I have many vivid memories of my first visit to the United States, thirty years earlier. Everything was so different, and yet so similar to what I was used to in England. It was autumn and the fall colours were developing, particularly in the forested areas of Virginia and North Carolina. The colours were the same as England, but England was never like that - the whole countryside glowed with a kaleidoscope of brilliant reds, oranges and yellows. The trees themselves were much the same - there were oaks, maples, birches, beech, dogwoods, but where England had only one or two species, America had many of each - especially the oaks. There was also a huge variety of unfamiliar species interspersed amongst them, including sugar gums, tupelos, hickories, magnolia and the ubiquitous poison ivy, which festooned all the tree trunks and forest floor in a luminous yellow lacework. It was the same with the animals, they were similar but different. Yellow-jackets were very similar to the wasps in England, in fact several English species had become established in America, but there were many more kinds in America than in England. My main interest at the time was in squirrels, because I had been working on the grey squirrel in England and had come to America to see it in its native country. I was astounded by the variety of squirrels - England only had one native species, but here there were pine squirrels, fox squirrels, chipmunks, ground squirrels, flying squirrels, woodchucks, marmots and prairie-dogs.

Jasper-Pulaski State Park

My travels took me to Indiana to see Charles Kirkpatrick who was well known for his work on grey squirrel reproduction (we had first met on a rough ferry ride to Heron Island, in Australia's Great Barrier Reef, two years earlier). One day he took me to the Jasper-Pulaski State Park to see some of the native wild-life and we were well rewarded. I was just fascinated by everything I saw - commonplaces to my host but new to me. As we walked in over a bridge, passing some familiar stinging nettles, I glanced down the stream to see that the waterway was blocked - no it was dammed! There were beavers here! Later I saw that ponds had strange piles of vegetation built in them - I thought this might be beavers' lodges, but "no" I was told, they were built by muskrats. There were signs of squirrels everywhere, with nests in the trees, gnawed patches on the trunks and piles of chippings from nuts, cones and acorns strewn along logs and stumps. We saw a beautiful big fox squirrel chasing a grey squirrel across the ground and up a tree, and there were chipmunks all around, making high-pitched 'chipping' calls and disappearing down holes as we approached.

The highlight of the visit came when we approached a lake. We could hear a commotion ahead as we followed the track through the last few trees to an open grassy clearing in front of the lake. The green gave way to a white mass of about two thousand sandhill cranes busily feeding, during a break in their long annual migration flight to escape the Arctic winter. After viewing this marvellous scene for a while something disturbed the cranes, probably an osprey coming to fish in the lake, and they all took to the air with a great clamour of honks and wing-beats. They broke into groups, which circled around like huge flurries of snow. They were probably getting ready for the next leg of their journey south.

USING A STICK TO LOOK FOR FLYING SQUIRRELS. We think of tools as being something which only mankind can make. Tools are in fact the essence of life - life is made up of a complicated assemblage of tools. There are biochemical tools, like chloroplasts, physical tools, like wings, and behavioural tools, like how to build a nest and interact with your neighbours.

Before we left, Charles wanted to show me a flying squirrel and picked up a stick and tapped fence posts surrounding an enclosure - there was a tame wapiti inside, which had a massive head of antlers. He said flying squirrels often slept in cavities under bark or in holes and would run away if tapped in this manner, so we went around tapping the posts together - unfortunately without any success. After all these years this simple action serves as a marvellous introduction to one of the main factors involved in determining the future of the human race - the role that tools play in the evolution of living things.

Tools

The simple use of a stick as a tool to knock the posts is an example of one of the earliest forms of tool use in mankind and it is so ingrained in our makeup that we almost unconsciously pick up a stick or stone whenever the need arises. Use of tools such as this was at one time thought to distinguish human beings from all other animals - we were the only species intelligent enough to use tools. This has since been found to be wrong; tool use is widespread in the animal kingdom. Chimpanzees use a wide variety of tools and even some relatively unsophisticated monkeys, such as capuchins make a variety of tools, sometimes from bone or stone, in a way which used to be thought only the province of early man. Birds such as crows are also able to use tools in quite intelligent ways, choosing the right one to do a job, or even modifying it so that it is sharp or of the right length, while others, such as vultures use stones to smash holes in large eggs.

There is no doubt, however, that human intelligence has vastly improved on this early tool use. This probably had its origins when our ancestors began to use sticks and stones as tools to kill prey or to dig for roots. The technology of making better instruments evolved over time together with an increasing intelligence so that it now extends to everything we use. Other species do not possess such an extended ability to adapt tool use or to invent new ones. Animals would have to have a higher level of empirical intelligence to be able to do this. This is what distinguishes us from the rest of the animal kingdom - we are surrounded by tools, everything we do is related to the tools we have made, our whole society and way of life hinges around tools - but is it the tools we make which distinguish us, or is it our intelligent use of them? Or - more fundamentally - is it only the rate at which we can develop them which distinguishes us from other members of the animal kingdom?

Tools come in many forms and perhaps it is necessary to try and define what is meant by the term. Normally one thinks of something like a stone used to break a nut or a stick to dig out a grub, we have workshops full of this sort of tool. These very practical tools are used to make other tools, such as tables to put things on, electric fires to keep us warm, bicycles to speed our rate of movement, television sets to entertain, and computers to work on and communicate. What constitutes a tool needs to be much more broadly defined than the narrow workshop definition. It could be: something which is used as an aid to achieving a goal - (where a goal is an outcome which can be interpreted as of benefit to the possessor).

Under this definition, human tool use becomes much less remarkable, in fact rather passé compared to the tool development that preceded the evolution of advanced intelligence in mankind. DNA has evolved incredibly complex and integrated tools which make our efforts, such as radar and cameras, look very crude indeed. The only advantage intelligence has is that it is much quicker in developing tools than DNA. We invent throwing sticks or stone-tipped spears to catch fish and mammals, while DNA has given beaks to the cranes, which are ideal tools for catching grasshoppers and frogs, and talons to ospreys - superbly designed tools for grabbing fish out of the water. We invent crude photo-voltaic cells to trap sunlight, while DNA uses chlorophyll - the whole Indiana countryside was clothed in leaves, then in all the wonderful fall colours - but we have barely even begun to use our technological version, even on a small scale. We invent computers, while DNA uses a far more complex and integrated organ developed millions of years ago, and possessed by all the animals in the Park - whether beaver, squirrel, crane or even yellow-jacket - the brain. Our brain is in fact one of the latest DNA tools to be developed, and through it high intelligence has been brought to the planet for the first time. This is a very dangerous tool for DNA-life, because it can invent and manufacture other tools at a far greater rate than DNA. It has potentially made DNA-evolution obsolete, and may end DNA-domination of the planet. We still appear to be in charge, because so far the human brain is still, in many respects, a better instrument than our artificial prototypes, but this is unlikely to be the case for much longer.

Tools and the definition of life

With this understanding of tools we begin to get an appreciation of what actually constitutes life - what distinguishes life from non-living matter. Life is a complex assemblage of tools which are integrated to form an actively self-maintaining unit (or potentially self-maintaining in the case of dormant seeds and other suspended forms of life, such as frozen bacteria, ova etc). With this definition the tools we make are no longer artifacts - they are something vitally important to our future. They are part of us as living things - or more worrying - we are part of them as living things. It is therefore crucial that we understand the role tools have played in moulding the lives of other living things - how tools have affected the course of evolution. With this we can prepare ourselves for the time when we are part of an artificial world, dominated by the artificial intelligence that is now developing on Planet Earth. It took millions of years for DNA to evolve high intelligence from early ape brains - it is likely to take only tens of years for matching (but different) artificial intelligence to develop from computers.

