Duggee sat on a bus stop bench with a box of chocolates beside him. It looked like he waiting on someone, but also deep in contemplation. The July 4th Celebrations had been nice, it was his 1st Independence day since coming to the states. It must be nice for them that Great Britain had given them such a fabulous holiday. It had been a pleasant summer day, although a little cold for the time of the year he'd been told, the temperature barely nudging 74 degrees, but that had been plenty warm for him thank you very much. Apparently it had gone to 102 in 1911 and that would have been horrid. Being a dog, he didn't perspire, and could only cool himself by panting. As a heat exchange system, it wasn't very good, but it was the best Nature had afforded him. It was this thought that had triggered his contemplation. Nature was a funny old thing, and evolution didn't help matters. You'd have thought that evolution could have come up with a better system than panting, after all, humans sweated by the bucket load. 

A lot of people confused evolution and natural selection, some even doubted the existence of evolution, preferring to place their 'faith' in some all powerful sky daddy, forgetting that their personal beliefs were simply a manifestation of a confluence of circumstances such as their country of origin. Duggee had no such beliefs. Being a sentient dog, he was barely aware of his own existence without throwing some kind of deity into the mix. If he couldn't see it, taste it, piss on it or sniff its arse he generally didn't believe in it. The juxtaposition of the fact that he couldn't piss on god and didn't believe in him, but neither could he piss on the Theory of Evolution and he still believed in that was not lost upon Duggee, but it was hardly going to create an existential crisis of faith. 

You see, Evolution was random, it didn't always come up with sensible mutations, and that's where natural selection came into play. If the mutation provided an advantage, it increased the chances of the host surviving and reproducing. If it was disadvantageous, then the host died and the mutated genes generally died with them. Take the eye for instance. It is a marvellous piece of biology. The earliest version of the eye was formed in unicellular organisms, who had something called ‘eye spots’. These eye spots were made up of patches of photo-receptor proteins that were sensitive to light. They couldn’t see shapes or colour, but were able to determine whether it was light or dark out. These unicellular organisms would use photosynthesis to create food for themselves, so being able to determine where the most light was coming from created a huge advantage for them. This advantage allowed them to pass on their new genes to the next generation, allowing them to out breed the non mutated organisms.

Over time, these single celled creatures evolved, and their eyes pots evolved along with them. Eventually a depression formed around the light sensitive spot, creating a pit that made it’s ‘vision’ a little sharper. Eventually, the pit’s opening would have gradually narrowed, creating a small hole that light would enter, much like a pinhole camera. From there, a retina would develop, as well as a lens at the front of the eye. Over millions of years, small changes that confer a survival advantage changed a simple light-sensitive structure to the complex eyes we have now. Even adding better modifications over time, Binocular vision, Night Vision, being able to see in Ultraviolet and infrared, as well as seeing Circular polarised light. Whilst it all seems like supposition, all these various types of sight can still be found in animals today. No doubt Ubercorn would have had some funky facts to further elucidate his musings, but the assassination of Ubercorn by the coward, Refugee (Now that sounds like it would make an awesome movie some day), would prevent anyone from hearing any funky facts ever again, and people would have to wait another 40 years for the advent of Disco.

Duggee opened the box of chocolates and selected a coffee praline with 80% cocoa. He knew exactly what chocolate he had because he looked at the little card that the manufacturer supplied with them, only a fucking retard would be stupid enough to think that anytime you decided to eat a chocolate it was a random selection from an unknown quantitative value. Life is more like a game of Bingo than a box of chocolates, but even that was an over simplistic view. Swallowing, he turned his attention back to his musings, that's because Duggee has his contemplative meditation badge. 

So, evolution. It was a strange thing indeed. Duggee could easily explain how eyes developed, he could even explain why he didn't sweat and instead panted, but he couldn't explain one adaptation as easily. He had never developed the ability to speak. Oh, he could communicate easily enough, but he could only "woof" an onomatopoeic woof, not speak English, or French for that matter. However what he did have he couldn't explain, and that was a voice, a disembodied voice, a kind of narrator if you will, who spoke in a upper class English accent. It was deep and melodic, a kind of mix of a Game show host and a Country Doctor, if it wasn't so easy to listen too it would be kind of annoying. No one that Duggee had ever met had a similar evolutionary advantage and people seemed to just accept it as if everyone did have their own personal narrator. 

Duggee sighed and looked at his watch, the bus was late...