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I was fascinated to read Graham Lawton's article on improving our immune system's fitness ( 28 March, p 44 ). I have always had a peculiar immune reaction to pathogens, having never really been very ill with anything. Recently, I have started to consider whether this was due to my habit of eating earthworms when …

Alistair Litt has a point about the difficulty of banning wild animal markets of the sort initially linked to the outbreak of covid-19 in China (Letters, 4 April ). However, we should still try to end them, as such markets are doing damage in many parts of the world. The coronavirus is just the latest …

Your coverage of the environmental effects of covid-19 lockdowns is timely and interesting ( 4 April, p 10 ). Just as we are careless about our planet and climate change, we have failed to show enough interest in our healthcare systems in this age of globalisation. Governments and social bodies should take the correct decisions …

Readers such as Bryn Glover discuss how we should define life (Letters, 4 April ). Could we do so by considering what it does? Life exists in bounded systems and it locally "reverses" the Second Law of Thermodynamics by creating order, or lowering entropy. Within set bounds, living things decrease entropy by consuming energy, which …

Thanks for an interesting article on the green parakeets that have invaded London 11 April, p 42 . Ring-necked parakeets have been brought to the West for a long time, no doubt along the Silk Road that has been in existence for thousands of years. The Pergamon Museum in Berlin has a mosaic of one …

Perhaps one of the reasons we are so loath to take vigorous lethal action against invasive parakeets is that they remind us of ourselves. Are we not the ultimate invasive species? Modern humanity likes to live in crowds, is very noisy, wastes a huge amount of food and displaces or renders extinct quite a lot …

Regarding your review of sci-fi novel Providence, which is centred on the rise of powerful artificial intelligence: isn't what we are striving for in our AI omniscience rather than omnipotence? Only if said entity were to have agency might it be omnipotent as a result, but this is by no means logically inevitable 4 April, …

You reported on research suggesting that monkeys travelled on driftwood rafts from Africa to South America 35 to 32 million years ago 18 April, p 19 . The east Atlantic Benguela current would have helped take them to the Amazon when sea level was lower because water was locked up in Antarctic ice. Perhaps people …

Steve Haake looked at the merits of running over walking 14 March, p 34 . One factor wasn't considered: you can save time by reading while walking. Thus walking can't be accused of wasting your time, the way running can.

You report on a study testing various popular diets, which found that they all led to weight loss and improvements in cholesterol in the first six months, although the effects disappeared later on 11 April, p 18 . Perhaps the explanation is that the gut biome isn't used to the new diet and somehow this …