Handicapped in the Wilderness

Another example of intelligence and thinking in a wild animal was a raven I saw using mud as a poultice on a very badly injured leg, just as people will do. 

I found him crouched, immobile, in a small pool of mud as darkness fell one night, as if so intent on something in front of him that he was unaware of anything else. He seemed in an altered mental state, and when I approached, he did not move.  

When he finally roused and scuttled into the undergrowth, one of his legs hung away from his body. He had been crouched in the only small pool of mud in the area, apparently soaking his injured limb in the cool substance.

The next day I saw him fly over, and one of his legs was hanging straight down beneath him.  He was with a mate, and they were calling back and forth to each other. It was unfortunate that he was the male of the pair, because in ravens, the male tends to look after the female.

I saw the bird again a few days later, approaching tourists for food in a parking area by the highway that traversed the valley, and threw him some. He understood my gesture but it took time for him to get it. 

And then his mate rushed in, targetted the food and took it. He did not stop her, but he was not happy about it.

Though the bird was not able to use his leg, he was able to manoeuvre with it, and to essentially function. However, being handicapped in the wilderness is very hard, especially when winter was soon to come.

This is a video showing the stricken raven:

Ravens are highly intelligent, as are many other species of birds. Some information on them is included in my book on birds, Birds are Impossible: The Supernatural Ways of the Fliers, available on Amazon. But a book just on raven behaviour is planned to be published next year.

Ila France Porcher

What is Wrong With our Species?

“The line between good and evil runs not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart.” 

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago 

Today I’m concerned about the appalling behaviour presented in the news, which is full of stories of the atrocities of two wars. Genocide is featured and even atomic weapons are being considered for use. In particular the slaughter of those in a hospital in Gaza, perpetrated by a people who claim to be “Chosen by God” seems to indicate an alarming blind spot.

These subjects, and the network of other closely linked ideas, cause us to wonder what is wrong with our species, which is acknowledged to be the most brilliant one on Earth. So lets step back to take in a wider perspective.

On a small planet far out in an ordinary galaxy, one species evolved the right set of capacities (e.g. hands, language, social skills, inventiveness, and aggression) to dominate the rest of the biosphere. Nature will try anything, and, like a peacock evolving a fabulous tail, Homo sapiens emerged. 

 

Though human delusion and ego has lead to a persistent claim that we are not animals and are above all other life forms, there can be no doubt of our biological nature. (To deny this is to invoke a Creation in which we sprang fully formed upon the Earth, and this contradicts the evidence.) Though we do have a tendency to over-think everything because of our extremely active cognitive functions, we are biological and run on instinct. An obvious example: In our dimorphic species, it is self-evident that all the feelings and inclinations that lead to reproduction and child-care are instinctual, and that human male instincts differ greatly from those of the female (Rigby & Kulathinal 2015).

As mentioned by others (Benvenuti 2018, Kiley-Worthington 2019, Criscione & Keenan 2019, Schoof & L'Allier 2019), our mass behaviour is irrational. It can only be explained in terms of the universal patterns that have been used by living beings over the aeons, to survive and reproduce within their available habitats (Darwin 1859, Lorenz 1963).

The tendency to regard those in a perceived ‘out-group’ as being inferior to the home group (Chapman & Huffman 2018)—as well as the quest for ever more impressive material possessions—have been identified as an aspects of the territorial instinct (Lorenz 1963), and this is clearly evident in human behaviour.

Not counting animals that kill indirectly by spreading disease, H. sapiens is the species that is most dangerous to humans. A study by the United Nations (2019) determined that about 437,000 people annually are homicide victims, and 90% of the perpetrators are men; their victims are often conspecific females. However, the need for human females to beware of being murdered as they go about their daily lives is never added to the lists of things that make humans exceptional. In terms of murderous behaviour, there is no counterpart in other vertebrates. Humans even kill for entertainment, and this is unquestioningly accepted by the others.

Lorenz (1963) hypothesized that human cruelty is due to the lack of the inhibitions that evolved to control intra-specific aggression in other social animals. Like sharks, animals that have evolved dangerous weapons will also have evolved behavioural strategies to keep them from mortally injuring conspecifics (Lorenz 1963, Klimley et al. 1996). But, when the animal did not evolve its weapons, but invented, there was no selection pressure to develop inhibitions against killing conspecifics. Hence H. sapiens lacks the ability to refrain from using his finely crafted weapons against his fellow man. Though dogs will not bite another who makes the gesture of submission, gunmen do not hesitate to shoot people who are begging for mercy. Individuals of such species can kill others slowly and cruelly in situations in which the victim cannot escape (Lorenz 1963).

