS EFFECT, you might have overheard some Salarians discuss how they were handed levo instead of dextro protein shakes, or something like that. I don't exactly remember.

Aren't the majority of detritivores animals? Killing them off would severely slow decomposition. Maybe a lot of plants would die after using up soil nutrients.