An Air of Superiority?

     We've harnessed the use of tool, built shelters, then villages and towns, and now cities. Humans have lived, if not comfortably, apart from nature for some time now. Some how we've gotten it worked into our minds that we're smarter and/or better than anything else out there. But think about this, could you survive in a rain forest on your own for a week? What if you weren't the biggest thing out there, are we really that well adapted or have we learned to create environments that suit us instead of adapting to the environment we live in? We don't stop to think about it much but  Michael Crichton and Richard Preston's new book, Micro, has got just the right mix of science fiction and colorful detail to stir up a a thought provoking tale.
      Micro takes seven graduate students and thrusts them into the harsh unforgiving natural world. These grad students are ethnobotanists, arachnologists, entaomologists, botanists, biochemists studying pheromones and an expert in venoms. Stranded in the Hawaiian rain forest with only their brains and any survival gear they can make these students face a world like no other, and to top it all off they've all been shrunk down to the grand size of about half an inch tall. Now, not only is this group of graduate students stranded with no one to call to their aid but they're no longer the biggest thing in the jungle, far from it at that.
      Even if we're not the biggest thing out there we're still the smartest though, right? We're smarter so we can think our way out of a tight spot and are smarter than any old bug that come our way. Except how to avoid a dangerous situation? We're soft creatures, no exoskeleton, we don't produce any kind of poison, and we don't exactly look terribly scary either, we're could be a meal waiting to happen.
     While in the the jungle our group of students faces venomous wasps, sticky spider webs, aggressive ants and an unforgiving world. To survive it'll take more than just wits and thinking you're the best. Crichton and Preston's book Micro is both a thrilling story with a touch of science fiction for flair and has just a few intriguing details not so far from reality that make for a good bit of food for thought.

Are are we really as brilliant and well evolved as we seem to think so are?