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Wow! It's so great to be here!

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I'm so happy to see you guys.

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Arguably, one of the most disruptive 
events in the history of the planet

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has got to be the rise
of the animal kingdom.

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Definitely.

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I mean, here is Earth, simmering along, 
minding its own, single-cell business

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for nearly four billion years,
and some group of restless cells

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comes together and decides 
to become multi-cellular metazoa and well...

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the neighborhood's 
never been the same since, has it?

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And we have a remarkable 
diversity of animals

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with whom we share the planet, don't we?

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Millions of species swimming, 
scurrying, slipping around,

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seemingly endless forms,
most beautiful.

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How do you make sense of it all?

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Well, it may just help to know 
that 99% of all animal life

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fall into just eight major groups.

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Eight body plans.

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Scientists call these "phyla".

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And if you know these eight plans,
you've got an incredible grasp

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of the constraints and freedoms 
of the animal world.

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And there's something special
about these eight phyla.

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While species go extinct every day,
these phyla have prevailed and persisted

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for over 550 million years.

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Every mass extinction 
the planet has mustered,

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they've managed to make it through.

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So who are these amazing methuselahs?

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Let's look at plan 1: the sponges.

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These are Earth's first 
true blue animals.

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They scripted that vital language
for single cells to work together

30
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with other cells for a common cause,
in this case, pumping.

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So hail Mother Sponge!

32
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It sucks, it pumps, 
it's a mother of us all.

33
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And you know, some of us have a problem
being descendants from apes. Well...

34
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So, plan number 2: the cnidarians:
anemones, jellies and corals.

35
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These were the first guys to put muscle 
and nerve together into a body plan,

36
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and with that, we get animal behavior.

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They're characterized by a round body, 
radially symmetric,

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and little stinging cells called "cnidae".

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If any of you have been 
stung by a jellyfish,

40
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you know what I mean, 
they pack a punch.

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So these were the first guys
to coin animal behavior.

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Okay, our next body plan –
look at those little anemones –

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– are the platyhelminthes.
Very contemptuous phylum,

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many biologists don't feel 
it's a true phylum,

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but comprised of many different phyla,

46
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and so right now the animal tree
is being shaken right at its roots.

47
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But what you need to take home
from this representative body plan is that,

48
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here we see the first representation 
of a left-right symmetry.

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Bilateral symmetry, 
which all complex animals have.

50
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And a concentration of sense organs 
right at one part of the body.

51
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The makings of a head,

52
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and with a head you can have 
directed animal behavior,

53
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and hunting.

54
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This is also where we think 
animals first started

55
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to get a threshold level 
of genetic complexity

56
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and pole body patterning genes 
called Hox genes.

57
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And that, coupled with the right 
environmental conditions,

58
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and serendipitous fossilization,

59
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catalyzed its incredible 
radiation of animal diversity

60
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best known from the Cambrian explosion.

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Also in this group is, we think,
the appearance of the first penis.

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And as I've raised that subject,

63
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I have to talk about one modern 
representative, the turbellarians.

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These guys have not one, 
but two penises that are hypodermic.

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And they joust with them.

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And the first one to jab its sperm 
into the other gets to be the boy,

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while the jab-ee gets to be the girl.

68
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And this remarkable behavior
is aptly called penis-fencing.

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Go figure.
(Laughter)

70
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OK, moving on to the fourth: 
we have the annelids.

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These animals have 
a body cavity called the coelom.

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And they're known by having these 
little rings running down their bodies.

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What these guys brought 
into the animal world

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was the ability to penetrate into the soil,
bring oxygen in and release carbon dioxide.

75
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And releasing carbon dioxide
actually helped

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to heat the planet up and make it 
more livable for other life.

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Now we've got too much CO2, 
but at the time,

78
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this was really an important thing
that the annelids brought to the planet –

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Bioturbation. Okay.

80
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Our next plan we've got are the mollusks.
Amazing phylum.

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Tiny little shelled animals to giant squid.

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All characterized by a single slimy foot.

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And what the mollusks show us, 
most of them are shelled.

84
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And we can see in the mollusk phylum 
is this arms race escalation,

85
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with shells becoming 
more increasingly complex

86
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in response to more complex predation 
from other phyla,

87
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so they kind of exemplify 
an arms race escalation,

88
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with some of them actually 
doing away with the shell completely,

89
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trading it for smarts and psychedelic skin 
that we see in the squid and the octopus.

