Winner(s), “Dear evolution” contest

This week’s contest, in which I asked readers to write a letter, as an animal or plant, to evolution (based on this Scientific American post), elicited a number of funny entries. My six favorites were these (readers’ names in parentheses):

Humans #1 (Diane MacPherson)

Human #2 (Kevin)

Dung beetle (Vern)

Nudibranch (Alex Shuffell)

Krill (Pliny the in Between)

Chicken (Alektorophile)

Praying mantis (Jonathan Wallace)

This was a tough one.  After due reflection, fasting, and prayers to Ceiling Cat, I have chosen two winners, which are:

Krill, by Pliny the in Between:

Dear evolution,

This whole food chain concept sucks! Not I suppose for your obvious favorites on the top like those hideous mutated sea cows with such a fondness for us , but from our perspective it reeks. Being a krill is no picnic on a good day. And thanks to you about the best we can hope for on any day is to not be digesting in a baleen whales tummy along with tens of thousands of our peers. Ok we get that you like these complex warm blooded creatures who are squishy on the outside instead of the inside as was always intended. But that warm blood that makes them so active and interesting to you makes them awfully hungry all the time. First of all, why’d you have to have sea mammals at all? It’s not like we didn’t have fish in all those niches to begin with and they were hard enough on us. Why’d you indulge their ancestors’ little forays into the water? Sure, now they look like they belong in the sea, but they are still posers! They can’t even breath underwater! You let them off the hook on that one. They wanted out of the sea so bad before, why let them back in? They’re total flukes!

Adding them to our already crowded little would be bad enough but you just had to make them huge didn’t you. It would have been hard enough if they would have stayed the size of a hippo. But NOOOOOO. You had to go and make them bigger than a sea mound. I guess you just didn’t think it sucked enough to be a krill before.

Could you at least given us a sporting chance? Make them chase us down one by one? No, you had to give them row after row of stringy filaments so that they could just open up their grotesquely over sized maws and filter us out by the bushel full.

Ok, I have to stop now because if I waste any more time on this rant I won’t be able to squeeze out the thousands of eggs I need to produce so that maybe one of them will last long enough to produce a single grandbaby krill to keep this cycle going so that all your favorites don’t have to work so hard for a meal.

AND Chicken, by Alektrophile:

Dear Evolution,

How about a rewind button? I am often told you have no goal, but I sometime wonder if making a joke out of me was deliberate. I see formerly small deer-like mammals suddenly taking to the sea and becoming the largest animals ever. What once were furry funny-looking primates suddenly spread all over and delude themselves into thinking they are in charge on this world. And me? My ancestors and their relatives used to rule this earth! A single roar and those upstart mammals would squeak in fright and scamper off to their burrows. Now look at me, I inspire no fear, my name is used to indicate cowardice, and all I got from you for surviving the Chicxulub asteroid are a wattle and a comb.

Granted, strictly speaking I am a success, with over 24 billion of us around the globe, but that is simply the consequence of another of your jokes: did you really have to make me so tasty? How about some proper wings that actually work instead? So please, even just for a day, how about reversing your mistake and make me into, say, something like an Allosaurus? Just for the fun of seeing the farmer’s face when he comes to collect the eggs? Please?

Sincerely,
Gallus gallus domesticus

So, Pliny and Alektrophile, email me with your contact information and I’ll send out an autographed paperback of WEIT.

Thanks to all for entering.  I still maintain that the commenters here are funnier than those on any other godless website.