Until prime-time television debates entered our lives, we believed what our biology teachers had taught us in our schools. The living world, she explained, was divided into two categories: vertebrates and invertebrates. Vertebrates have a backbone. Invertebrates do not. It was a simple classification. A beautifully organised natural world.

Then came prime-time television, and biology had to be rewritten. A third category had quietly evolved, the selective vertebrates.

This fascinating species appears to possess a spinal column. But, in a remarkable feat of evolutionary adaptation, the backbone mysteriously vanishes the moment it suits them. I often wonder how Darwin would have explained this extraordinary example of the survival of the flexible.

The caterpillar has no backbone, yet it has managed quite well. The jellyfish has drifted through the oceans for millions of years without ever feeling the need to evolve a spine. The snail carries its own house wherever it goes. The slug doesn’t pretend to possess a backbone they do not have. Perhaps we have misunderstood evolution all these years. Nature spent hundreds of millions of years producing creatures with stronger skeletons. A surprising number of modern television journalists, however, have evolved in the opposite direction, and in just a few decades, the backbone has become an optional organ for them. It is displayed when convenient, folded away when necessary, and carefully deposited in the newsroom locker before prime-time debates.

Perhaps the next edition of the biology textbook should include a footnote: backbones are essential for most vertebrates. Television exceptions exist. 

Photos and text by Prerna Jain.