Years ago, washed-up ex-actor and simpleton fundamentalist Kirk Cameron poked fun at evolutionary biology by using the phrase ‘crocoduck’. What did he mean by that? If evolution was true, according to our intrepid interlocutor, you would find ridiculous and bizarre combinations of half-half animals, such as a cross between a crocodile and a duck.

Well, he should also be aware of the old saying – be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it.

Welcome to the sea robin, a fish with legs like a crab, the body of a fish, and fin-wings like a bird. The legs of the sea robin, while used for locomotion, are also used for digging and tasting. That’s right, there are papillae, minute taste-receptors, on its shovel-shaped legs, enabling it to taste for prey hiding in the ocean floor.

You may view a video of the sea robin here.

Scuttling along the sea bed, the sea robin’s features serve to illustrate the development of evolutionary traits, and the genetic markers from which they originate. The sensory legs of the sea robin – modified versions of their pectoral fins – raises broader questions regarding the role of genetic factors in shaping phenotypic adaptations.

Alternating between swimming and walking, the crab-like legs are sensitive to chemical stimulants, detecting mussels and small shellfish buried in the sea floor, without any visual identification. The sea robin has eyes like a frog.

Leopard sea robins, a particular species of sea robin, use their legs for locomotion only. The northern sea robin uses its legs for digging and tasting, as well as walking.

Researchers investigating the genetic origins of the evolutionary adaptation of walking first sequenced the genome of the sea robin. Using gene-editing techniques, known as CRISPR, they modified the gene tbx3a, responsible for the development of leg-like limbs. A particular variation of this gene is responsible for the emergence of limbs in vertebrates.

Fish that can walk, or at least combine walking with swimming, are not unusual in the marine world.

The skate, another species of fish, scurries along the sea floor, using the genes and neurons vertebrates use to walk. The skate is closely related to sharks and rays – and displays walking behaviour, strongly suggesting that bipedal locomotion was already emerging before the first vertebrates ever walked on land.

Carl Zimmer, science writer for the New York Times, wrote in 2016 that scientists are finding fish that walk the way land vertebrates do. No, they do not sprint like us, or land-dwelling mammals, but they use their leg-like fins to walk and climb. Cryptotora thamicola, a waterfall-climbing cave fish, not only climbs, but possesses an intact pelvis, similar to tetrapods. A troglobitic species, it walks salamander-like, it climbs cave rocks while being splashed by a waterfall.

It was first discovered in 1985, living and climbing deep inside caves in northern Thailand.

Why is walking such a fascinating evolutionary adaptation?

Discovering how other vertebrate species began walking opens a window into our own evolutionary pathway.

The first fully bipedal hominins began to emerge millions of years ago. Standing upright, and walking on two feet for locomotion, is the decisive step in the emergence of modern humans. To be sure, other hominins adopted an upright posture, temporarily. The transition from moving on four limbs to bipedal movement was not a smooth, linear progression. Nevertheless, without bipedal locomotion, we cannot talk of genuinely modern Homo sapiens.

Bidepal locomotion freed up the hands – for counting, nonverbal communication, signalling, and working. While walking upright has enabled hominins see long distances, there is no obvious physical advantage to being bipedal. Four legged animals can certainly run faster than humans.

It was the early australopithecines, millions of years ago, that took the first tentative steps on the road of bipedalism. Numerous hominin species, coexisting with each other in the branching, messy delta of evolutionary history, adopted a mixture of walking on four limbs and being bipedal.

For instance, an early hominin ancestor, Australopithecus sediba, walked on two feet, but tended to hyperpronate – place excessive weight on the inside of the feet.

Liberating the hand from the pressures of locomotion was the most important consequential result of bipedal movement. It is not just myself saying this. The late Jacob Bronowski (1908 – 1974), Polish-born British scientist, observed that the interaction of the now-free hand and brain made possible the emergence of symbolic thinking, work, and scientific understanding.

In the nineteenth century, Frederick Engels wrote a brief pamphlet called ‘The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man.’ His language reflected the paleontological knowledge of his time. He observed that adopting bipedal locomotion, thus freeing up the hand for labouring activities, was the crucial step in the emergence of modern humans.