Lorenz (1963) presented the possibility that the Christian story about Jesus Christ’s admonition to “turn the other cheek” did not mean that one should submit to more violence, but that one should present the other cheek so that the aggressor could not strike again. Lorenz considered this, along with the ritual of the ‘peace pipe’ (in which a pipe is communally smoked before peace talks), as being efforts by modern humans to control the instinct for conflict and violence (Lorenz 1963).

Though war kills fewer people than homicide, human history is an account of successive wars (Keeley 1996). Tribal warfare was on average 20 times more deadly than modern warfare, calculated as either a percentage of total deaths from war, or as average war deaths each year as a percentage of the population (Keeley 1996). These numbers are echoed by deaths in modern tribal societies in which death rates from war are between four and six times the highest death rates in 20th century Germany or Russia (Keeley 1996). The popularity of war and violence in media entertainment provides further evidence of human instinctive violence.

Benz-Schwarzburg (2018) pointed out that animals do not condemn others as criminals but humans do, citing sexually aggressive dolphins as an example. However, only certain types of violence are condemned by humans. Others are commonly accepted as if they do not count—crimes against conspecifics who are considered to be inferior being just one example. Through decades of experimentation with human subjects, Altemeyer (2006) found that one would only have to ask three or four people before finding someone who says he would be willing to hold you down and electrocute you fattally on the request of a minor authority (Altemeyer 2006).

Zangwill (2021) mentioned that humans have the power to change their behaviour given new information. However, such a capacity is not generally evident. Humans readily avoid facing the facts and will defend their beliefs against them (Kahan et al. 2017). For example, the discoveries concerning the size and nature of the universe (Penrose 2007) and the mysteries concerning the presence of life and of consciousness, are reasons to consider the biosphere on Earth to be remarkable and precious. But the failure to do so is the subject of the target article and all of the accompanying commentaries. How can it be that an intelligent species, one that is exploring the solar system and holds detailed concepts of what to look for as signs of alien life, is destroying the plant cover of its own planet? Given our situation as the dominant species on a delicately balanced planet with nothing but an icy void for an infinity of light years around, the understanding of human biology with the goal of healthy sustainability should have been top priority for decades. It was warned in the 1970s that growth on a planet (with finite resources) cannot continue for long (Meadows et al.1972), but growth did continue and has put the planet into a catastrophic state.

Chapman & Huffman (2018) suggest that we ought to use our powers to effect positive change. But what powers? Assuming that a species can change, what is needed is a complete paradigm shift. In much of human society, however, the prevailing power structure is headed by a military/industrial/political complex that is motivated by financial gain. It is able to use the media to squash or twist any new information that might weaken its interests. If we were actually intelligent, our most learned academics would have been at work for many decades, doing research on the best avenues to take with respect to a sustainable future—avenues implemented by willing leaders.

We may be the only animal that has evolved enough to understand the difference between reasoned thought and instinct. That understanding, in my opinion, is the only thing that can save us from the usual fate that befalls over-populated and highly aggressive species. 

Originally published as a commentary on Chapman &  Huffman (2018): The Elephant in the Garden

A video on the same subject:

Ila France Porcher

 

References

Altemeyer, Bob. (2006) The Authoritarians. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba. Canada.

Benvenuti, Anne (2018) Good news: Humans are neither distinct nor superior. Animal Sentience 23(3)

Benz-Schwarzburg, Judith (2018) We don’t want to know what we know. Animal Sentience 23(12)

Chapman, Colin A. & Huffman, Michael A. (2018) Why do we want to think humans are different? Animal Sentience 23(1)

Criscione, Matthew J. and Keenan, Julian Paul (2019) Our brains make us out to be unique in ways we are not. Animal Sentience 23(38)

Darwin, Charles, & Kebler, Leonard (1859) On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or, The preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. London: J. Murray, 1859.

Keeley, Lawrence H. (1996) War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage. Oxford University Press, 1996.

Kahan, Dan M., Peters, Ellen, Dawson, Erica C., & Slovic, Paul. (2017). Motivated numeracy and enlightened self-government. Behavioural Public Policy, 1(1), 54-86. doi:10.1017/bpp.2016.2

Kaplan, Gisela (2019) Mirror neurons and humanity’s dark side. Animal Sentience 23(24) DOI: 10.51291/2377-7478.1401

Kiley-Worthington, Marthe (2019) Anthropomorphism is the first step. Animal Sentience 23(30)

Klimley, Abbot Peter., Pyle, Peter., & Anderson, Scot. D. (1996) Tail slap and breach: Agonistic displays among white sharks? In: Klimley AP, Ainley DG, editors. Great White Shark: The Biology of Carcharodon carcharias. San Diego, CA: Academic Press, p 241-55.