Kinds of tool

Tools fall naturally into three categories. The first, behaviour, will be discussed in this chapter. This is often a whole-organism tool - a largely programmed ability of an organism to respond to stimuli and maintain itself. The second category, organs, will be discussed in Chapter 3. These include the more conventional understanding of tools - physical organs which are adapted for particular tasks such as eyes, lungs, teeth, claws etc. The final category covered in Chapter 4 is that of biochemical tools and organelles. These include tools that were evolved very early on - long before organs existed and are extremely complex and refined. They are the tools which are more closely allied with our understanding of life itself - their use distinguish carbon-based living things from complex chemical activity.

Behaviour

This is one of the highest-order of tools evolved by DNA and requires mechanisms or tools for receiving stimuli and responding to them. To do this there needs to be a means of communication between parts of the body or between organisms for behaviour to exist, and this has lead to the evolution of nerves and nervous systems. There are other means of communication, which are also used, such as chemical messengers (e.g. hormones and pheromones) and the microtubules, which form the main means of communication within single cells. These other means allow plants and single-celled organisms to move and develop behaviour tools without the need for a nervous system, such as the opening of flowers in sunlight and spermatozoa swimming to find and fertilise eggs. An understanding of behaviour is very important because our rapidly expanding artificial communication systems make it possible for new levels of behaviour to develop - those that involve a global population of billions of individuals responding to perceived global needs or fears - whether real, media-inspired or implanted by artificial intelligence.

In science fiction the combination of behaviour and artificial intelligence is a rich field, providing anything from power-hungry maniacal robots, hell-bent on taking over the world, to androids which like lying in the sun, skiing and swapping floppy discs to create mini-bots. In real life we tend to think our robots and computers are behaviour-less - merely stupid because they appear to tilt, with error messages, when we ask them to do something. In fact it is the operator who is stupid in expecting the computer to know what we want it to do, without communicating with it in a way it can understand. Behaviour is in fact the one thing they are fully programmed with - it is an advanced tool, which forms part of intelligence. They are programmed to respond exactly as directed from appropriate inputs.

Behaviour is a remarkable tool, which, like other tools, is largely inherited via DNA. It differs from other tools in that it is intangible and can be equated with a computer software package, operating the organism in a similar way to a computer programme. The other tools of living things are essentially hardware - tangible creations of DNA which are physical or chemical and whose functions are clearly defined. With behaviour the organism is essentially programmed with pre-existing Information Technology (knowledge) from birth - it can recognise its optimal habitat, know what to eat, where to find it, escape predators, seek the opposite sex of the right species, and then only mate if both have gametes at the right stage of development.

It would seem possible that this form of DNA programming could include a huge volume of material - we could even be programmed with the total Encyclopaedia Britannica at birth, and be able to speak any language at will, if natural selection had taken us that way. Evolution has not proceeded along these lines because increasing intelligence has superseded DNA-programming as the main provider of information technology and replaced it with a more rapidly evolving and adaptable means of achieving the same end - communication and learning. The highest levels of programmed behaviour may be seen in animals which have poor learning skills.

Insects and spiders just do not have enough neurones to learn much, but the yellow-jackets (wasps) have very complex behaviour and know how to build amazingly engineered nests without any instruction. Similarly the spiders' webs adorned by fall dew are extraordinary feats, when viewed in the light that instruction is not necessary because it is all programmed in DNA (but even in these invertebrates we are beginning to find that learning plays an important part of their behaviour development). But perhaps it is not so extraordinary after all - inheritance of the structural detail, wings, the ability to fly, antennae, jaws, physiology surely all this is much more of a feat of DNA-programming than the organism merely knowing how to build a comb or web? The wasp or spider's behaviour is, however, likely to be as complex as its anatomy and physiology - it is just not so easy to describe, measure and quantify. It is unnerving to know that behaviour-transmission is already virtually instantaneous, limitless and with total recall, in even the most stupid computer - it is just that we are not yet able to provide enough instructions and sensory input to make them into something more responsive - life-like.

The behaviour software package expresses the essence of an organism whether it is a wasp or chipmunk - it is the driver. It directs the hardware what to do, whether the hardware is part of the body or part of the environment. In this sense the behaviour package has an existence somewhat divorced from its possessor. It is like a "soul" which enters the organism and tells it what to do. Being a separate character it can also change and evolve relatively rapidly, adapting the hardware of the species to new environments or new ways of life, as long as they are within the limits dictated by the body and environment - physical changes can come later, after longer periods of natural selection. In a sense the organism and its behaviour package evolve together as a whole, but as behaviour development becomes more advanced, so it becomes more important as the driver of evolutionary change, and has consequences on the future of the species. Our culture and technology now dominate everything we do, but we still have our inherited driver, which is unable to keep up with the rate of cultural change.

 

EVENING FLIGHT OF SANDHILL CRANES. Changes in behaviour and mate recognition can lead to speciation. Differences in behaviour between the Sandhill and Whooping Cranes ensure that the species do not interbreed in the wild, although they have a common ancestor in Asia. The behaviour tool can change more rapidly than most of the other tools of life.

The amazing variety of animal life in North America, like everywhere else, has a lot to do with behaviour. One of the main avenues to speciation appears to come from behaviour differences arising in isolated populations, because it is one of the inherited characteristics, which can change most quickly. The clock which tells a 17-year cicada when to emerge has strong selection forces to be accurate, but somewhere sometime a small population may have got it wrong together and founded the 15-year cicada species. I wrongly thought that a similar occurrence may have happened between the marvellous sandhill cranes wheeling overhead and the rare whooping cranes, because they have different migration routes which could have resulted in isolation. However, the separation happened at an earlier stage, the original ancestor lived in Asia, with the sandhill evolving from the first migration to America and the whooping from the second. The two crane species have unique sex-bonding displays which normally prevent cross-breeding.. Separate species rarely cross in the wild because behaviours differ, but in unnatural conditions they may form unnatural liaisons, such as in zoos or cities where animals (or people) are forced to live in close proximity. This happens with ducks, particularly the mallard, which will cross with most other duck species, including black duck and the beautiful wood duck seen on the lake and ponds of the Jasper-Pulaski State Park.

Behaviour can also be a component in plant speciation, such as the time of day or time of year when they flower - if they do not overlap in branches of a population, then speciation is likely to occur. However, plants are much more able to hybridise than animals, and when brought into unnatural close proximity, hybrids often occur. There is much discussion about whether Homo sapiens crossed with H. neanderthalensis leading to a merger of the two species. Current DNA evidence suggests that they did not cross under what would then be regarded as "natural" conditions. Such hybridisation between modern human races may also have been uncommon until unnatural conditions emerged, caused by population explosion and the invention of boat and horse transport. Under the present unnatural conditions, misdirected sexual behaviour towards other, even quite unrelated, species has become commonplace, but no evidence seems to be available of any hybrids resulting, even with our closest relatives. The concept of species in artificial life would have to be something quite different - there are no lasting barriers to the transmission of technology and tools between individuals. The Mac and Microsoft operating systems initially provided the basis for speciation, but this could not last because of the huge pressure to forge means of communication.

 

GREY SQUIRREL. Animals with different sets of behaviour tools can cohabit in the same area without competing too strongly with one another. Many kinds of squirrel live together in America - ground squirrels, chipmunks, grey squirrels, fox squirrels, chickadees, flying squirrels. They may be active at different times, have different food preferances or store it in different ways, or prefer different trees.

