
National Geographic: The Body Changers
- Year:
- 2000
- 12 Views
In the beginning,
there is the fertilized egg.
Its form couldn't be simpler.
But this will change.
It's a piece of work to craft
a creature from a single cell.
By the time it enters the world,
every living thing has experienced
an odyssey of alteration.
Change doesn't stop
with hatching or birth.
Growing up is also
a story of transformation.
over 50,000 times in weight.
Some creatures do far more than
simply grow up.
They reinvent themselves.
A fish can start life as a female
but end up as a male.
A bird can grow or shrink a brain area
for song to suit the season.
Polliwogs become frogs.
Caterpillars turn into butterflies.
We learn few more curious facts
than these.
But it's easy to lose sight of just
how astonishing these changes are!
And even weirder transformers
live among us.
Turn and face the strange.
Meet the body changers.
"Hey, Emma, come here!"
Compared to the epic alteration
of a caterpillar,
our own changes may seem subtle.
But there's no denying that
kids change shape
as they turn into grown-ups.
sexual transformations.
Girls tend to get curvier
from estrogen and other hormones.
A child's body,
and that of many other young creatures,
changes shape when it reaches
the age for reproduction.
These alterations prepare us
to compete for mates,
to have babies,
and to care for them.
They add muscle.
Shoulders become broader.
The body gets hairier.
Vocal cords lengthen as does the jaw.
A child's journey to adulthood
is a long one.
A grown-up is not just
a scaled-up kid,
but one rebuilt from head to toe.
Look back at
and we see that
starting in infancy with small chins,
huge eyes, and plump cheeks.
We are all body changers
and growing old.
It may be no accident that
many baby animals have different
face shapes from their parents.
Adults find baby features irresistible,
a hard-wired system
Silvered leaf monkeys
have Day-Glo offspring.
No one knows why,
unless it's a reminder
to rough-and-tumble mothers
to handle the baby with care.
The young and old of many animals
have different colors,
sometimes to conceal newborns
that are less able to flee danger.
A young, sexually mature male orangutan
has a distinguished, mournful visage.
But in middle age,
his face changes shape.
His new jowly look
is a badge of power.
Changes in our own faces
tell many stories.
A face that forms symmetrically
in the womb
and stays that way through adulthood
can be a mark of good nutrition
and resistance to disease.
Is it any wonder we are highly attuned
to symmetry and find it beautiful?
Old age brings new changes
keeping a faithful record
of wear and tear, loves and losses.
subtle ways that human beings do,
we're surrounded by creatures
Around us are animals
that live out the youthful fantasy of
sprouting wings and flying like a bird.
But we also share the world
with animals
whose stories of change
echo darker myths.
Hercules' enemy,
the many-headed Hydra,
sprouted two new heads
The salamander has powers of
regeneration bordering on the magical.
It will need these talents,
for it lives not in a fairy tale,
but rather in a world of real dangers.
A red-eared slider enters the stream.
The salamander picks
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Citation
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"National Geographic: The Body Changers" Scripts.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2021. Web. 15 Jan. 2021. <https://www.scripts.com/script/national_geographic:_the_body_changers_14568>.