"Contrary to expectations, urban landscapes are some of the most interesting ecologies. The variety of landscapes and microclimates (roads, parks, gardens, rail, canals, industries), the intense flow of exotic materials for commerce and gardening, and continual disturbance, all contribute towards many opportunities for nature. Due to such variety, cities are often more biologically diverse than the surrounding countryside. Nature is astoundingly creative, and keen to exploit subtle convoluted chance.

Nature continues to happen, in more astounding forms, even within our most artificial environments. Some bizarre relations of humans and nature from The Ecology of Urban Habitats

• The overall result is that urbanized areas, despite a large reduction in the total vegetation cover, support a higher number of species than the surrounding countryside. [p. 11]
• .. tropical fauna and flora occurs in certain canals where water used to cool machinery is discharged. Thermal pollution of the River Don by the steel industry has enabled wild figs to colonize its banks, [p. 118]
• In fact all industry, as it gets tidied up, becomes less interesting for wildlife. The very features that allow a rich flora and fuana to survive - the squalor, rubbish, old buildings and machinery, derelict huts, rotting dumps, ineffiecient handling - are becoming unacceptable to management [p. 122]
• [Oxford ragwort] A native of Southern Italy, was cultivated in the Oxford Botanical Garden for over a hundred years before it eventually escaped (1794) and soon reported as plentiful on almost every wall in the town. About 1879 it reached the Great Western Railway system where the plumed seed engaged in a new form of dispersal, being carried along in the vortex of air behind express trains, or even inside them [p. 139]
• the reasons for caraway being limited to railway verges in Scotland ... caraway cake topped with fresh seeds was pocketed at post-funeral teas ... on the way home they tried to eat it, gave up and threw it out of the window [p. 142]
• A more subtle effect of dogs can be observed on the base of street trees against which they urinate. This area, known as the canine zone, carries a different epiphytic flora to the rest of the trunk. [p. 162]
• Starlings were successfully introduced into New York in 1890-91 as part of a project to establish in the States all the plants and animals mentioned by Shakespeare. [p. 171]
• .. [an] experiment took place in Germany during the Third Reich when exotics [foreign plants] became enemies of the state and for a short time naturalistic planting flourished ... [p. 184]"

On April 20, 1967, the unmanned lunar lander Surveyor 3 landed near Oceanus Procellarum on the surface of the moon. One of the things aboard was a television camera. Two-and-a-half years later, on November 20, 1969, Apollo 12 astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan L. Bean recovered the camera. When NASA scientists examined it back on Earth they were surprised to find specimens of Streptococcus mitis that were still alive. Because of the precautions the astronauts had taken, NASA could be sure that the germs were inside the camera when it was retrieved, so they must have been there before the Surveyor 3 was launched. These bacteria had survived for 31 months in the vacuum of the moon's atmosphere. Perhaps NASA shouldn't have been surprised, because there are other bacteria that thrive under near-vacuum pressure on the earth today. Anyway, we now know that the vacuum of space is not a fatal problem for bacteria.

Biologists Raœl Cano and Monica Borucki had extracted bacterial spores from bees preserved in amber in Costa Rica. Amber is tree-sap that hardens and persists as a fossil. This amber had entrapped some bees and then hardened between 25 and 40 million years ago. Bacteria living in the bees' digestive tracts had recognized a problem and turned themselves into spores. When placed in a suitable culture, the spores came right back to life.