Diversity of behaviour and species

As well as initiating speciation, differences in behaviour also allow similar species to live harmoniously together and build complex ecosystems - every added item being potentially exploitable and leading to added complexity. Most of the squirrel tribe will eat similar foods, but they each have a complex array of adaptations and preferences, which divide the environment between them, so that they can all inhabit the area. The fox squirrels like the big scrubby oaks trees while the greys the tall dense forested parts, areas of pine have chickadees and the edges of clearings chipmunks and woodchucks. Open areas have thirteen-lined ground squirrels, while flying squirrels come out at night, when all the rest are asleep. It is interesting that all the diurnal squirrels probably had nocturnal ancestry - their eye structure retains characteristics typical of night-vision being all-cone and with a yellow cornea. Perhaps sometime in the dim past a small population of an ancestral squirrel became isolated on an island without predators, and began to be active in the daytime, because it found it easier to see food and keep warm. This could have altered the whole behaviour-package of the species and led to the foundation of the diurnal squirrel tribe.

Tree-squirrels appear to have their origin in south-east Asia, where there is by far the richest diversity of species - perhaps it was there that they first learnt to climb trees in the ancient rain-forests of the region. One of the essentials about the behaviour package is to be able to recognise optimal habitat - the sort of place where survival is most likely. Pine squirrels (chickadees) when caged will automatically choose to sit in parts of a cage where there are pine branches and cones, while grey squirrels will tend towards parts with oak branches instead. Little is known about how animals select habitat - it tends to be taken for granted that they do. We seem to be ingrained with an image of open-country or semi-desert as our preferred habitat.

Animal behaviour and machine intelligence

The behaviour package is obviously a very important set of tools possessed by living things and the additional abilities of learning and changing it have wide implications. These are all very relevant when we look at the likely development of machine intelligence and its possible integration into human society. Certain aspects need further discussion.

The behaviour package is usually well integrated, adapting the animal to the environment, but in analysing the effects elements of behaviour have, it may be worth dividing behaviours into some major categories, to see how they can determine future evolutionary pathways - what consequences they have on the possessor - and apply this to our own future and to the behaviour we may find developing in our artefacts, when they become sophisticated enough. The three categories chosen are: Constructional behaviour, Communicative behaviour and Maintenance behaviour.

Constructional Behaviour

This is the ability to make and construct artefacts. The dawn of our species is marked by the appearance of crudely fashioned stone implements, but these were probably only of minor importance compared to other constructions such as house-building and wood, bone and antler tools - chimpanzees have already evolved a culture which uses a wide range of tools, including stones, while capuchin monkeys can make sharp implements from bone and stones. Our ability appears to be almost entirely based on cultural transmission, in other species constructional behaviour may be partly learned, but mostly it is transmitted as part of the DNA-software package. Web-construction in spiders is one of the most advanced achievements, others include comb and nest building in bees and wasps. These demonstrate some of the high levels of sophistication achievable by DNA, in the absence of conscious thought.

 

DEW-COVERED WEB. Spiders' webs represent one of nature's most complex constructions. The peak achieved by DNA without the use of intelligence. The programme of how to make a web is genetically implanted in the spider's nervous system. More advanced animals have to learn how to make things.

Spiders webs are such a commonplace that we barely give them a glance, but it never fails to amaze if given the chance of watching one being built - to witness this display of what appears to be technology, craft, skill and ability to adapt to the chosen site. In the Indiana fall, many of the spiders were using their silk for other purposes - it is the time of year when young spiders disperse, and in suitable weather conditions they play out long streamers to catch rising air currents. When they feel a sufficient pull, they cut adrift and fly high in the air on their kite string. As night falls after a good day for dispersal, the air cools and tends to pour down into low lying swampy areas, carrying all the spiders with it. Sometimes the spiders are so numerous that by morning all the swamp vegetation appears to be covered in hoarfrost from a festooning layer of dew-covered gossamer. The method of constructing a web appears to be governed by a few rules which result in what appears to be such a technological miracle, in the same way that constructing a hexagonal comb by yellow-jackets is governed by the geometry of packing an array of circular cells next to one another with the most efficient use of wood pulp. The result, nevertheless, is an astonishingly complex and well-engineered structure.

Most constructions require the individuals to be sedentary to reap the rewards of their construction, but some are carried with the maker. Dinopid spiders spin a web net and then pick it up to throw over their prey, while caddis larvae and many moth caterpillars build cases which are carried around with them. In this respect the constructional technology of using materials to-hand has much in common with the topic discussed in Chapter 3, organ technology, because it is another avenue for achieving similar goals. Snails secrete their shells, while caddis larvae build them out of sand or plant materials, jellyfish secrete a 'stone' in their organ of balance while crayfish pick up a grain of sand and put it in their organ, we grow our own teeth which wear and decay with age, while birds select suitable stones to swallow to perform the same function in the gizzard - birds have the advantage, because stones are renewable.

MUSKRAT LODGE. Mammals do not need to build complex nests to hold eggs, like birds, so mates do not have to cooperate in the same way. Some, like beavers and this Muskrat, build complex structures. Beavers' dams require a lot of work and tie the makers down to a particular location. This brings about a cooperative, monogamous relationship. Human beings became tied to agricultural crops and housing which led to a more monogamous relationship developing.

Vertebrates only rarely make complex constructions, possibly because their rate of natural selection is so slow in comparison to invertebrates, that they have much less chance of evolving complex constructional behaviour. However, the learning ability of advanced vertebrates makes it possible for more advanced structures to be built and opens the door to cultural transmission. Some species are beginning to make up for lost ground compared with the insects. Simple structures like the nests built by squirrels and cranes are probably largely the result of innate behaviour, but include an element of learning from experience. Weaver finches have taken this to an extreme, with complex nests being built with very skilled basketwork. The beaver dam is something else, it is a complex structure built over time by a group of animals working together - this has more in common with the yellow-jacket nest, and involves complex engineering. How much is innate, how much learned by experience, and how much by cultural tradition, no-one knows.

The appearance of constructional technology has marked effects on the constructor. The heavy sand-constructed case of a caddis larva is a very good protection, but it limits movement - just as armour did with medieval knights (although armour was, in fact, very light, and probably not as encumbering as modern weaponry is to today's soldiers). On the other hand, the type of case is adaptable, heavy ones are useful for anchoring the animal to the bottom in fast-flowing streams, while more buoyant plant materials are suitable for still water. Silk woven ones are used by some larvae, which have a planktonic way of life, swimming in clear lake water. The type of construction is modified to suit different lifestyles. Birds have retained the dinosaur egg-laying habit, probably because young cannot easily be born in such an advanced stage that they can fly, or even cling onto parents (like bats) without encumbering them. Being warm-blooded, also means that eggs also have to be kept warm and most birds have taken to building nests for this purpose. The only species which have found other means of doing this are the mound-builders which use various means of keeping eggs warm, mostly sun-heated sand or rotting vegetation - some even use volcanic heat.

Consequences of nests on birds

Nest construction has consequences for the birds, because the nest has to be built in the first place, then the birds become tied down to a particular location where the nest is constructed. This has meant that there is a strong tendency towards developing a cooperative venture between the sexes, territoriality and monogamy. Ground-dwelling and water birds have the advantage that they can lay large eggs, which produce young at an advanced stage that can be active the moment they hatch and follow the parent. The level of parental cooperation in these species depends partly on the degree of territoriality - swans are highly territorial, monogamous and cooperative. Perching birds, on the other hand, produce embryonic young, which need considerable care and cooperation between the parents. The long development period with birds before they can fly gives them time for learning from their parents. This is particularly so for species that need to acquire important survival skills, such as ospreys. These birds stay with their parents long after they can fly, so that they can learn how to catch fish. Even so, some birds seem to be fully programmed in the egg. Mound-builder chicks hatch in the mound, burrow their way out and run into the bush without any contact with parents. There they seem to be able to grow, mature, mate and mound-build (if male) without any learning period.

