What's life really about? (Capital 'L' life that is, the essence of what makes our living, breathing blue planet unique in our solar system.) To paraphrase John Donne, no species is an island. Life is all about relationships: who eats whom, who sleeps with whom, who competes and cooperates with and who cannot live without whom.

What can we learn from other species? From their relationships? From the landscapes we share? From the communities we form - all of us, human and all the other lives? What does it mean to be human, and where do we fit in the web of all life?

I think E.O. Wilson has it right with his theory of biophilia: to be human is to have an innate affiliation for all forms of life, whether animal or vegetable, large or small, domestic or wild. For me, nature is very much the community I belong to; other species - like them or not, know them or not - are just as much kin as my human family.