"Humans are not very typical mammals, but they are quite typical birds," quips Hanna Kokko at the Australian National University in Canberra. In about 90 per cent of mammals, the male's role in reproduction stops at fertilisation – he couldn't care less what happens after that. "Birds, in contrast, have pair bonds, extra-pair copulations (as we call them politely) and divorce. They have all kinds of complicated social relationships, not so unlike humans," says Kokko.
When one is young one doesn’t feel part of it yet, the human condition; one does things because they are not for good; everything is a rehearsal. To be repeated at lib, to be put right when the curtain gets up in earnest. One day you know that the curtain was up all the time. That was the performance.
We are entirely made up of bits and pieces, woven together so diversely and so shapelessly that each one of them pulls its own way at every moment. And there is as much difference between us and ourselves as there is between us and other people.