Effect of constructions on mammals

Mammals bearing live young have no need to develop nest-fidelity and its consequence of monogamy. Monogamy is therefore almost unknown in mammals, except in a few species which have adopted constructions or ways of life that have effects comparable to those of nests on birds. Beavers' dams are like nests in that they are a cooperative construction - in fact they are more binding than a nest, because they are lifelong structures, not temporary. The consequence is that beavers are monogamous in the human sense of the word. (Most supposedly monogamous species mate with other partners when circumstances allow, but are monogamous in the sense that they stay and cooperate with a single partner, which is also their usual mate).

Mankind would appear to be another exception where custom has led to a form of monogamy. Various reasons have been suggested as to why mankind has evolved this structure, when other apes are far from monogamous - orang-utans are solitary, gorillas have harems and chimpanzees have an enthusiastically promiscuous tribal organization. It may be that the long learning period necessary for young to acquire the constructional skills and cooperative hunting skills of small tribal units tended towards monogamy, where two parents built shelters and brought up their offspring, even though in a tribal setting. This structure would have been greatly reinforced by the advent of agriculture, where pairs became slaves to their farms (construction complexes) and absolutely dependent on their successful management. This would be consistent with conservative farming communities being much more intolerant about extra-marital relations than itinerant communities. Why we went one way and the chimpanzees another we shall probably never know, perhaps we frolicked in an Eden-like garden of promiscuity until we became tied down by our constructions.

Nowadays our constructions are changing and growing so fast that we no longer identify with our own constructions and the force encouraging monogamy is disappearing, yet our mechanisms for child-rearing are still reliant on its continued existence. Enormous changes occur within a life-time, and this does not give time for appropriate social structures to evolve, it also interferes with the formation of firm, life-long alliances between individuals. We are becoming more like intensely social species where the individual is largely irrelevant. The constructions themselves, on the other hand are growing and evolving like a huge termite mound out of control, and dominating everything we do. We need to identify our constructions for what they are - manifestations of an extra-corporate evolution. They change and evolve much faster than we can, and are outside the control of DNA. Already the constructions tend to be valued well above the constructors and dominate everything we do.

On the other hand, our cities are ideally suited for the growth of extra-corporate complexity, inter-communication, automation and intelligence. They are becoming like living things behaving under the control of a developing super-intelligence. If they are to survive the transition from human-controlled to machine-controlled, they will need to attend to the primitive needs of their human constructors - at least for the time being.

 

STINGING NETTLE. Communication. Even plants communicate. They can do it via chemicals in the soil or can just have a message like "I am a nettle - beware". Just being there is a message widely used by mammals too, many making themselves obvious for others to see.

Communicative Behaviour

Communication is an essential part of behaviour. In its simplest form, just existing in one organism is a form of communication for other bodies or organisms, which can sense its presence. On this level, communication is a general feature in nature, with non-living objects such as planets communicating to one another by the force of gravity. A plant that exists communicates its presence to grazing mammals, and has the power to change the message by growth form. Sometimes it may be an advantage to have a clear message, such as: "I am a stinging nettle, so beware", or it may be deceitful like a deadnettle and say "I am a nettle", when in fact it is not. (Deceit is a common form of communication in nature, and often appears in the relations between animals.) Messages can be chemical, such as an egg sending messages to sperm to swim in its direction, or at a higher level, a mare informing a stallion through her urine (sensed by his vomaronasal organ) that she is ovulating. On the other hand, visual or sound cues may have physiological responses, such as when a female bird hears the cock singing her ovaries may be stimulated into action and start producing eggs. (Human beings are almost unique in regard to ovulation - their females are endowed with hidden ovulation and deceive their males by appearing to be ovulating when they are not. This characteristic does appear in some other primates to a lesser degree.)

Signals used in communication have anatomical effects in the same way as other behaviours. The type of vision in grey squirrels means that they do not need to move their eyes, so do not use this for social signalling - they do it by narrowing their eyes instead. This behaviour has resulted in the anatomical chance of growing white lines above and below the eye, which emphasise this. We on the other hand have much eye movement and so have white eyeballs to make movement more conspicuous. Horses also signal with eye-whites, and horse-wise people note these carefully - with reason. Tails are an important part of the anatomy and used for many purposes. But having got a tail, it is natural to use it for signalling - squirrels do this, and the tail grows to be especially conspicuous for this purpose. Beavers have flat tails as an aid to swimming, and use them for signalling by slapping the water, they may be particularly well developed so that they can do this noisily. Scent is also widely used - squirrels when feeding or grooming clean their mouths by wiping them alone branches. This leaves scent from their mouths and over time has led to the enlargement of skin glands in the angle of the mouth to secrete scent to enhance the message.

The development of communication systems has other effects - once unconnected parts become interdependent and can be coordinated into more complex units. Microtubules link parts of a cell so it becomes a functional unit, transport systems link parts of plants together so that they can grow into trees. Nerves link parts of bodies together so that they can become active animals. Free ranging wasps can become complex yellow-jacket societies. Human societies can become nations. Efficient communication may lead to new, unsuspected levels of complexity in a global environment made up of billions of inter-communicating people and machines.

We need to look at some of the processes involved. With the increasing development of advanced nervous systems, the potential importance of communication increases. How far communication advances depends upon many factors. It may start with increased survival chances produced by care of young - the young observe the adults and learn strategies for survival. Much of this learning is passive communication, not deliberate on the part of the parents. It further develops into deliberate teaching, from warning calls, to demonstrations on how to catch prey. From there it is possible for societies to develop mainly from related individuals who can communicate effectively and evolve their own culture and interact with neighbouring societies (the evolution of societies is further discussed in Chapter 8). Our communication skills have evolved in concert with our increasing brain power, and have together facilitated the development of learning skills far beyond any other species. (There is even evidence to suggest that our communication skills have been with us long enough for much of our language learning ability to have been hard-wired in the brain, so that basic language structure is already present at birth). Human communication can now over-ride and supplant previously DNA-transmitted information, although we still have the considerable hidden baggage of inherited behaviour, which acts as our driver (this is further discussed under maintenance behaviour and in Chapter 5).

With the invention of extra-corporate information storage, initially by art work, then writing and now computer discs and the Internet, information and communication have developed an existence outside our DNA bodies. Any intelligence could take charge of this heritage, especially if it had skills well beyond our abilities. We are now totally incapable of absorbing the vast amount of existing information, we cannot cope with the complexities of today's world - big business, the ramifications of international finance, government, administration of social services. It is now all so complex, that leaders are having to make decisions, which are quite beyond their capabilities. Daily we hear politicians and economists talking about budgets, finances and economics as if money was real and subject to the laws of simple arithmetic, when in reality it is determined by a complex of social perception and mood together with a global casino factor generated by large fund managers etc. We have become completely reliant on computers for backup, but our understanding is so limited, and speed of communication so pedestrian that we have lost the race for control. Computers on the other hand can be instantly taught anything merely by inserting a disk or tapping into a computer network, and are capable of analysing the most complex issues. They can already communicate a billion times faster than we can, and they are in the process of being linked into global networks with the use of high-technology optical fibres (these are far superior to telephone wires).

Currently there is also a rapidly growing system of communication between all our artefacts - soon we will have all our cars linked into traffic control systems which respond to various conditions, cars which drive themselves, microchips which operate all the machines in a house, positioning systems which keep track of our every movement, coordinated machines which can do anything from build a house to farm the land. Few recognise what is happening - more and more we are becoming slaves to the machine intelligence which is growing up around us. We seem to be progressively becoming like slaves to the system, observing numbers coming up on screens and rushing around fulfilling orders. The development of this communication network around us has the potential to completely enmesh us. An Orwellian scenario is becoming possible, where we can do nothing without it being observed and analysed - our every heartbeat counted, our every tilt recorded. Perhaps George Orwell merely got the date wrong - 1984 was too soon.

