Recent human history, especially the last few hundred years, has seen tremendous technological advancements and sweeping changes to our ecologies and cultures. In most cases, we are not adapted to these radically new conditions because our cultural advancement has entirely outpaced our biological evolution.
“I know of no pleasure deeper than that which comes from contemplating the natural world and trying to understand it.”
David Attenborough
Before sunrise, a sunflower looks east in anticipation of the coming dawn. Then, the flower’s face tracks the sun from east to west until it dips below the horizon. Overnight, the flower head slowly but deliberately orients back to the east to start again. How do sunflowers accomplish this solar tracking?