There have been many attempts to visualise a system of the animals which in the nineteenth century tended to depict a ‘Great Chain of Being’ with people perched at the top of a tree of life. Zoologist Georg Goldfuss in showing stages of development within the animal kingdom, characterises this idea as a series of interconnected nested circles within an egg; with protozoa at the point of the widest end and ‘higher life’ at the peak of the narrowest.  Transferring his diagram to the Exbury Egg, I see that I nest myself somewhere in the zone of the mollusc.

I fell asleep last night considering life as a cuttlefish and contemplating the idea that every single creature is equally evolved and important to our understanding of the interconnection of species.

System of the Animals, Georg August Goldfuss. Ueber die entwicklungsstufen des thieres, Nurnberg 1817