Maintenance Behaviour

Animals are involved in many different kinds of maintenance behaviour, for instance, in grey squirrels this sort of behaviour may include the sum of daily activities, movements around their home area, migratory movements when food is short, searching amongst the fallen leaves for acorns, storing them, eating, sleeping and avoiding predators. Maintenance may also be taken to include mate-seeking activity, rearing young and defending the home area from neighbours, together with other behaviour patterns, which are essentially social interactions. In all these activities, changes in any one behaviour pattern, for the species in question, is likely to have consequences on other aspects of its behaviour or, in the longer term, for the animal's anatomy. For instance, grey squirrels often eat pine cones; when they need to they chew off the scales to get at the seeds in much the same manner as pine squirrels. However, to do this as the main method of feeding is very tiring for the jaws, because the animals need greater leverage to do the job with ease. Pine squirrels have this with a shorter jaw and larger muscle attachments. A relative of the grey squirrel lives in the forests across Eurasia, the red squirrel, and this squirrel has lived in pine forests long enough for it to have evolved the jaw structure found in North American pine squirrels. This squirrel is now effectively a pine squirrel, acquiring many of the anatomical characteristics typical of the American species including jaw structure and dark colour.

There are innumerable examples from nature that illustrate how one behaviour element has consequences, which demand other changes to make it more effective. They demonstrate how the rules also apply to us when we choose to go down certain behavioural pathways. Pine squirrels, like the Douglas Squirrel hoard pine cones for winter because they keep damp and this stops the pine seeds falling out, and becoming available to other mammals and birds. But hoarding in a pile has a disadvantage compared to the scatter-hoarding done by grey squirrels - it is easy to rob by neighbours. The result is that pine squirrels are intensely territorial against all other squirrels, but are also terrible thieves - frantically filching cones from their neighbours whenever they can.

The parallel in human society is particularly obvious with those who fill their homes with expensive jewellery, paintings, silver etc. If you build a hoard like this, it is open to thieving and you have to also develop territorial defence to protect your wealth. The scatter-hoarding grey squirrels, on the other hand are much more relaxed about their store. They appear to be happy about sharing it with their immediate neighbours - after all, they all worked together to build the store - all they need do is to go and pluck an acorn whenever they are hungry (perhaps, more correctly, one should say they are unaware that they are sharing a limited resource or that it is indefensible, therefore it is a waste of energy to try and keep other squirrels from using it). This is perhaps much as we used to be before we extended the concept of ownership - it was agriculture and money, which sent us along the path of the pine squirrels. European pine squirrels are still ignorant of the merits (and demerits) of pile-hoarding cones - they scatter-hoard like the grey squirrels.

It is interesting that animals can have the behaviour repertoires of more than one life style in their makeup - they can be switched on and off according to need. Migratory birds like the cranes do not need a great behaviour change when feeding around Indiana swamps compared to their breeding grounds in Arctic swamps, but there are some warblers which do an amazing change of character between their two main habitats. Reed warblers in Europe nest in reed-swamps around lakes and where they went in Africa for the winter was long a mystery, because it was found that different species of warbler occupied their niche there. Eventually they were found living in the desert regions of the southern Sahara, in small scrubby areas where the temperature went near 50°C during the day and few other birds could survive! The inclusion of more than one behaviour package, is commonplace in species which evolve more rapidly than vertebrates. The insects have taken it to an extreme and include total anatomical reconstructions as well. Grasshoppers have young which look like the adults and live similar lives, but the yellow-jackets have grubs for the early stages, which have totally different life styles from the eventual adult wasp.

DOG DAY CICADA EMERGING. Having more than one set of behaviour patterns is common in nature. This cicada has one for its nymph stage when is has to burrow and feed on roots and another for its adult stage, when it has to fly, chirp and mate. We manage this quite well also, taking on different roles according to circumstances. Intelligence gives us the ability to rapidly swap roles.

Human inherited behaviour package.

Human beings have a huge range of inherited behaviour packages, including optional extras. It would appear that we can also consciously choose to add learned behaviour where appropriate. Commuters, like the reed warblers, have different behaviours according to whether they are at home or work. While sequentially we go through a number of stages in our long wasp-like development - each adapted to the pertaining conditions. We have the advantage over our animal cousins in that we can build our own behaviour tools without waiting millions of years of natural selection on DNA to give them to us. We can easily slip between roles - flying like a bird, speeding like a cheetah or working like a slave-ant. We make behaviour tools as we need them, and can switch rapidly between characters. It is as if we can take what is necessary off the hook, like a stage prop, and act out whatever part we choose. But for each choice there are also the limitations and consequences imposed by the choice. As people go through life they acquire something known as their "character" coming from the mix of the theatrical parts they choose to act out (normally, presumably, within the limitations imposed by their inherited and early environmental constraints). With this ability to add and extend roles, we have come to use uniforms to signify a stereotyped role and dress people up in them to act the part. It is as if a worker termite fleeing to the nest, could strap on a pair of soldier's jaws, change its behaviour and rush out to attack the enemy.

Something which becomes clear when looking at our choices of activities is how much we are in fact still dominated by DNA programming dating from our distant past - this is the behavioural driver which evolved from the time when we lived as a tribal ape. This driver is immensely complex - it is what initiates us as active human beings, doing all the programmed behaviour which has been evolved for successful maintenance over thousands of generations of natural selection. We are diurnal (although adolescents go through an innate phase where the sleep pattern borders on nocturnal), and we seem to identify most with open habitat, recreating semi-desert-like conditions wherever we go (we still seem to have an innate vision of desert being our natural habitat). Worst of all we seem unable to shake off the shackles of some of the disadvantages of the behaviour dictated by a tribal organization. These include a limited capacity for inter-personal relationships designed to cope with a tribe-sized number of people; an entrenched tribal organization with divisions of labour between different peer groups (e.g. males and females, age groups, social classes), with which we reserve the more debasing occupations for the disadvantaged "inferior" groups.

The most serious legacy of our tribal past is the xenophobia we retain - it presumably evolved as a means of uniting the tribe to defend its territory and resources from neighbours, much like individual pine squirrels chase all neighbours. Most mammals exhibit related behaviour, ranging from avoidance of neighbouring groups, such as in mustangs and other wild horses, to infanticide and murder in rats and chimpanzees. Most will kill when forced into unnatural proximity with rival members in confined spaces, including doves.

Computer behaviour

Computer aids give us the ability of escaping these limitations; being active at all hours in all locations, they are able to recognise any number of people, are sexless and are not affected by traditional barriers between different peer groups. Computers and computer networks are likely to stray further outside the behaviour limitations of a tribal ape as they become increasingly intelligent, and will develop their own behaviour patterns and value systems. They already respond in an absolute way without any humanity: bouncing cheques, cutting off your electricity and evicting without a hint of sympathy - notices will often go out without even being seen by a living organism. Now that the original tribal unit has gone, individuals are merely numbers, and human failure is becoming more closely allied to machine failure in the eyes of computer-run systems. The worry is that the people running them are becoming more absolute, with more machine-like intelligence in their approach to human failures, because there is no longer any personal contact.

What is the future of this relationship? Our culture software, the databank-analysis-communication facility, evolves like a living thing in our society, outside our DNA bodies, and has the potential to evolve independently with no further input from us - natural selection now being in ideas rather than between human bodies. So far we have not invented any computer which is capable of intelligent control of the system, and most people assume that we will remain fully in control of the computer network system, with it being run only as a means to further human ends. However, this is somewhat naive, because we are still stuck with our DNA-programming, which is increasingly at variance with the future needs of the global human population and the environment.