Engels’ pamphlet presented a simple picture, to be sure. Future scientists will fill in the blanks, and flesh out a more complex scenario. However, changing our environment through labouring activities – and indeed being impacted by our environment in turn – set the stage for the emergence of consciousness.

No, the journey from bipedalism to consciousness is not a short walk (no pun intended). However, the above provides us with a basic framework to approach a large topic. In the meantime, let’s celebrate the humble sea robin, whose steps may be small, but significant in understanding how vertebrates transitioned from aquatic to land environments.

Oh, and for Kirk Cameron’s benefit; no, of course ducks and crocodiles are not related, but then these hybrids come close to being the creature he mocked. So the crocoduck came back to bite him.

In the 1970s and 80s, the word ‘greenie’ was an appellation reserved for conservationists and environmentalists.

You know the type – portrayed in the conservative circles as a kind of leftie weirdos. Those fedora-wearing, hippie-dippie, muesli- eating vegans with their soy lattes, choosing to drop out of society, more concerned about endangered species rather than ‘Aussie workers’. That purported lifestyle, ridiculed until today in hard right media quarters, is a cultural barrier many Australian workers have to any kind of ecosocialist perspective.

The false dichotomy between ‘jobs vs environment’ is being exposed for the fraudulent distraction that it is. However, my purpose is not to revisit that debate, but to focus on the issue of living in harmony with the environment. So being a ‘greenie’, motivated by concern for ecological welfare, is a kind of weirdo-lifestyle pursuit?…..I see.

That is interesting, because in the 70s and 80s, we had the portrait of Grizzly Adams, the lone frontier man who lives in the woods, in harmony with nature, only consuming enough for himself to live sustainably.

The Grizzly Adams character was meant to be a lesson in living in peace with the natural world, not against it. The frontiersman embodied the free spirit of the self-motivated individual, living free and respectful of nature.

That is not the first example of the allegedly self-starting pioneer living in tune with nature’s beat. Henry David Thoreau (1817 – 1862), author of Walden and proponent of individual self-reliance, lived in an environmental paradise, cultivating the food and sustenance needed from the natural resources around him. Going off-grid (a term we use today), he detached himself from the harmful influence of big government (so the story goes) and lived as a free individual.

Thoreau’s vision was that of an individualist laissez-faire capitalist, transitioning from a purely labouring person to that of a budding sovereign citizen. No, he did not describe himself as such, but we may see the beginnings of an ultra-libertarian perspective in Thoreau’s relationship with the environment.

Never matter that runaway slaves, whose individual desire for self-improvement went acknowledged, founded their own self-reliant community in Concord, Massachusetts before Thoreau even dreamt of his scheme, speaks volumes about how we in the settler-colonial Anglophone world regard the environment. Pioneering frontiersmen are applauded for their indomitable self-reliant spirit; the victims of colonial settler societies, and their drive to be free, are forgotten.

When Tory politicians in Australia – those in the misnamed Liberal-National coalition – want to pretend to be farmers, they wear an Akubra (not forgetting the leather shoes). A bit similar in poseur fashion to the greenie hippie-dippies wearing their outsized fedoras.

Yes, you may find fedora-wearing, self-absorbed types who think they are sensational because they have chosen to go vegan. At least, they are speaking about the environment, and the harmful impact of industrialised agriculture on nutrition as an important topic.

Now, a case study…..

The Wye river, flowing through Herefordshire in the UK, is the inspiration for poetic descriptions of the bucolic English countryside. William Wordsworth wrote of his joy at seeing the vast unspoiled landscape of Heredfordshire. Who would not want to live in harmony with this lush, pristine environment?

I wonder what he would say today.

Over the last 25-30 years, the River Wye has been systematically polluted by a growing poultry industry. Tonnes of harmful phosphates and surplus nitrates, deriving from the excess chicken manure at the intensified poultry processing units, is washed into the Wye river by the rains. The millions of chickens produce way too much manure to be absorbed entirely by the soil.

