It is much more complicated to produce desired changes in the larger eukaryotic animals. In these creatures the egg itself is programmed in the mother’s ovary, where it builds upon itself in the foundation of the embryo’s development. Only after completion of this embryonic structure does each cell produce proteins that change the cell itself, as well as other nearby cells, in a process that finally results in the juvenile organism. How this process has been mastered and altered is too complex to go into in this curtailed discussion. There are other facets of Yilanè science that have to be considered.

Mathematics must be discussed since many Yilanè have heard of this, and since all of the sciences employ it, though they will not have run across it at other times. The following explanation, although brief, is accurate.

The science of mathematics is based upon numbers. If you wish to understand numbers, spread your hands out before you, palms down, and inner thumbs touching. Wriggle your outside thumb on the right. That is called number one. Now moving one finger at a time from right to left, the adjacent finger is two, the next finger three, the inner thumb four. Left inside thumb five, fingers six and seven, and finally the outside thumb on the left is ten. Ten is also called base, a technical term that we will not go into here. It is enough to know that numbering starts over again after the base is reached, ten-and-one, ten-and-two, right up to two-times-ten. There is no limit to the number of multiples of ten that you can have. That is why numbers are so important in the sciences where things are weighed, measured, recorded, counted, and so on. Mathematics itself is very simple, just a recording of things that are bigger than things, smaller than other things, equal or not equal to other things.

The origin of mathematics is lost in time. Although mathematicians themselves believe that the base ten was chosen because we have ten fingers. They say that any number may be chosen as a base, though this seems highly unlikely. If we took two for a base then 2 would be 10, 3 would be 11, then on with 4=100, 5=101, 6=111 and so on. Very clumsy and impractical and of no real use. It has even been suggested that if ustuzou could count, a singularly wild idea in any case, that their base 10 would be our 12. All our numbers would change as well; the 40 million years of Yilanè existence would shrink to a mere 30 million years. You can see where such unwise speculation might lead so it is best we abandon such unhealthy theorizing.

CULTURE