As we are at present, we are all individuals wishing to further our own selfish ends, striving to ensure the continuance of both our genetic line, by any means (monogamy through to cuckoldry and rape) and our culture, through building self-serving tribal structures, varying from families and villages to ethnic groups, nations, companies, clubs, and trade blocks. These combined selfish ends threaten the future well-being of the human species together with the artefacts it is making, because they are destroying the environment necessary for human survival. This destructive juggernaut can only be counteracted by intervention from a collective super-intelligence.

If we get to the stage of there being a global networked machine-like intelligence, human selfish ends are likely to be irrelevant, except where it has to deal with the continued presence of human beings. Increasingly one can expect our selfish ends to be overridden by a collective intelligence, progressively eroding our personal freedoms for the sake of a higher level goal of the well-being of the globalized system. But, as such a global system evolves and grows in complexity, it may increasingly function as a unit concentrating on its own survival, with the human species becoming less and less relevant. We may end up like domestic animals, useful only as long as we work to maintain the system. The whole could be like a single thinking organism linked together by a complex nerve net wielding billions of units (people and machines) into concerted action, as if they were coordinated into organs. Objection will be impossible - we as individuals are too primitive to understand what the organism is doing, and could be destroyed like faulty cells in a body if we fall out of line. Already forces behind the scenes are manipulating us (unconsciously), particularly the media.

In the more distant future, it is likely that the communication facility will break down due to the limits of the speed of light. Colonies will soon be established in space and on the planets, but these locations are so distant from Earth that the delays between sending and receiving signals will seriously interfere with communication. This could eventually lead to separate evolutionary pathways emerging around each planet in the solar system, or artificial satellite, and the potential for selfish rivalry, conflict and war redeveloping.

This is all very futuristic, but every trend examined in the following pages reinforces these visions of the future. The main question, which we need to answer, is what happens in the situation, (which is fast developing) where intelligence replaces DNA-natural selection as the main force determining behaviour. What is the driver of the system going to be like when it is motivated by intelligence alone? Is it going to have a human face, or something quite alien to our present view of what is right? This is what I hope will emerge during the course of the book.

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Part I TECHNOLOGY (B)

Contents part 1
Main Contents

 

MAZARUNI RIVER FROM THE RESTHOUSE AT ISSANO. Technology is the basis of life - birds have wings and beaks, bats have hearing, butterflies have iridescent scales. All these technologies have consequences for the possessors. We are surrounding ourselves with tools of our own making, like the Amerindian boy seen paddling up the river in his bark canoe. What ultimate consequences do these tools have for us?

CHAPTER 3

ORGANS

Guiana, South America

The South American Rainforest is an incredible cauldron for the evolution of life's technology. It has been an inspiration for many people, including Darwin and Wallace, who were both impressed by the amazing diversity of animals and plants that they found. The romance of the unexplored interior led Conan Doyle in 1912 to write The Lost World, where he imagined an encounter with surviving, Jurassic/Cretaceous life. The flat-topped Mt. Roraima, sacred to the tribes living in the area, was the setting for his novel where he writes about Professor Challenger and his party scaling the surrounding sheer cliffs to explore the high plateau. This, the story goes on, was found to be dominated by dinosaurs and led to his characters having many adventures and narrow escapes from tyranosaurs and pterodactyls. The days of this sort of novel have passed - no such unexplored places exist on Earth any more, and all the remaining rainforest is disappearing so fast under the axe, bulldozer and fire, that little will remain for the next generation to see. There is little doubt that other places do exist, too incredible for us to imagine. At last we are beginning to discover what seems to be the obvious - the universe is packed with planetary systems. But many people are still reluctant to accept that life is also universal and that unbelievable lost worlds exist all around us. There is little doubt that the present century will see all this changed. The belief that our living planet occupies a unique position in the Universe will be finally blown to pieces.

Mazaruni River

My visit to Conan Doyle's setting left me with a lasting impression. I went with two friends from University at a time when we could see the South American rainforest in a relatively pristine state. Our first excursion followed Professor Challenger's route up the Mazaruni River in Guiana towards Mt. Roraima. All around us there was a vibrant, living system, which filled us with a sense of excitement and romance. Hatchet fishes skimmed away from the boat like marine flying fish, cutting the mirror-still floodwater as if it were glass - the tangled lianas wrapped on overhanging branches, transformed themselves before our eyes into huge anacondas - the raucous calls of red macaws flying overhead, contrasted with the blue flashing wings of morpho butterflies fluttering amongst flowering trees at the water's edge. From high above we felt the cold malevolent stare of orange howler monkeys - we were trespassing on the world, which was theirs until as recently as 12,000 years ago when the first humans made their way into the continent.

The boat drew up at Tumureng, which at the time was the centre for the local diamond prospecting industry. The indigenous Amerindian population had long since been decimated by western diseases and culture, and the few remaining survived further up the river at Imbaimadai. Others had largely vacated the forest with the aid of missionaries, whose attentions had the effect of so devaluing the Amerindian culture that they had become the outer fringe of the city fringe-dwellers. The diamond rush was accelerating the change, because it brought in opportunistic fortune seekers who had no respect for anyone, let alone the environment or its indigenous peoples. However they were only in the vanguard of modern exploitative land use, the coastal plain was then already under sugar cane and large areas of the remaining forest was progressively being logged for the valuable greenheart timber. The soil was also being stripped in bauxite mining operations, and the resulting turbidity in the Demerara river was appalling. Fortunately, at that time the Mazaruni was still pristine and much remained of this idyllic area, which has been so evocatively captured in the book Green Mansions by W. H. Hudson.

The origin of the diamonds is one of the most fascinating discoveries in modern science, which also explained why widely separated continents shared related flora and fauna. It had been a mystery as to how the diamonds got to the Merume Mountains - the sandstone rocks forming the mountains were laid down in a shallow sea, so the diamonds and sand must have originally been washed there from somewhere else. The discovery - still rejected by many at that time - was that continental land masses are not stable, but drift slowly around the globe on solid plates, like scum on the surface of a pond. Africa and South America were joined together 120 million years ago, and the diamonds came from the diamond-bearing rocks of Sierra Leone before the continents began to drift apart.

This movement is a remarkable illustration of how the accumulation of minute changes over millions of years can lead to undreamed-of gross change. In this case it is the result of chaotic convection currents deep in the earth leading to surface flows that may split land masses apart and float them about at the rate of a few millimetres a year. Similar minute evolutionary changes have accreted over the last 100 million years or so in every animal and plant living in the tropical rainforest. Some of the gross changes include those of what might have been a tree-climbing feathered dinosaur, which evolved the ability to glide using its forelimbs. The forelimbs developed its muscles and eventually led to powered flight. Its present descendants included the macaws flying overhead. Conan Doyle's dinosaurs of The Lost World were indeed still here, but they were changed beyond recognition.

The mammals have similarly changed from the insignificant weasel- or shrew-like animals of the dinosaur era, into the staggering diversity of mammoth-sized species, which populated the globe before modern man. In the South American arena most of the larger species are already extinct, but sloths, giant anteaters, armadillos, llamas, pumas, marmosets, and manatees still exist. There are even about 65 different kinds of marsupial surviving on the continent, which are the remnants of a much richer fauna existing prior to the invasion by eutherian mammals from North America. This almost rivals the number of marsupials found in Australia.

Beaks

Charles Darwin was impressed by the finches he saw in the Galapagos islands - like domestic dogs, they all appeared to have come from a single original species, but natural selection had taken them along different paths on each island. The main differences were in their food gathering tools - on some islands the bills were powerful organs developed for cracking seeds, on others they were long and narrow, to reach into crevices. There was no conscious process involved - those which were better able to feed, survived and reproduced. This is the relentless process which perfects the tools of life. Beaks are remarkable tools and are just one example of the awe-inspiring array of organ-technologies, which have been developed by animals and plants. We take them all for granted - because they are just everyday characteristics of the living things which surround us. But it is an inescapable and unnerving fact that this unconscious, unplanned DNA-engineering still far surpasses most of our efforts. Much of the technology is beyond our understanding, but our knowledge is increasing all the time, making the complexity of the engineering involved ever more incredible.

