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Fellow citizens of Naples: You are lazy.

In the election held on Feb. 7, an election that determined three of the five seats on the City Council and changed the city's charter in the matter of mayoral succession, just about three out of four citizens didn't bother to show up at the polls.

I know you lead busy lives. Golf, tennis, the beach, boating, shopping and — above all — watching television take up a lot of your time. And the polls were only open for 12 hours on Election Day.

Or maybe Alzheimer's disease is much more widespread among the voters than the epidemiologists believe it to be.

The sad fact is that out of more than 20,000 registered voters, only 4,579 ballots were cast, a turnout of 28.11 percent. They do better in Baghdad, where roadside explosives and suicide bombers make it hazardous to stick your head out your door.

Becoming a citizen of Naples entails more than applying for the homestead exemption on your house or condo. Men and women have died to protect your right to vote. It's the cornerstone of our democracy. You not only have a right to vote, you have a responsibility.

We have all seen neighbors who pay no attention to local affairs. They have the attitude that they've retired to this demi-paradise and they don't want to be bothered by politics or community problems.

They read The New York Times instead of the Naples Daily News. They got frothy at the mouth over Iraq or global warming or FEMA's response to hurricanes or the price of gasoline. But take part in a local election? Not them!

A long time ago, a brilliant politician named Pericles said this about the democracy of ancient Athens: "We regard a man who takes no interest in politics not as a harmless citizen, but as a useless citizen."

Democracy is government by the people. Elections are the way in which the people make their wishes known, and turn those wishes into practical governance. Useless citizens — those who don't bother to vote — edge us away from democracy and toward a government of the few, the monied, the powerful.

One of the results of the Feb. 7 election was to change the city's charter so that the mayor can be eligible for a second consecutive term in office. As readers of this column know, I am strongly in favor of term limits, not term extensions. But the charter revision was passed by an almost three-to-one vote.

The voters have spoken and our mayor is now eligible for re-election after his current term expires. To a large extent, this is a tribute to Mayor Bill Barnett's charm and affability.

Congratulations to our once and future mayor.

One of the issues facing the new City Council will be the question of annexing Pelican Bay. Mayor Barnett has been quoted as saying the annexation is "dead."

The three newly-elected council members — two incumbents and newcomer Bill Willkomm — are all on record as opposing annexation. That means a majority of the council is against the idea.

But politics takes strange bounces. It would behoove the voters, and that other 71.89 percent of registered voters who didn't bother to show up at the polls, to make their feelings known to their elected representatives, one way or the other.

Personally, I'm against annexation. Naples doesn't need to add Pelican Bay to its turf. The city has little to gain, except more expenses for additional police, fire, road maintenance, schools, etc.

Growth is always an issue in Collier County. It is now being presented in the guise of "affordable housing." The cynic in me says that "affordable housing" is a code word that means, decoded, let's do away with our zoning regulations and allow builders to put up high-density developments where they are now forbidden.

I was born in a slum; I don't want to see such neighborhoods arise in Naples — subsidized by taxpayer's money, to boot.

• And now for something completely different.

The recent news that biologists have mapped the genome of Man's Best Friend, the dog, has opened my eyes to a new understanding. People who argue against Darwinian evolution have claimed that there's no evidence for species changing — evolving — into different species. Nobody has seen a fish turn into a frog, they assert.

Well, the evidence has been sitting at our feet all along, faithfully wagging its tail.

Some 40,000 years ago, there were no dogs. But there was the grey wolf. Human tribes domesticated that wild animal and began breeding it into a new species. The grey wolf evolved, under human selection, into the hundreds of breeds of domesticated dogs we know today.

The DNA evidence is clear. The genes tell the story.

No one knows when early human hunting tribes managed to tame a wolf or two, here and there. But over the centuries and millennia, people inbred wolves for traits that they desired, slowly changing the domesticated wolves into faithful, helpful dogs.

Over many, many generations the animals accumulated mutations that changed them. Their human masters bred the animals for traits they found useful; animals without such traits were not bred. They died out.

As time went on, dogs were deliberately bred for specific purposes, such as herding sheep, hunting birds, battling bears. The Rhodesian Ridgeback was specially bred for hunting lions, no less.

Animal species do change; they do evolve. Some fish did evolve into amphibians. That happened long before humans appeared on Earth, and the evolution must have taken long, long ages.

But now we have solid evidence that the grey wolf evolved — under human direction — into the domestic dog. And in the past few centuries, hundreds of different dog species have been bred, deliberately selected for traits that humans have found desirable.

Man's Best Friend is also good evidence that Darwin was right. Woof!

Naples resident Ben Bova is an asthmatic and unfortunately allergic to dogs. He is the author of more than 100 books. Dr. Bova's Web site address is www.benbova.net.