Kopnina, Helen (2019) Anthropocentrism: Practical remedies needed. Animal Sentience 23(37)

Lorenz, Konrad. (1963) Das Sogenannte Böse, Zur Naturgeschichte der Aggression by Verlag Dr Borotha-Schoeler, Vienna, Austria.

Meadows, Donella H; Meadows, Dennis L; Randers, Jørgen; Behrens III, William W (1972). The Limits to Growth; A Report for the Club of Rome's Project on the Predicament of Mankind. New York: Universe Books.

Penrose, R. (2007). The Road to Reality: a complete guide to the laws of the universe. 1st Vintage Books ed. New York, Vintage Books.

Rigby, N. and Kulathinal, R.J. (2015), Genetic Architecture of Sexual Dimorphism in Humans. J. Cell. Physiol., 230: 2304-2310.

Schoof, Valérie A. M. and L'Allier, Simon (2019) Mobilizing heads and hearts for wildlife conservation. Animal Sentience 23(42)

United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (2019) Global Study on Homicide. Zangwill, Nick (2021)

Consciousness in the Wilderness

The former posts were written to introduce the subject of intelligent awareness displayed by the living things that have emerged on this planet. When you look deeply at the biosphere, it seems that it’s delicacy, power, and beauty convey something of the underlying consciousness behind it. When one follows that realization to its end, one has to stand back in breathless awe at the refinement and splendour of the universe that produced it. All the details we see around us are clues, windows into that deep mystery. I used to go underwater to remember I lived in a magic world, but really any excursion into nature will do. And the more you look, the more you see!

Yet in the quest to glimpse nature's mystical and still largely unknown realm, one swiftly discovers that wild animals are highly sensitive to being looked at, especially when they don't trust you. Crows can vanish in seconds if they are noticed by the wrong person. They fly straight away from your face, so that all you see is a flicker in the trees as they disappear through the branches; no motion is apparent. Given that our eyes, as well as those of most other animals, are attuned to movement, the effect of instantaneous vanishment is startling, and an excellent survival strategy, especially given the way some people shoot at them.

Each creature is an individual and some are very different from the others. Often it is a special individual who is willing to make contact with an interested person, while the rest pay as little attention to you as you pay to them.

An example: I used to give the local pair of ravens some pieces of fat each morning, and in this way I gained a window into their world. Year after year they came, and when they had offspring, they brought the kids to meet us too. One day a chickadee intercepted me as I walked out with the ravens' plate of fat. The tiny bird shouted as I went by, and flew to the plate, but the pieces were too big. He came close again as I returned to the house, so I took him a saucer of fat cut into tiny pieces. The chickadee came right away and took one; he seemed to have understood that I was bringing it for him!

This chickadee had to get my attention each time he wanted a piece of fat, and he became adept at the challenge. Sometimes he would hang from a twig to look into the house through the window. Once when I was painting outside, unfortunately too close to his bits of fat, he suddenly alighted on a bare stalk just beyond the painting, practically within my arm's reach. I couldn't help but look at him, and he looked straight back. Then, when I returned to my careful brushing, he did not hesitate to alight on his plate and begin to eat.

It appeared that he had put himself in front of my face, so that I could not help but react to him, for the purpose of finding out what I would do. Was I really as unaware of him as I appeared? Or would I try to catch him, or show another reaction that would reveal a different attitude? It was reminiscent of predator inspection, as described in fish, in which an animal, sometimes with companions, comes close to look at a predator.

Weeks later, I was serving coffee to guests on the deck, when there was a wild little chitter beside my ear, and the momentary touch of tiny claws and wing-tips! When I looked up, the chickadee was hanging off a twig towards me, his eyes fixed on mine. That was the only time I was ever buzzed by a bird.

Needless to say, I hurried to produce some fat, but there was too much activity outside, and in the end, the chickadee would not come near.

The next year he reappeared again in February, shouting at my elbow as I took out the ravens’ fat. And when I paused to cut bits of fat small enough for him to take, he alighted on my head!

Other special individual birds I got to know would also try to get my attention by perching near and looking at me.