Much has been written about the fascinating parallels between the tools of living things and our own technology, often examining life's tools from a modern engineer's viewpoint. Each part of the body is effectively a tool of some sort. The body is held up by skeletal struts, which are often strengthened in similar ways to those employed by engineers. They also have many variations on hinges for articulation. Motor power is provided by muscles, which are attached at suitable leverage points. The heart is an effective pump circulating fuel and other necessities to the body, while the kidneys form an efficient molecular filtration system, and the lungs provide a gas exchange facility. Limbs provide a great diversity of tools from wings and paddles to shears and hypodermic syringes. Sense organs are some of the most sophisticated of all, especially eyes and ears, being far more high-tech than our video cameras and microphones. While the most complex of all, and the one we know least about, is the brain. This extraordinary organ can power animals, such as a minute insect only half a millimetre long, to fly, seek mates, know where and how to lay eggs, avoid predators - to do all that is necessary to live. Honeybee brains are much more complex and capable of learning, but the human brain has the additional power - of using what we know, in something we call intelligence.

Termites

Tumureng was on a hill almost surrounded by floodwaters, which had spread into the surrounding forest. We spent many hours walking and wondering at all the animals and plants we saw - a rainbow boa in the bathroom, opossums on the roof, epiphytic bromeliads dripping water as we rowed through the flooded forest. Coming from England, I knew many interesting things lived under bark, and I was well rewarded when I pulled some bark off a dead tree. It was seething with termites - something not seen in my home country. The workers filed away into holes in the trunk while soldiers flooded out to deal with the emergency. Their enemy was not me, although I had caused the problem, it was the ants - they had quickly got wind of the turmoil and started marching up the tree to carry off worker termites.

Watching the skirmish I soon realised that the soldiers were doing something peculiar - they were not attacking the ants as I expected, but rushing around, stopping momentarily, while putting their jaws down - then making an audible clicking sound. Then I saw what they were doing - at each click a nearby ant disappeared! The soldiers had some remarkable technology in their jaws, which, instead of biting, struck the ant with such force that it was thrown off the trunk. This was clearly an advance on biting jaws - it was just a matter of click-bang! and the adversary is gone, instead of having to fight and kill each marauding ant. Each soldier could despatch many ants within seconds. I had seen drawings of these soldiers in entomological textbooks, some with extraordinarily shaped jaws, but it was as if the writers sat at their museum desks, and had never seen a living insect. The jaws seemed only to be used to identify species by museum taxonomists - there was no mention of their fascinating purpose. The jaws were amazingly engineered to store energy and release it with what is known as a click mechanism - imparting the energy to the hapless ants.

CLICK-JAW ANT. Click mechanisms are common in nature. These ants have one in their jaws which have a trigger to release the jaws which click shut on prey. Click beetles have a similar technology. It is also used in insect flight, and makes the wings click up and down. It is used in cicadas to make sound. Mankind first used it in making crossbows, and later developed it into the click mechanism to fire guns.

Click-Mechanisms

Similar click-mechanisms are widely used by invertebrates; insect flight is largely powered by it, and click-beetles use it to jump, scaring predators. Mantid shrimps use it to cause cavitation in the water and stun prey, with their hammer-like limbs moving so rapidly that they create a vacuum in the water, and a shock wave travelling faster than sound. Using the click mechanism, and the remaining complex technology of flight, it has been found that insects are able to achieve wing-beat frequencies as high as 1000/second, which used to be thought impossible by physiologists studying muscle contraction. Similar processes are involved in sound production in cicadas, which vibrate a tympanum - they can produce high notes by making several clicks for each muscle contraction. With these strange soldier termites there was, however, a cost in their technology - they could not feed themselves, and had to rely on workers for food.

Leaving Tumureng we went on a heavily overloaded boat further up the river. The passengers were glad of the calm glassy water, because there was only about two inches of freeboard between us, and a swim to the non-existent bank through piranha infested water. Everyone kept remarkably still! The boat turned up the Kurupung River, which wound its way in such a sinuous fashion that it was hard to know the way we were travelling. Eventually we disembarked at Kurupung, where the river emerged from a rock-strewn gorge. We set up camp in the forest and the next day we went with a diamond prospector on a hike along a jungle trail past rocks covered with filmy ferns, and along logs felled to cross over creeks full of bromeliads. After climbing for several kilometres, we could hear a roaring noise, which became louder and louder until we came out to the river again, and a rare glimpse of the sky. Looking downstream the tea-coloured river boiled into a foam, and disappeared abruptly over the brink of a huge waterfall. Walking along the cliff-top the roar became deafening, the bromeliads grew thicker, and, saturated with spray, they tipped water over us as we passed.

Eventually we came out onto a rock ledge to view the tremendous Kumarau Falls. The locals believed the drop to be about 180 metres, but it had only recently been discovered and had not been surveyed (although, of course, well known to generations of indigenous peoples). The waterfall was certainly very impressive, carrying the Kurupung River from the high plateau, to the level of the plain below, and through the long tortuous gorge it was cutting. Falls such as this are not unusual in this part of the world: there are lots of them, perhaps the best known is the Kaietur Falls on the Potaro River, which is 120 metres across and 225 metres high.

On the way back an ant on one of the bromeliads attracted my attention. It was walking around with its jaws wide open - I wondered what this adaptation might be, and only later learned that they have a click-mechanism in the jaws. (It was in Australia - I found some similar ants and tried putting a squashed fly near one. It carefully stalked the fly and then there was a loud click as its jaws shut, piercing it with rapier sharp daggers.) The jaws were wide open because they were cocked with stored energy, like a mouse-trap, ready to be released by the click-mechanism to kill its prey. With this tool the ant clearly had to adopt quite a different strategy for catching prey - stealth rather than the mass attack usually used by ants. This organ-level engineering had the side-effect of altering the behaviour of the ants. There were huge side effects when man invented a click mechanism and used it in the cross-bow - it revolutionised warfare. The stored energy released by the click was eventually replaced by a similar trigger, which released the stored chemical energy in the bang of a gun.

Ants

On the way back down the Mazaruni River we stopped at Issano for a few nights. We found people were having problems with ants there. One morning we saw that a citrus tree by the resthouse had had all its leaves stripped off, and they were being carried along the track towards a huge ant colony. These ants have developed a form of technology similar to our own - agriculture. Humanity only discovered agriculture about 17 thousand years ago, ants were doing it millions of years ago. They grow their own crops of fungi on leaf compost. They have well-adapted scissor-like jaws for cutting the leaves into suitable portions and carrying them back to the nest, where they are cut up and built into suitable piles, seeded with fungi and weeded to remove unwanted moulds.

The ants are so successful with this technology that they become prey to other species. They are everywhere and so form a widespread host for any animal able to take advantage of them - mostly they can defend themselves, but are vulnerable when they have their jaws full carrying a leaf back to the nest. Flies use this opportunity to lay eggs on the leaves, which are then carried back to the nest to hatch into parasitic larvae. This has been such a problem to the ants that they have evolved a minute worker cast which rides on the leaves to drive the flies away.

This is basically akin to us creating, by genetic manipulation, a midget class of people as a tool for our own benefit - we have not got that far yet, although past cultures would have had no ethical problems with purpose bred human beings - they just needed access to modern technology. We use children instead - as punkah-wallahs, chimney sweeps and fine-fingered carpet weavers. Our answer in the future will inevitably be robotic tools rather than purpose-bred human beings, because they can be made as required, instead of having to wait for them to grow. (Although in a robot-dominated world, purpose-bred human beings may have a place - we are already well into the process of culturing parts of human beings for transplant purposes - whole human beings is only a small step away).

