Life

Life reminded Slothy that he is not a conscience walking around wearing an animal's body, but that he's an animal who, through no fault of his own, happens to wear a consciousness. The order is important and we, errr, our brains, often confuse it. And so our consciousness, I've noticed, squirms at our animal foundations and feels self-conscious about it. I'm not quite sure I understand what that means. After all, would an animal, acquiring a conscience, wiggle in discomfort, saying "Hey, consciousness, you think too much and your constructed view of the world is slimy"?

Anyway, the winners: oogpister beetles; sea-dragons; sundews (plants that eat mosquitoes--take that, citronella-scented candles!); aye-ayes; vogelkop bowerbirds; star-nosed moles; coral reefs; and chimpanzees. All these fine creatures get an unabashed A+. Life gets an A.

Losers: gorillas--Overrated chest-thumpers. They get an F for pretending to be as cool as the chimpanzees.

Koko: Oh yeah?

Slothrop: Chimps done learned how to embed youtube videos thousands of centuries ago.

Koko: They also learned how to stalk and devour other chimps; they're cannibals. They conduct surgical raids against monkeys too, slaughtering and eating them. Gorillas, on the other hand, remember their mothers and eat leaves.