I don’t link to the New York Times these days, but my wife just showed me a picture from an article entitled “Hungry Goats Atop a Tree, Doing Their Bit for Gourmands”, By CRAIG S. SMITH, Published: October 27, 2005. The accompanying photo shows a number of odd black animal silhouettes, perched high in a tree in an arid clime somewhere. I thought they were baboons until she told me: goats. Goats in a tree.

Why they’re in a tree is the subject of the story. As is the economic import of their poop.

But I care not a whit for that. What came to mind, immediately. was an old picture present in many biology text-books, and which I suspect is engrained in the engrams of many a scientist raised in the 60s: On the left pane, a sad little short-necked primordial giraffe ancestor, standing beside a tree tentatively nibbling the lowest leaves, looking longingly up into the higher branches. On the right pane, a robust, spotted modern long-necked giraffe gracefully defoliating the tender shoots with a self-satisfied gleam in its eye — or is that a sly glance over to its sickly neighbor?

I suspect that this one image, with its accompanying rhetoric of directed adaptation, informs many people’s (professionals and laymen) understanding of selection pressure.

They ought to have a picture of those goats, snacking comfortably 20+ feet high in the flimsy branches of a tree, sitting right next to it.