8 More Science Facts To Make You Sound Clever At Parties

4."You Are Related To The Bacteria In Your Gut"

So, we all know by now that there is a whole load of bacteria cruising around your body. Ew, gross, very interesting and all that. But what people often don't think about, is the fact that you're all just one big happy family. It is almost certain that all life on Earth can trace its evolutionary ancestry back to a single life form, floating around in the ancient primordial soup. From this single organism, every living thing was created, meaning that we are, however distantly, related to every other living thing on the planet. This includes everything from the apple tree that you climbed as a child, to the slug that you stood your bare feet on in the kitchen this morning and, yes, the bacteria living in your gut. Of course, there is the slightest possibility that life was spontaneously created more than once, spawning two or three or a hundred different branches. However, someone has run the numbers on this one and has found that the likelihood that we're all descended from a single common ancestor is 10^2,860 more likely, than multiple ones. Those are pretty good odds.