From The Greatest Show On Earth by Richard Dawkins (thanks, Blair):
Behold the mighty dinosaur,
Famous in prehistoric lore,
Not only for his power and strength
But for his intellectual length.
You will observe by his remains
The creature had two sets of brains
One in his head (the usual place),
The other at his spinal base.
Thus he could reason A priori
As well as A posteriori.
No problem bothered him a bit
He made both head and tail of it.
So wise was he, so wise and solemn,
Each thought filled just a spinal column.
If one brain found the pressure strong
It passed a few ideas along.
If something slipped his forward mind
˜Twas rescued by the one behind.
And if in error he was caught
He had a saving afterthought.
As he thought twice before he spoke
He had no judgment to revoke.
Thus he could think without congestion
Upon both sides of every question.
Oh, gaze upon this model beast,
Defunct ten million years at least.
— Bert Leston Taylor (1866 1921)
What if we could have been double-butt sacrocoocygeal-brained? How would that have changed us?
