SONG: “Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod?” (To download: double right-click & “Save As”)
ARTIST: grant. Originally by The Mountain Goats.
SOURCE: This is a penitential cover, recorded as penance for being late with that post-punk original this month. Well, the end of last month. There’s no specific scientific source. It’s from this album.
ABSTRACT: Metaphors are great things because they can cut both ways. John Darnielle wrote a song about a teenager in Southern California who feels like a tetrapod (a four-limbed creature, usually used to describe one of the lobe-finned fishes or semi-amphibians from way back in the Devonian). I can hear it and think: “That must have been what it was like, on some level. For Ichtyostega and Tiktaalik and those guys. They must have felt like that.” Because why else would they have left those smothering waves?
Tiktaalik, by Arthur Weasley, CC2.5, on Wikimedia Commons