I don’t know about this quote specificly, but Darwin spent almost 10 years working on barnacles to establish himself and came to hate them. It was supposed to be a quick detour before releasing ‘On the Origin of Species’. During that time he made a lot of similar statements.
At the time barnacles represented a major taxonomic mystery. They have a bizarre lifecycle that baffled scientists and figuring out what they were related to was baffling
I don’t know about this quote specificly, but Darwin spent almost 10 years working on barnacles to establish himself and came to hate them. It was supposed to be a quick detour before releasing ‘On the Origin of Species’. During that time he made a lot of similar statements.
Reminds me of the Onion video about the man who wastes his life studying anteaters: https://youtu.be/qXD9HnrNrvk?si=x3vd96q2BzMRFAnA
10 years… of barnacles.
yeah. I’d hate my life too.
The history of Darwin’s Barnacles is fascinating https://youtu.be/plYuvU2VZkE?si=Xq6rwC8FdhXFBDYD
At the time barnacles represented a major taxonomic mystery. They have a bizarre lifecycle that baffled scientists and figuring out what they were related to was baffling
The TLDR is that he couldn’t figure iut how to classify the fuckers because he didn’t have modern biology tools like genetic analysis, protein identification, or any molecular biology.