The Wye river has turned into a vast algal bloom, and brown slime predominates in the river. Marine life has had to migrate to less polluted parts of the river, or else be overwhelmed by the algae. Native vegetation and flowers, once reliant on a clean river system, are disappearing. No matter how sturdy or resilient the Grizzly Adams pioneering spirit may be, rugged individualism is not enough to respond to corporate-generated agricultural pollution.

It is well-nigh impossible to live the Thoreau-esque lifestyle, free and in harmony with nature, when that natural environment is being systematically exploited and destroyed. What is required, as the much-maligned greenie groups are demanding, is change and regulations targeting the exploitive poultry farming industry.

Yes, I can hear the howls of outrage from the Tory-corporate media; more regulation means socialism, bowing to the dictates of overarching government. The word bureaucracy has acquired negative connotations – sclerotic, geriatric, Soviet-style resistance to change. Except that bureaucracies, such as environmental protection agencies, have been at the forefront of social change, monitoring the environmental vandalism of large corporations.

Responding to climate change induced problems will require stronger regulations of predatory and destructive corporate practices. Holding companies accountable for the fossil fuels they use, the pollution they create, and the species they drive to extinction will require the kind of regulatory bodies that Musk, Trump and the modern day conquistadors spend time attacking.

Regulatory action has been remarkably successful in reversing the ecological damage caused by rapacious industries.

The Endangered Species Act, which reached its fiftieth anniversary last year, has catalogued and preserved multiple species from certain extinction. Cleaning up the acid rain has been achieved by regulatory legislation monitoring and reducing the harmful atmospheric acidification. We would still have a worsening hole in the ozone layer were it not for environmental protection efforts.

If you wish to live the Thoreau, ruggedly individualist lifestyle in the forest, please be my guest. Just remember that a clean, hospitable environment is possible only when the community bands together to protect it.

Kenan Malik, columnist for The Guardian newspaper, invites us to examine the changing nature of Britishness, and the things in which the Anglophone nations take pride – or feel a sense of shame. The concept of Britishness, based on an identification with Britain’s imperial past, has declined over recent years.

Malik elaborates on a study of social attitudes towards identity in Britain today. Commissioned by the National Centre for Social Research, their report can be read in full here. The findings are interesting in and of themselves, but one particular trend has raised the hackles of the Tory Right. The survey found that pride in Britishness has declined sharply since 2013.

Pride in the British empire has declined, you say? That to me is a commendable achievement. As more of the crimes of the British empire have come to light, a debate has occurred around notions of what it means to be British. For too long, we have allowed the conservatives to define what is worth commemorating in British history.

Over the decades, the conservative movement has attacked what it calls the wokeness campaign. Billionaire libertarian tech-bro Elon Musk, in a colourful turn of phrase, calls it the ‘woke mind virus’. Ah, a clever riposte, devoid of any meaning. What is being confronted is not British history per se, but an imperial mindset cultivated by a decades-long empire-nostalgia narrative.

When statues of slave traders are torn down, it enables us to see English history more clearly.

Cultural imperialism is an enduringly fascinating subject. It makes people consider the empire from the imperialist point of view. It makes us identify the project of empire building as either benign, or uplifting for the colonised peoples, or a bit of both. The obsessive flag-waving, pageantry, film-making and cultural output conceals the sword upon which empires rely, to paraphrase Lord Salisbury’s words.

An imperial mentality among the general public helps acclimatise that public to the atrocities and crimes committed by that empire. Offensive and predatory actions are presented as purely defensive in origin, thus creating a lopsided sympathy for the foot-soldiers of empire.

Now, a philosophical turn….the late great Edward Said, writing in his magisterial book Orientalism, portray themselves as positive, or at least modernising enterprises. It is worth considering his following words:

Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires, as if one shouldn’t trust the evidence of one’s eyes watching the destruction and the misery and death brought by the latest [civilizing mission]

I am quite certain we have all heard the objection that while the British empire may have been periodically violent, it did run the colonies efficiently. The British built railways, road, electric telegraph networks and taught English. This objection is a kind of mental balm applied to soothe the wounds on our collective conscience.

