Abstract
I received the book “Penguins, Pineapples, and Pangolins” <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref1" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">[1]</xref> as a Christmas gift in 2022. It is a fascinating compendium of the first encounters European travelers had during the Age of Exploration (the 15th century to the 17th century) with people, flora, and fauna in distant lands, all narrated in the explorers’ own voices. As the author Claire Cock-Starkey notes in the prologue, “humans have always searched out new experiences and this has fueled exploration. The early Polynesians set out in outrigger canoes, the Vikings used rather larger ships to discover new lands and the Romans were inspired to explore in order to expand their empire” <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref1" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">[1]</xref> . The book brought to my mind a modern explorer of the cosmos, Frank Drake, who passed away <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref2" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">[2]</xref> , <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref3" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">[3]</xref> recently at the age of 92. His first encounter was yet to come.
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