Along a similar vein, the male raven, on arriving at my house each morning, would often watch for movement at the window before coming in for a landing on the road. Large birds like ravens use a lot of energy to take off, so he would not alight on the ground unless he had a good reason. But when he saw me in the window he would suddenly appear, floating across my line of vision, his wings a parachute as he descended from some invisible height into the open space in front of the house. Then he would come in like a plane to alight on the road.

One morning, he walked down the driveway to the house as usual, but as I went out, he suddenly flew up into the forest. I continued out to the road, and his mate glided out of the trees to soar in a wide spiral around me. I threw her a good chunk of food, which she romped forward to get, but by then the male had flown down, and was hurrying over to take charge of any more forthcoming food. He usually insisted on taking it all each time and then he would give her permission to eat some. But this time, he took a piece and left the rest for her.

This was his way of trying to tell me that it would be better to put the food I gave them out in the open at the side of the road. It was not until later that I found out how wary these large birds are of thick bush where a predator could hide, and our driveway was lined with greenery where such terrors as bobcats could hide.

On another morning, I could scarcely see the male peering out towards the house from the other side of the road. He was actually hunched as he looked down at my window, nearly out of my view. Evidently, however, he understood that I could see him. When I went out, he walked a short distance and stopped and seemed to indicate the ground in front of him as if suggesting that this was the place to put the food. And just at that moment, above, a branch waved, and his mate swept down. It seemed that while waiting for me that morning, he had chosen a place where he was in my line of sight while also remaining in view of her!

Curiously, his action is the opposite of hiding, in which one places oneself out of the line of sight of another.

One morning I looked outside from a second floor window, and saw a bear standing directly below. Just as I withdrew, he seemed to notice my movement, so I peeked out again to see. He had vanished, though not a sound had disturbed the spell of silence that lay over the forest.

It took a moment to see his bright eyes, peeking back from between the spreading leaves of a devil's club plant growing beside the trail there, that now effectively concealed the bulky creature from view! 

He had seen me and hidden. Cognitive ethologist pioneer, the late Donald R. Griffin, formerly of Harvard University, suggested in his book Animal Minds, that when an animal hid itself from view, it was demonstrating self awareness. He described how naturalist Lance A. Olsen, President of the Great Bear Association, reported grizzly bears seeking places from which they could watch hunters while remaining hidden.

Other early observers such as William Wright (1909) and Enos Abija Mills (1919) reported that grizzly bears tried to avoid leaving tracks. The researchers concluded that these bears were aware of being present and observable, as well as creating effects―their tracks―through their movements, which could be seen by others. They were self-aware.

Not only birds are sensitive to being looked at and photographed; photographing fish was often problematic because they energetically searched for a hiding place, so my photos often revealed not much more than fish trying to hide! The sharks I studied used the visual limit for concealment, suggesting that they, too, are aware of being present and observable, and hence self-aware to that degree.

Each animal is a self-serving entity: seeking food for the self, protecting the self, saving the self, and so forth. So to be aware of the self, as distinct from others and the environment, would result in survival benefits. Thus, evolution, through natural selection, would tend to favour self-awareness.

The way crows instantaneously vanish by flying straight away along your line of sight, without giving the impression of any movement, is another way an animal has found to use lines of sight to its advantage. These are interesting clues to the differences in the ways that birds view the world. After all, their brains have evolved to deal with three dimensional movement, something we know next to nothing about.

The raven's perch is high above it all, his realm the sweeping landscape as seen from tens of metres above. From his perspective, how could there be a question about who is superior? Us or him? Even our cars cannot fly. Given my difficulty in seeing him in the crowns of nearby treetops, doubtless he considers himself the brightest light while he wonders how to attract my attention. Surely only that could explain the circus performances he would give as he suddenly appeared in my view, as I gazed upwards.

These ravens were so aware of things happening across the vast expanses below their high lookouts, that I often saw them fly low over the car when I drove back into the mountain valley from below. They would be perched above the highway at the mountain pass, and recognize my car, from among all of the others, as I returned. By the time I arrived at the house, they would be gliding in over the trees. 

I have published several videos showing this pair of ravens on YouTube, most under the title of "The Raven Lovers." There are other videos that focus on their calls, song, and chatter.

 

Such intelligent behaviours are signs of consciousness. Maybe one day when we understand things better, people in the future may see humans as just one of countless intelligently aware, and specialized life forms on this planet, all interdependent in the beautiful, transcendent web of life.

