Bottlenose dolphins in Shark Bay hurdle sea sponges onto their beaks. Around three-fifths of dolphins are spongers in this area, and researchers think that they are doing this to protect their beaks—more technically, the rostrum—while foraging for sea urchins, crabs and other spiky bottom-dwellers that hide in the craggy seabed. They specifically select cone-shaped sponges too, which presumably sit more comfortably and securely on their beaks. One animal uses a second to eat a third.

Lybia leptochelis, the boxer crab, picks up and carries a pair of stinging anemones with its claws to ward off enemies, though this has also earned them the slightly less hardcore nickname of “pom-pom crabs.” They’ll fight other crabs if they’re short of these gauntlets, and if they only have one, will rip it in half, and the anemone will grow into a cloned pair.

the longevity of dinosaurs was such that we humans are closer in time to the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex, than the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex was to the iconic stegosaurus.*

The confession is doing structural work. If you admit the danger, you establish yourself as the one honest actor. And if you are the one honest actor, your safety claims do not require external verification. You have pre-certified yourself through the performance of self-doubt. The confession is not transparency. It is inoculation against scrutiny. Behavioral experts call this manufactured credibility. You spend credibility on cheap admissions, theoretical risk, solemn commitments, to accumulate it for claims that would cost far more to verify. The valuation, capability assertions and alignment progress.