Why Is Studying and Understanding Evolution So Important? Chris Packham

I think it's really important to understand evolution because it provides us with context. Now there is a temptation to think that we are the be all and end all of evolution. And furthermore, we have an animal and there are all of those other animals over there. What evolution and the understanding of it gives us is the fact that that isn't the case. Evolution is continuing apace. We just happened to be looking at it at this snapshot at this point in time.

Furthermore, we are an animal amongst a community of many others at this point on the planet, and that community is only ever going to survive if all of the complex links between it. Everything that links us to those ecosystems, of which we are a part, are functional. And at the moment we're making them unfunctional, we're taking away that resilience.

So, we need to think of ourselves as not above nature, but very much part of nature. And if we could engender that respect, as it were, that knowledge with a greater immediate fortitude would be in a better place. And we can do that on a day-to-day basis. Just thinking about the way that we impact on nature, the most obvious thing is what we eat. Every time you put something in your mouth, it's come from ecosystem services, Earth. It's grown out of soil; some has been harvested from the sea. It's not been magicked out of the, you know, spatial ether.

And it comes with an environmental cost. And by making decisions in a supermarket aisle, you can minimize that environmental cost. And therefore, you can ameliorate the damage that we are doing to the natural environment, our natural environment, our planet, our one and only home, the place that we have to nurture so that we can live happily and harmoniously in the future.