I wonder what benefits English colonisation brought to the indigenous people of Tasmania. The Black War (1824-31) involved the full scale destruction of the indigenous Tasmanians. While the numbers of people killed may have been on a smaller scale than the fatalities in other regions of Australia, the cultural and historical losses of the indigenous are incalculable.

It is only in recent years that this particular war of extermination is coming to light, casting the role of the British empire is a different way intended by its supporters. In the early years of Tasmanian colonisation, the numbers of settlers was quite small. With transportation from Britain increasingly used by the London authorities as a means of social control, the convict population in Tasmania steadily increased.

Conflict with the indigenous was at first infrequent. As the numbers of white colonists increased, (men outnumbered women six to one), the Tasmanian colonial authorities launched expeditions to kidnap indigenous women for the purpose of procreation. That was the proximate cause of increased conflict.

The colonists faced staunch resistance from the indigenous, but the firepower of the English (including convict and settler auxiliary forces) proved to be overwhelming in the end.

These ferocious frontier wars are largely ignored in the retelling stories of the British Empire as a glorious civilising project. Even when indigenous resistance is acknowledged, the actions of the English army are portrayed as purely defensive in nature (check out the 1964 film Zulu as an artefact of this kind of misrepresentation).

Let’s also stop circulating the myth, perpetuated by the English authorities, that the Palawa people (as indigenous Tasmanians are known) went extinct with the death of Truganini in 1876. The passing of the last ‘full-blooded’ Palawa woman, so the story goes, marked the extinction of that particular nation. Indigenous Tasmanians have been demanding a truth-telling commission to quash that slanderously false claim.

The purpose of this article is not simply to recite a catalogue of British atrocities and compel readers to feel a sense of shame. It is to confront the deliberate misreading of imperialist history as a source of pride. If we want to take pride in English history, then there is no shortage of episodes – the peasant uprising in 1381 against the feudal nobility and English monarchy; the Chartist movement; the solidarity of the English working class with the American anti-slavery movement.

The British empire is dead, but its imperial mindset lives on in the Anglophone nations. The United States is only the latest practitioner of the longstanding technique of cultural imperialism.

The Red Sea is the location of an ongoing yet underreported conflict. The Yemeni Ansar Allah movement, lazily named by the corporate media as the Houthis, began attacking American and British maritime traffic. Why? It is a response to the American-supported Israeli assault on Gaza and the Palestinians. The Yemenis have a long tradition of solidarity with the Palestinian people.

The Ansar Allah group, by interrupting Red Sea shipping, intend to stop international trade reaching Israel and its allies in the region. Since October last year, the Ansar Allah group has fired hundreds of drones and missiles at targets in the Red Sea. The Yemeni militant group is waging a war of attrition against pro-American forces in its own country, hoping to detach itself economically and politically from the clutches of the United States.

The US responded with tactics eerily reminiscent of those adopted by the now extinct British empire – gunboat diplomacy. The US Navy deployed the aircraft carrier, the hulking USS Dwight D Eisenhower, to the Red Sea area. In the old days of the British empire, whenever the natives would get restless or rebellious, London would send British gunboats to the restive colonies.

The mere sight of massive British gunboats, so London authorities reasoned, would be so intimidating that the rebellious foreigners, quivering in fear, would quickly give up and submit to British rule. Well, that tactic did not work – the natives still fought for their independence. Apparently the authorities in Washington ignored the lessons of history.

With the Ansar Allah Yemenis attacking cargo shipping, surely they need to be taught a lesson in American power? We have all watched the Top Gun movies, where the aircraft carrier is the sanctuary. A safe and powerful presence in a dangerous world, surely the mere sight of the imposing USS Eisenhower would dissuade the rebellious Yemenis from continuing their destructive campaign?

Operation Prosperity Guardian is the official name of the US-led military campaign to stop Houthi attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea. Inaugurated in December 2023, the US and its coalition partners (a handful of token contributions made by American allied nations) would surely easily defeat these ragtag Yemeni rebels.