(c) Ila France Porcher 

    Author of Birds are Impossible: The Supernatural Ways of the Fliers

The Mystery of Consciousness

The subject of consciousness is an interesting one since we use it all the time yet it remains completely mysterious. Science holds that consciousness arises from matter, while religion holds that matter arises from consciousness.

Science began the first time one of our ancestors gazed up into the stars and wondered. Yet, in spite of the way our telescopes have been able to see nearly back to the big bang, and our microscopes and particle accelerators have been able to probe into matter's heart, how consciousness works, what it is, and how it could arise from matter, remains unfathomable. 

Scientific ignorance about consciousness underlie the claims of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Biologists, who believe that consciousness depends on the human brain alone—consciousness arises from matter—have been arguing against consciousness in animals at the same time that computer scientists have been claiming that they are about to build conscious machines (again believing that consciousness arises from matter). Some (see Dennett 1971) have even enthused that their thermostats are conscious.

But what is consciousness? Mathematical physicist Sir Roger Penrose, of Oxford University, has shown that the world that we access through our consciousness appears to have an independent existence where the laws of mathematics, physics, chemistry, music, and conceivably other absolutes including ethics and beauty, exist outside of space and time.  Since it was Plato who first described it, it is called Plato's world—a place that can only be accessed by the intellect and that reveals itself to each of us through conscious reflection. Mathematical ideas unfold when we reflect upon them and they have also been found to underlie the physical world.

Consciousness appears, it reflects and finds Plato's world, and the truths found there lie behind the manifestation of the physical world. An example to illustrate this remarkable idea was presented by Penrose in his book The Emperor's New Mind. Though the idea that the number -1, minus one, could have a square root may be thought of as nothing more than a mathematical joke, since the squares of all numbers are positive, the square root of minus one, (√-1) has turned out to play a basic role in the operation of our universe at its tiniest scales. This argues powerfully for the reality of Plato's world--that place where things that are fundamentally true exist in an absolute sense. The illustration below shows the graph of an equation involving the square root of minus one: the Mandelbrot set. The second part shows it magnified a million times—the outline does not change with magnification, which is one of the characteristics of a fractal. The strange beauty of the graphed Mandelbrot set was always there, unknown to us, outside of space and time, until the calculating power of the computer allowed us to see it. There are many amazing images of it on the Internet, if you are interested and many other such intriguing graphs.

Roger Penrose also crafted a mathematical argument that machines would never be conscious, no matter how big or complex they might become, because consciousness lies in the region of non-computable things. He wrote that animals are likely conscious, and that consciousness likely involves the actions of sub-atomic particles—quantum mechanical phenomena—which do not follow the expectations of classical physics.

This could explain how fish and birds can be so intelligent, in spite of their small brains—the miniaturization of the animal has not resulted in a loss of intelligence. Brain size, it seems, is unrelated to intelligence, implying that consciousness does not depend on mass.

There are other ways to access Plato's world. Though music is just vibration at different frequencies, pitch, and speed in the physical world, we respond to it sub­jectively and perceive it as beautiful. We all agree on the qualities of its different styles—slow music played in a minor key is sad, fast music in a major key is cheerful or rousing, and so forth. That this response is shared among us, provides further evidence of the independent reality of Plato's world. 

Other animals respond to music too. Birds use some of the same harmonies, rhythms, beats and scales as human musicians, (though their music may be performed many times faster than ours), which suggests that birds can also access Plato's world. A hermit thrush's song, when played at one-­quarter speed, sounds like a human composition that has between forty-­five to one hundred notes and twenty-­five to fifty pitch changes. It approximates a pentatonic scale with all the harmonic intervals.  

Depending on the species, each individual bird creates his own songs, and some compose hundreds and perfect them single-­mindedly. Occa­sionally one achieves an aria. 

Birds seem to enjoy singing and will sing in duets and groups. A singing flock will at times be joined in their tree by other flocks, of other species, who add their voices to the symphony.

As in humans, the artistic ability seems to be partly hereditary, and partly due to the efforts of the bird to improve his performance in comparison with an inner concept of the musically beauti­ful, which he or she found, presumably, in Plato’s world.

Animals seem to be aware of visual beauty, too. The bowers of bowerbirds resemble art. They are created by the males, who search out a variety of coloured objects with which to decorate them, and proceed like a human artist, alternately placing the coloured pieces, then standing back and surveying the effect, as if guided by an inner idea of the most attractive arrangements. I was lucky to have observed this in Australia.

