“The ladybird was halfway up the windowpane when it fell off and landed upside-down on the smooth surface of the sill. For a moment it lay there, kicking helplessly, but then, opening its wings it flipped into the and, in a trice, was the right way up. ‘That was clever’, I thought, throwing the intellectual baggage of a biological upbringing out of the window. In truth, any dome-shaped animal that leads a life more athletic than a tortoise and cannot right itself is unlikely to leave ancestors to demonstrate their ineptitude.”