What Washington, London and Ottawa forgot to mention is that the Ansar Allah group can strike back – successfully. The US Navy spokespeople have admitted that the Red Sea confrontation has involved the heaviest, sustained and ferocious battles experienced since World War Two.

The Telegraph, a British newspaper which unfailingly encourages US wars overseas, admitted that the Houthis have defeated the US Navy. Not only have the massive, hulking aircraft carriers of the US Navy failed to deter Houthi attacks, the Red Sea is the scene of numerous exchanges of drones and missile fire.

The Ansar Allah has not only maintained its attacks, but its campaign has become even more diverse and sophisticated. Small arms fire, hijackings, and ballistic missiles are tactics practiced by the Yemeni rebel group. American sailors, returning from their Red Sea deployment, describe being traumatised by the experience – actually being fired upon by your enemies.

In July this year, the USS Eisenhower returned home from its Red Sea, after months of unrelenting attacks and strikes by the Ansar Allah forces. The NY Times tried to put a brave face on what was a failed mission.

Maritime trade through the Red Sea has declined by 90 percent since the start of Operation Prosperity Guardian. What was supposed to be a cakewalk for the US Navy has turned into an un-winable quagmire. Speaking of which, this past August was the third anniversary of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, another conflict that was supposed to be a walk in the park, but turned into a humiliating defeat for the United States.

Jonathan Hoffman, writing in the New Arab magazine, states that after nine months, the Houthis remain undeterred in their course of action. While Washington likes to present its maritime campaign as purely retaliatory and necessary in confronting ‘evil’ Houthis, the latter have consistently stated their motivations.

What motivates the Ansar Allah group in the Red Sea is Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza, and Washington’s unstinting support for that war. The Gaza war, and its horrendous toll of Palestinian lives, is the original catalyst for the maritime campaign by the Houthis. The major trading powers, such as the US, Britain, France and others, have continued their voluminous trade with Israel, enabling its war machine to continue unimpeded.

Let’s not forget that every one of the US Navy’s missiles that is fired costs millions of dollars to replace. The US military has a bloated, gargantuan budget. The Pentagon has already allocated billions for missile production. That is not considering the multi year 2 trillion-dollar plan to upgrade and modernise nuclear weapons. All this while America’s aging infrastructure is deteriorating and buckling in heatwave conditions.

The US aircraft carrier had its time in World War Two. Today, it is a relic, an antiquated structure from a bygone era of gunboat diplomacy. Its purported intimidatory value is now as defunct as the British empire. It is time to re-examine the swollen military budget, and reallocate money to spending on public and social needs.

In today’s social media saturated culture, it is easy to find comeback stories. Inspirational narratives of people, from all walks of life, who overcame crushing defeats to go on to glory and accomplishments are meant to motivate us. In this age of the cult of self-motivation, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and making something of yourself, is a mantra we can all abide by.

From the cranky uncle who loudly proclaims that young people today don’t know the value of hard work, to the self-appointed experts that populate talkback radio in Sydney, the self-made man is all around us – if we are to believe these stories. Hey, did not Henry David Thoreau (1817 – 1862) American philosopher, environmentalist and self-help advocate, counsel his audience to build a self-sustaining community of individuals in Walden?

Yes, he did, and he built a paradise for himself and his cothinkers at Concord, Massachusetts. Nothing wrong with that, and reading Walden is all well and good. Except for one inconvenient fact; African Americans, formerly enslaved, were building their own Walden-type community long before Thoreau. Having the self-motivation to escape the violence of enslavement has not entered the Anglophone public consciousness in the same way as Thoreau’s social experiment.

Be that as it may, let’s get on with meeting the inspirational comeback character in our story – Uncle Otto. His full name was Otto Skorzeny, an Austrian-born German military officer. Achieving the rank of Obersturmbannführer (lieutenant colonel) in the Waffen SS, he made a name for himself as a daring, innovative commander, rescuing Mussolini from partisan captivity in 1943, removing Hungarian leader Admiral Miklos Horthy in 1944 when the latter’s pro-Axis sympathies wobbled, and was rewarded with high decorations from Hitler himself.

