Choose the Discourse mode

For an invertebrate, the octopus brain is enormous. Octavia’s was about the size of a walnut—the same size as that of an African gray parrot. Alex, an African gray, trained by Dr. Irene Pepperberg, learned to use a hundred spoken English words meaningfully, demonstrated an understanding of concepts of shape, size, and material, could do math; and asked questions. He could also purposely deceive his trainers—as well as apologize when he was found out.

Debate continues about how much complexity was present in the common ancestor of all these animals. For many years, people have had in mind something like a flatworm. But recent work has raised the possibility that the animal was more complex than had been supposed. Some biologists looking closely at insects have suggested that subtle similarities of design between ourselves and arthropods show that a small ‘executive brain’ was present all the way back in the early bilaterians—this has been argued by Nick Strausfeld and Gabriella Wolff, and would be a change of view.

For a famous place, it was very dark and shabby. A few old women were sitting in a corner, drinking tiny glasses of sherry. One of them was smoking a long pipe. A little man in a top hat was talking to the old bartender, who was quite bald and looked like a toothless walnut. The low buzz of chatter stopped when they walked in.

In a weak attempt to create more of a story (it’s a misconception that ‘Cats’ has none, when in fact it does, just not a particularly compelling one), Hooper and co-writer Lee Hall have made Macavity a more nefarious character, lurking on the sidelines of each of the previous cats’ songs. When they’re finished, he works some kind of magic — enticing the ever-hungry Bustopher Jones (James Corden) with a pile of mouthwatering trash — that causes them to vanish in a puff of dander. They reappear across town, held captive on a barge in the River Thames by battered old Growltiger (Ray Winstone), who serves as Macavity’s surly accomplice.

Winston wrenched his body out of bed … and seized a dingy singlet and a pair of shorts that were lying across a chair. The Physical Jerks would begin in three minutes. The next moment he was doubled up by a violent coughing fit which nearly always attacked him soon after waking up. It emptied his lungs so completely that he could only begin breathing again by lying on his back and taking a series of deep gasps. His veins had swelled with the effort of the cough…