Animals including elephants and apes have learned to paint pictures and seem to enjoy doing so. Apes and bears have been reported to go to a lookout to watch the sunset, and one of my jungle­ fowls spent each evening on the beach, intermittently looking across the shimmering sea towards the setting sun. When he was dying, his last act was to get up from his bed, stagger to the window, and gaze out across those glowing waters one last time.

The spotfin lion fish (Pterois antennata) is plumed in patterns of red and white, and presents a flower­-like, lacy beauty that is thought to have evolved to attract the crustaceans upon which it preys. What does that tell us about crustaceans?

If intricacy, rather than beauty, was selected for in order to produce a disguise, why is it of such loveliness? The surpassing beauty of so many animals suggests that the most beautiful ones had the most offspring. Therefore the appreciation of beauty could be wide­spread throughout nature, and not confined to vertebrates, providing further evidence that animals, too, can access Plato's world and are conscious.

Reflection on life's processes suggests other curious facts.

In nature, each instance of animal behaviour always presents as an individual in a specific situ­ation. This is the essence of the evolutionary process, as a population of a given species, depending upon the ingenuity and resilience of its individuals—especially its unusual individuals—adapts to changing surroundings. It is the choices and effort of each individual that drives evolution, as they succeed or fail to reproduce and pass on their special genes to their descendants. As in human communities, unusual animals can have a powerful influence on others and on the culture, as anyone who observes wild animals and their communities soon finds. 

The flight capabilities of birds have been documented through the fossil record to have evolved slowly as each generation tried to stay in the air as long as possible. Con­sider what must have taken place. At first, just the ability to hop higher, with the fore­limbs reach­ing up, must have begun the transition as the creature fled from increasingly nimble predators. Gradually, gliding developed, as only those who were able to leap the highest reproduced. At last, over aeons of strife by each individual trying to survive, wings evolved.

Thus, birds have wings because they fly—the behaviour comes before the structure—and in this sense it is consciousness that gives rise to matter. Following this line of reasoning leads to a picture in which the species have created themselves, each being a manifestation of all of the efforts of all of the individuals down through the abyss of time since life appeared. Even those who were eaten by predators had their role, for they helped others to survive.

Now, evidence of cognitive capabilities has been found in bacteria, amoeba, paramoecia, and plants, as well as those we consider to be the “higher animals.” Awareness in a one celled animal suggests that it might be an intrinsic aspect of life itself, and not dependent on the complexity of the animal's nervous system. It could be a long time before the phenomenon of consciousness is understood, but as long as its source remains unknown, no conclusions denying it to animals can be drawn. 

This brings us to the general subject of wild animal behaviour, which is what I created this blog to write about. These first three articles are meant to provide some background—to set the scene—before we move on to accounts of what some specific wild animals are doing. I hope you enjoyed them and will join me as we go on to yet more intriguing things!

(c) Ila France Porcher

Author of Birds are Impossible: The Supernatural Ways of the Fliers.

 

A Brief History of Earth

Protected by the most delicate film of atmosphere, our planet spins alone in a near vacuum of chilling darkness for an eternity of spacetime in all directions, where, apparently, nothing lives and no consciousness wonders. In all the universe, no other planet has been located that is anything like ours—that has even a remote possibility of sustaining what we know as complex life. At least we can be sure of this within 100,000 light-years of Earth. And that's a long way. Yet life has found myriad ways to flourish, no matter what happened, since it mysteriously made its start, here on Earth. 

 

Pursuing my wildlife artist’s lifestyle, I was always roaming the wilderness. The interior plateau rolled northward like waves upon a great sea and there the sky opened wide. At night I would lie half dreaming, glued flat on my back to the surface of our beloved planet, too awed to sleep. Gazing away into the diamond galaxy, as it swept through the black satin background, I felt right at the centre of a universe of wonders. What could be happening at this moment out there, what unimaginable event? When one looks out in this way, human life’s concerns grow dim; it is obvious that in general, up and down has no meaning. Reality consists instead of radiating, gravitating centres, whirling for eternity along invisible paths. There are more stars than grains of sand upon the earth, in galaxies without number, some with gigantic black holes at their centres. There are quasars whose cores are black holes of the mass of many billions of our sun, in a single point 10^-43 cm across. There are young stars, old stars, red giants, white dwarfs, and exploding stars.

And you know that what is out there is something terrific, whether or not one of us humble creatures can understand it. As some mystics are wont to say, “Behold the true dragon!”

