Among the most famous of all scientific texts is On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. The theories of natural selection and survival of the fittest are taught in schools around the world and have shaped modern ecology as we know it. About a century before Darwin, Carl Linnaeus pioneered modern taxonomy, introducing binomial nomenclature and the classification of life that we still use today. Although these systems have been useful in the scientific understanding of nature, over time they have led us to favoring rigid, binary labels; something must either be live or not alive, wild or domestic, male or female. Yet, the reality of life is much more complex, and the more we try to categorize species with distinct labels, the more we end up with ‘exceptions.’ One example that many people know about is that mammals give live birth except platypuses and echidnas, which lay eggs. We also have a tendency when discussing survival of the fittest to imagine ‘fit’ as being physically strong, fast, and smart; think a cheetah chasing down an antelope. But Darwin never referenced physical fitness, his belief was that the individuals that survived and the species that evolved did so because their genes and adaptations were the right match for their environment. This constant pressure to find a niche has led to infinite adaptations many of which do not match commonly held assumptions.