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Life

How humans evolved to think about risk may cost Earth dearly

A provocative new book delves into the way humans – and elephants – evolved to manage risk. We might do better to think more like elephants

By Simon Ings

29 January 2025

NEW YORK - NOVEMBER 09: Traders work the floor of the New York Mercantile Exchange November 9, 2005 in New York City. Following a report that inventories of crude and gasoline grew in the last week, oil prices dropped Wednesday. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Traders on Wall Street show how institutions can take big risks

Spencer Platt/Getty Images


Glenn Harrison and Don Ross (Profile Books)

Insights into animal evolution used to come from studying a creature’s evolutionary relationships to its closest relatives. To lampoon this slightly: we once saw humans as a kind of chimp. Our perspectives widened and, looking across ecosystems, we began to see what drives animals who share the same environment towards similar survival solutions. This is convergent evolution – the process by which, say, if you are a vertebrate living in an aqueous medium, you are almost certainly going to end up looking…

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