We are flying at a speed of thirty kilometres per second around the sun, which is moving around our galaxy, the Milky Way, at several hundred kilometres per second. The Milky Way moves against the background radiation at a speed of 600 kilometres per second, or one fifth of a percent of the speed of light. Yet I feel perfectly still, without even a breath of wind to suggest movement—so much of what we perceive is only an apparancy. In fact, there is no such thing as absolute stillness; all movement is relative.

To look out through the universe is to look into the past, since the light revealing it took time to reach us. Therefore, space is measured by the distance light travels in a year, called a light-year; it is impossible to separate space and time. Scientists believe, through many meticulous measurements and calculations, that the universe banged into being 13.7 billion years ago—plus or minus 200 million years—and flew outwards at a rate that had nothing to do with the usual speed limit. The rule that nothing can travel faster than light does not apply to the expansion of spacetime. The observable universe (the part from which light has had time to reach us), is about 28 billion light years across.

Using modern telescopes, scientists can see back in time almost to the big bang, though that mysterious beginning is veiled in the fog that existed before atoms formed and the universe became transparent. However, astronomers have found very old galaxies that formed soon after, from irregularities in spacetime. Those first stars grew old and when they exploded, they scattered the heavier elements we know as matter across the expanding universe. Another unimaginable abyss of time passed as the action of gravitational forces caused this material to cluster, and form a second generation of stars, many with revolving discs around them, as rock, dust, ices, and gases drew together in an ever-turning aggregate. Thus our our planetary system eventually formed—about five billion years ago. 

We live in a changing, evolving universe.

Earth formed about four and a half billion years ago as the third of the nine planets in the disc orbiting our newborn sun. The new planet was in wild turmoil due to gravitational forces acting on the different densities of matter tumbling inwards. While debris rained from the skies and lakes of lava exploded, blocks of rock were thrust to the surface, ices melted and boiled, and heavier material sank. For a long period it was a hot, explosive place, littered with active volcanoes, and running with lava.

Slowly Earth cooled and its geological features became more settled. After a billion years, it was cool enough that the steamy atmosphere had mostly condensed and rained into a planetwide ocean. Carbon dioxide precipitated out of the atmosphere, leaving it mostly nitrogen. The sky was cloudy. Earth was still hot inside and volcanoes continued to pour lava to the surface, some forming islands in the ocean. The crust of the planet contracted as it cooled, and the powerful and turbulent forces of the molten rock within forced some regions up to form mountain ranges, and caused others to crack or sink. With the passage of time, chains of islands were pushed together and continents began to take shape.

How life got started is not yet understood, for only life grows more, and not less, orderly. (The tendency for things to fall apart is self-evident and completely irreversible in all but living things.)

Once life was here, it began to change its environment. The fossil record reveals that single-celled cyanobacteria were the first life forms, 3.7 billion years ago. They floated in the hot and shallow ocean—doing nothing much—but they produced oxygen, and claimed this spinning aggregate of rock, fire, water, and gases for life. After two billion years, enough oxygen had collected to turn the sky blue, and there was a breathable atmosphere that could support complex life forms. Our life-supporting atmosphere was created by life itself.

In all that time there had been life, but death waited. For those first aeons, life consisted of single-celled forms that reproduced by cell division—a continuous existence with no death and no change. Until, deep in this interminable peace, somehow two cells merged before dividing, sexual reproduction began, and, 1.7 billion years ago, death appeared.

It was death, with his side-kick, sex, that launched evolution's race. Now, each new individual was endowed with his or her very own combination of genes to play in the chances of life, and only the excellent won the right to reproduce.

Suddenly, life diversified dramatically. Death cleared away all who could not keep up, which was nearly everyone. Molluscs, seaweeds, sponges, coral, starfish, sea-lilies, plankton, algae, shrimps, crabs—a whole array of invertebrate life—sprang into being. Some life forms developed photosynthesis, which continued the production of oxygen, and half a billion years ago, plants appeared and covered the land, while the first vertebrates emerged. Able to support themselves against the pull of gravity, animals could finally leave the waters.

Ninety percent of the entire history of Earth was required to set the scene—to prepare a stable, compatible place for complex life to flower. Another eternity passed while a variety of life forms evolved and vanished, before dinosaurs dominated the Earth 260 million years ago. 

Though they were a victim of a mass extinction 65 million years ago, some are still with us in the form of birds, having evolved considerably in the meantime.

All of us living today descended from the best, the smartest and the strongest individuals from each generation, for all of that time. Many more died than lived to reproduce, but every single one of our ancestors managed to make it to adulthood, AND have kids! What a test. If only we knew of all of their stories, their strife, and their lucky breaks. . .

