Transcript: We tend to think of tools and technologies in terms of human development and our control over the natural environment, but life has more generally evolved technologies to solve the problems of adaptation and evolution. Examples include flight, which was invented 150 million years before humans invented it, the detection of infrared waves, which is done by snakes and some forms of fish, sonar detection, done by bats, the sensing of magnetic fields, done by birds and also some fish, and communication by pheromones, or chemical signals, which occur in many species at a rate of more than 100 bits per second, equivalent to about 20 words per second in the English language. These examples of technology may not seem as impressive as our control of the natural environment, but, given sufficient time, it’s unclear how diverse the technologies evolved by life on other planets might be.