Reptiles evolved a three-bone multihinged lower jaw to permit swallowing large prey, but two of these three bones became an expatiation for improved hearing. The convenient location of these bones made possible the evolution of two little sound-amplifying bones inside your middle ear. No engineer would have dreamed of such an inelegant solution, which goes to illustrate the opportunistic nature of evolution. (As Francis Crick once said, “God is a hacker, not an engineer.”)
The Tell-Tale Brain, VS Ramachandran