The latest counts tell us that about nine hundred million species of higher life forms share the planet with us, networking in an intricately inter-tangled play of individuals, large and tiny, which form life’s endless community. From frozen poles, to tropical jungles, to the oceanic abyss, each creature is at the centre of its own world view of events, each challenged by survival. Green plants link the earth to the sun’s energy. Using photosynthesis, they mix sunlight with water and Earth to grow leaves, flowers, and fruit. Physically and chemically intertwined with the air, they recycle water to fall as rain and stream from the forest fringes, back to the sea. The oceans circulate in a cycle taking a thousand years, keeping our climate stable, while, through evaporation, water puffs back into the atmosphere and blows in the winds, forming clouds to rain again upon the land. And forces beyond the power of our imaginations have permitted this spinning globe to rest stably so that we have all had the chance to pursue our lives.

The numbers of life forms who have played out their existences on Earth is unimaginable, as the sun rose and set, and things happened, for them as for us. Did all of these creatures not understand, however simply, the world in which they found themselves? Can consciousness only have existed since our own species emerged? When did life on Earth begin to feel and wonder?

We live in a universe that remains mysterious, after all!

(c) Ila France Porcher

Author of Birds are Impossible: The Supernatural Ways of the Fliers, Outwitted by Chickens: The Bird Who Killed the Tiger and The Spirit of Wild Ducks

The Majesty of Life

The great mystery of life and its majesty here on Earth is a theme in my thinking these days, so I decided to create this blog to write about it. If you are reading these words, welcome. I hope you will enjoy exploring some of these ideas with me. 

 

Life has become harder since the pandemic and many people are feeling pessimistic. But beauty is worth living for. It is everywhere, as if it is one of those basic attributes of nature—as if the very physical laws cause it as they play upon the universe.

 

 If the study of the universe has taught us anything, it is surely how precious life is. The intricate network of living things that covers our planet from pole to pole is like a jewel, while reality, for countless light-years in all directions, consists of uninhabitable chilling darkness and incomprehensible gravitational sinks. So is there not every reason to consider the manifestation of life here, in this planetary system, to be remarkable? Never has it been more important to recognize the true nature of the biosphere and treat it with all of the wisdom with which we pride ourselves.

 

Life on our planet started as soon as it settled down enough to provide stable conditions. Energy, water, air, and a variety of complex molecules came together and organized themselves into increasingly complex structures. Yet they did this in defiance of the law that decrees that entropy—disorganization—must always increase. How the elements of life, alone, could possibly have defied this basic law of physics remains a mystery to science. As is life’s strange manifestation: the mystical elixir of consciousness. 

 

Through all of my years watching the actions of wild animals, if one thing has seemed inarguable, it is that we share consciousness with the other forms of life. Consciousness of the same reality appears to be the medium that permits living things to interact appropriately. Reality makes sense to us all because we are all conscious of it, and this shared understanding is the ground for interaction among individuals and species.

 

Indeed, the spirits of nature and humanity are interwoven upon our spectacular planet. 

 

Now, scientific evidence of consciousness is being found in increasing numbers of species—not only in dolphins, crows, and apes, but also in octopuses, plants, bacteria, moulds, and amoebas. It presents as a fundamental aspect of life—an awareness of the objective world in which the life form understands its environment and deliberately furthers its interests as it pursues its existence.

 

We are enraptured by the unicorn of the imagination, but is not life itself the miracle?

 

The delicacy, the beauty of the biosphere, conveys something of the underlying quality of the consciousness behind it. The peacock, for example, in its quest to become beautiful, did not just grow a radiant plume to attract the gaze—it evolved a fabulous fan of intricately designed feathers, each detailed to the microscopic level, all fitting together to produce a breathtaking over-all design. Then there is the intricate and precise colouration of butterflies. Their flamboyant patterns tell us something of the minds of these delicate life forms who, through aeons of evolution, have chosen their dress.

 

 

The beguiling beauty of Nature on Earth is well beloved by its inhabitants. 

 

Each creature, even the tiniest, is an individual with his or her personal ways. Including snakes.

I chose the title of this blog as a way of saying, Fear not. Fear is one of the things that has stood between modern humans and nature, but it is a phantom, a ghost. Animals will not hurt you if you do not hurt them as I know from many years of wandering the wilderness alone, both above and underwater. Indeed, it is us who are the dangerous ones. 

So take heart and behold the majesty, the transcendental splendour, of Earth!

(c) Ila France Porcher 

Ethologist, Author and Wildlife Artist