90
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And these are the guys
who can change color

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and texture of their skin
in split-seconds,

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the rockstars of the mollusk phylum.
Gotta love these guys. (Laughter)

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And they can even be bipedal!

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Okay, our next phylum are 
the echinoderms, the spiny-skinned guys.

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The sea stars, sea urchins,
and sea cucumbers.

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And they're characterized by 
an internal skeleton of little plates

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that can lock together with 
very little energy expenditure.

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And underneath are these tube feet 
that allow them to move

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and shuttle food to their central mouth.

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Now, these are a complex animal,

101
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but they decided to do away
with bilateral symmetry,

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they have a five-part symmetry.

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And they have no brain.

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And they seem like they don't do much, 
they just sit there on the sea floor.

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But you speed them up in timelapse and 
you see that they're incredibly industrious.

106
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And they actually comprise the bulk 
of the biomass in the deep sea environment.

107
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Very successful body plan.

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Our next one, the true rulers 
of the planet, the arthropods.

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Now, if you look at all the animals,
the arthropods comprise the bulk.

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Eighty percent are arthropods.

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If you added up the biomass of humans,
they are 300 times the biomass of all humans.

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And most of them are insects!

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Did you know that four out of five
animals have six legs?

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So, these are the first guys 
that walked out of the ocean

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and started to explore at land.

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They were the first ones 
that took to the skies.

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100 millions of years before the birds 
ever thought of doing such a thing.

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So, what is the secret to their success?

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How are they able to be in 
every environment imaginable?

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Well, it has something to do 
with that outside skeleton,

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their exoskeleton.

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And their diversity of appendages 
down their body,

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like a little Swiss army knife.

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They can have multiple antennae,
multiple legs, multiple wings,

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multiple reproductive organs,
it's just an amazing attribute

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that allows them to infiltrate 
every habitable space on the planet.

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And the last phylum, the chordates.

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This is, of course, where we originated 
over 550 million years ago.

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And it's characterized 
by having a spinal cord,

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right there you see in pink, 
that blossoms into a brain in vertebrates,

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and underneath a notochord,

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which turns into a bony spinal column 
in the vertebrates as well.

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And this is all the guys that 
make the silver screen all the time.

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The mammals, and the amphibians, 
and the reptiles, and of course, the fish.

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The bulk of the chordates are the fishes.

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And these are all the guys 
we know and love.

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And of course, the fish –

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that's one of my favorite fish, 
the mola mola.

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And it includes our kin, 
our land-loving hominids.

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These are my little ones.

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So that's the basic eight,

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and, I think, to recap,
why don't we do that with a song?

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Alright, you guys ready? Okay.

144
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And now, a song.

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The sponges started everything,
pumping up a storm,

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...among the ruckus, 
the rest of us was born.

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Cnidarians muscled up, 
mixed nerves into the potion,

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and with that quick addition
got us brand-new locomotion.

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The flattish worm-like hunters 
got a head and then some traction,

150
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and with some senses and a penis – 
Oooh! – scored some action.

151
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The shape of life, yeah.

152
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And here we have penis fencing 
in flagrante delicto.

153
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The shape of life, yeah...

154
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Now, being male and female,
that just works out great,

155
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anybody in the world
can double as your date.

156
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Then all hell broke loose 
and the other plans appeared.

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The Cambrian exploded, 
launched the world into high gear.

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The annelids took to the dirt 
and bioturbatin'.

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The mollusks took to fighting
and arms race escalating.

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Echinos said, "The heck with this,
we're better off instead

161
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taking life into the slow land,
lopping off that head."

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Arthros stepped onto the land 
and ruled, that ain't no mystery,

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till bonehead chordates followed 
and soon would rewrite history.

164
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The shape of life, yeah...

165
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Okay, very good!
(Applause)

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So why study these mostly 
slimy, spineless critters

167
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with whom we co-pilot spaceship Earth?

168
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Well, were it not for them, 


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none of us would be strutting and 
fretting our ten minutes upon this stage.

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It's the animal life and 
all the life that came before us

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and with whom we share this planet 
that not only set the stage,

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but created the very stage for all life 
to flourish in the future.

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And I can't put it any more eloquently 
than E. O. Wilson, who says:

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"Humanity is exalted, not because 
we are so far above every thing living,

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but because knowing them well
elevates the very concept of life."

176
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Thank you.

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(Applause)