For the "evolution is cool" file, here are some examples of miraculous evolutionary innovations, from Richard Dawkins:
"Bats and dolphins perfected sophisticated echo-ranging systems millions of years before human engineers gave us sonar and radar. Snakes have infrared heat-detectors for sensing prey, predating the Sidewinder missile. Two groups of fish, one in the New World and one in the Old, have independently developed the electric battery, in some cases delivering currents strong enough to stun a man, in other cases using electric fields to navigate through turbid water. Squid have jet propulsion, enabling them to break the surface at 45mph and shoot through the air. Mole crickets have the megaphone, digging a double horn in the ground to amplify their already astonishingly loud song. Beavers have the dam, flooding a private lake for their own safe conduct over water. Fungi developed the antibiotic (of course, that's where we get penicillin from). Millions of years before our agricultural revolution, ants planted, weeded and composted fungus gardens. Other ants tend and milk their own aphid cattle. Darwinian evolution has perfected the hypodermic needle (wasp sting), the valved pump (heart), the harpoon (snail mating dart), the fishing rod (angler fish), the water pistol (archer fish aim water jets to dislodge in sects from trees above), the automatic focus lens, the light meter, the thermostat, the hinge, the clock, and the calendar."