The Waffen SS, the military branch of the general SS, committed the most heinous atrocities in German-occupied territories, and were direct perpetrators of the Holocaust. A niche occupation and skill set, to be sure, but they did find gainful employment after the end of the Third Reich, as we shall see.

Before the war, Skorzeny had joined the Austrian equivalent of the Nazi party, and agitated for the installation of a pro-Nazi government in that nation. Growing to 6-foot 4 inches tall, a fencing enthusiast with a large scar on his face, he became a dashing, debonair achiever, and favourite commando of Hitler’s. The Waffen SS left burned out villages, piles of corpses, murdered POWs, and ethically cleansed territories in their wake.

Skorzeny’s rescue of Mussolini demonstrated his courage – he and his team used hang gliders to attack the Gran Sasso mountaintop where Mussolini was being held captive. Awarded the Iron Cross military decoration for his paratrooper mission, it seemed that Skorzeny’s career could only hit new and exciting heights.

However, his flourishing career as a licensed killer was coming to an end. Alas, Nazi Germany faced a crushing military defeat and combined Allied occupation. What was to become of our multinational murderer? Never fear, because our Uncle Otto found a new benefactor, who helped him repurpose his skill set for new outlets.

Captured by American forces, he was put on trial for war crimes in a military tribunal, and acquitted. In 1947, Uncle Otto escaped captivity, along with his fellow former SS officers – by dressing in American uniforms. It should have been within the intelligence capabilities of the American army to predict this tactic, after all, during the Battle of the Bulge, Skorzeny and his team penetrated enemy lines to wreak havoc, by disguising themselves as American soldiers.

Skorzeny’s commando tactics gained widespread popularity after the war, and were subsequently widely imitated by the imperialist powers.

Be that as it may, Skorzeny and his fellow ex-SS officers made their way to Franco’s Spain. General Franco, an Axis-allied commander, remained in power long after the end of the war. Spain became a sanctuary for Skorzeny, who reinvented himself as a businessman, with an eccentric habit of keeping Nazi memorabilia around.

It was a new world in the post-1945 Cold War. The new state of Israel, victorious over the displaced Palestinians, had a new worry. Egypt, led by Gamal Abdel Nasser, posed a revolutionary and Arab nationalist challenge to the Zionist state. Allegedly, German rocket engineers were employed by Cairo to pass on their skills. Tel Aviv was concerned about the long range striking capabilities of Cairo.

Enter the Mossad, the Israeli secret service, with a plan. Assassinate the German scientists. And guess who they employed as their professional hit man? None other than Otto Skorzeny, former Waffen SS officer. Several German rocket engineers were quietly killed by the new Mossad employee.

In return, Mossad claimed that Skorzeny’s criminal record, and his wanted status as a fugitive on the run by the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal centre, was expunged.

Skorzeny got involved in numerous extreme right wing causes, helping to rehabilitate the reputations of Nazi collaborators and war criminals. His Mossad activities only came to light long after his death. Dying of lung cancer in Madrid in 1975, his funeral featured numerous ex-Nazis, giving the Roman salute and singing WW2-era German songs.

Ex-Nazi rocket scientists found long term employment in the United States after the end of WW2. For instance, Kurt Debus, former SS officer and rocket engineer, escaped from the chaos of war torn Europe, and found refuge in America, where he headed NASA’s Launch Operations Centre (later renamed the Kennedy Space Centre). A white immigrant had a good opportunity to restart their career in the racially segregated United States.

No, of course I am not seriously suggesting taking the example of a former Nazi officer as a basis for inspiration. I am suggesting that behind every story of a self-made person is an entire network of social and political relationships that provide an interconnecting basis for individual achievement.

When the United States (and Britain) rejected providing sanctuary for fleeing European Jewish refugees during the war, but went out of their way to covertly ensure sanctuary for Nazi collaborators and ex-SS personnel, such behaviour opens a window into the character of imperial powers.