Thursday, 3 November 2022

Colonists all around us

Most people would agree that if the human race were to disappear tomorrow, life would pretty much go on as usual on this planet. 

Nature is a massive self-regulating system of interconnected processes and relationships. Those species equipped to survive the post-human world will thrive while other, more specialised things like cultivated plants and domesticated animals might fare rather worse. But life will go on. 

I saw some perfect evidence of this on Facebook yesterday when one of my closest friends, Dr Erica McAlister - dipterist and curator of flies at London's Natural History Museum - posted these two images: 



As she wrote: 

'I love these but, until today, I'd never realised what I was walking over while on my way to work. These are Hayward's Patent Self Locking Plate coalhole covers - they're hatches for underground coal bunkers, the holes of which have happily been colonised by Nature.' 

Nature pays no attention to rules or boundaries set by humans. 

If it can find a place to grow and thrive, it will.

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