Well, if the effect is just experimental error, I agree that no explanation is needed. I was using entropy in the information theoretic sense, as you might ass

Well, if the effect is just experimental error, I agree that no explanation is needed. I was using entropy in the information theoretic sense, as you might assign a measure of entropy in bits to each character in a language. If part of an animal is "less surprising" I'd say it contributed less to the entropy of the whole thing. Maybe that's too woolly. There is a difference between complex mechanical and organic objects, though. See the universal machine tools illustrated on this page: http://www.lathes.co.uk/adcock%26shipleycombination/ http://www.lathes.co.uk/adcock%26shipleycombination/ There is no way you could identify the whole machine based on seeing a small part if an identical part recurs in many different machines. It's not holographic in the way animals are.