There was a lovely view over the river from the resthouse, where we watched Amerindian boys paddling their bark canoes, while dragonflies patrolled the riverbank demonstrating their amazing flight technology - hovering, darting off to chase rivals, zooming up to catch a fly, and settling on the yellow flowered plants below. I noticed that these plants had masses of ants clustered below the flower heads, which I assumed were visiting aphids to collect honeydew. But when I looked closer I saw that they were not ants at all, but membracid leaf hoppers. They had extravagant growths out of the top of the thorax, which mimicked ants, presumably so that predators would leave them alone. These outgrowths must have seriously impeded their ability to fly, but presumably their gains in terms of survival, outweighed their losses in mobility. This was another curiosity I had seen in textbooks, which had no accompanying explanation - no museum taxonomist could guess what the outgrowths were for without seeing the living insects in action.

AMERINDIAN WOMAN WITH HER PET MACAW. Wings are wonderful tools, making birds one of the wonders of nature. Once you have tools, such as wings, they are then available for many other uses - the feathers can be coloured and used in displays to attract mates, like this macaw, or to scare off enemies.

Macaws - flight

An Amerindian lady in the village showed us her pet macaw - they are really beautiful birds, but it is a shame that they are usually kept as chained pets, instead of being allowed to fly free. They are such a wonderful sight living in their natural habitat and flying overhead across the river. One wonders what their distant relatives, the flying dinosaurs, looked like - some were much larger than birds. Could they have been even more adapted to life in the air than most birds? Could the huge pterodactyls have been like hang-gliders over the ocean, never settling, unless coming to lay eggs in the safety of off-shore islands? Only swifts have achieved this among the birds, staying day and night in the air until they have to nest.

We could learn a lot from birds - Leonardo daVinci had the right idea, designing flying machines based on bird-like flapping wings. The trouble was that he had little idea how birds fly, so his ideas fell flat, and later machines based on his model never got off the ground. It is necessary to have the scientific information before one can try and use nature's technology. Most people have tried to invent technology from scratch without looking at how nature does things. The first iron bridge was built in 1779 in Shropshire using solid cast iron. It was a very heavy structure using a lot of iron. If the engineer had looked at bird's wing bones a better design may have been used, with tubes and internal struts - but then, the technology to do this may not have been available at the time.

Many other ideas were there in nature, but engineers had to invent them from scratch. The mason wasps building nests of clay under the resthouse, were vibrating their wing muscles to transfer the movements into the clay and keep it pliable. Concrete pumping uses the same principle to stop the concrete going solid in the pipes. Wild potatoes in South America have a wonderful system of immobilising insects, which might attack them. They have two sorts of glandular hairs, and when insects walk over the surface they get covered in droplets from both hairs. When these drops of resin and fixative mix, they turn into a strong gum, which immobilises the insect. Our chemists have exploited a similar technology in epoxy-resin glues.

The production of Velcro is one of the few examples where natural engineering has been consciously applied for human use - plants use bur hooks to attach seeds to animal hair and Velcro uses similar plastic hooks to grip onto loops on an opposing strip, for many temporary closure applications. More often we rely on stealing the organ intact from the owners and use it ourselves, such as skin for garments, wood for building materials, pig hearts for organ replacements. But eventually, as we become more acquainted with the technology of DNA, the use of most of these natural products may become unnecessary, and be superseded (see Chapter 4).

Our engineers build superb flying machines on a far grander scale than the largest pterodactyl. These jumbos lack the control given by the macaw's flapping wings, but we have invented helicopters, which are our answer to dragonfly technology. In the late 1990s robotic engineers began looking at flies with renewed interest. Details were discovered on how they fly, using three different wing-motions to create the vortices that provide lift. We know enough about mechanics to reproduce the flapping motion, and about materials, such as Mylar, to make the flexible wing structure necessary. The aim was to produce a robotic fly - that flies! This may appear a senseless exercise - why make a fly when we spend most of our lives trying to get rid of them? But, when you think about it, if it is possible to build a fly, the implications are frightening. We look with amazement at a fly, just taking for granted that it is a living thing which has all these skills - of flying, finding food, mating, avoiding predators - this was all just considered to be part of the mystery of life. But now our knowledge has advanced so much that it is within our grasp to create a robotic fly. The mystery of life is no longer such a mystery.

To most of us it is incredible to think that the technology required is known - not only for the flight mechanism, but for the sense organs for balance, sight, olfaction, hearing and a nerve centre for processing all this information and determining action - a brain. It is not surprising that funding for the project comes from the military - perhaps they see it as a potential fly-on-the-wall eavesdropping device. Next we may see a mosquito designed to deliver lethal doses of anthrax. The spin-off may have positive uses, such as robo-flies finding people buried beneath rubble after an earthquake, and mosquitoes which deliver immunization shots.

Flies - nano-technology

In building a real fly, DNA has the advantage over the robo-fly of using tiny cells as building blocks to construct every part of the body. This micro-engineering is used to construct incredibly complex organs - just look at the beauty of a fly's eyes or those of a dragonfly. Micro- and nano-engineers can now make complex tools, which potentially can be on a molecular scale. The practical implications of this are staggering - the robo-fly may be one of the first signs of silicon life. Already with micro-engineering we are approaching the ability to produce a microchip with the power of the most advanced mainframe computer. While nano-technology can out-do DNA in miniaturisation - it has the potential to make molecular chips with the equivalent of all the cells in a human brain packed into an area the size of a coin - the theoretical framework is already there, and the first practical beginnings made. Work is also being done on using biological techniques for producing these constructions, such as growing semiconductor membranes, and it is only a matter of time before DNA technology is tapped for this purpose - it may eventually be possible to grow artificial tools, even brains.

School science leaves the impression that everything is known and there is little more to discover - our scientists have been so successful that it was getting harder and harder to come up with anything new. As a scientist everything is turned around - the little we know merely alerts one to the infinity of knowledge yet to be discovered. Another universe of knowledge is being revealed, now that it is becoming possible to unravel the innermost mysteries of life, and reproduce them for our own ends. We have already seen the impacts of gross technology on our way of living, what are the likely impacts of nano-technology tools? Can the living possessors of nano-technology tools tell us anything about what effects they may have on us? The living world is filled with material, which may aid us in this research.

Sitting in a partly shaded spot by the river I soon found that I was the welcome centre of attention - of bloodsucking mosquitoes. They streamed out of the shadows into the sunlight, gleaming with metallic beauty. They were so attractive I almost forgot what they were there for. They were not robo-mozzies - the iridescent metallic blue and green colours came from scales on their bodies, which have a minute layered structure. The layers are spaced at the wavelengths of the green or blue colours. These colours are reflected while the remaining colours in sunlight are absorbed. Their hind legs had extended plates of iridescent scales, presumably designed to attract predators, which could catch a leg and leave the rest of the mosquito intact. The scales were probably originally designed as an escape mechanism from spiders' webs - the scales stick to the web, and break off to allow the mosquito to escape. These were day flying mosquitoes, which used the scales to protect their bodies from damaging UV rays.

The mosquitoes around me were all females, they were equipped with sense organs to detect the heat and the higher carbon dioxide concentrations found near their warm-blooded victims. Their wing beats emitted the tell-tale whine of mosquitoes. This is the give-away for male mosquitoes, which have a complex organ at the base of their antennae designed to detect female's wing-beats. For mosquitoes the technology of flight has lead to a new organ to detect the opposite sex. Generators emitting a female-like whine have become jammed with male mosquitoes lured by the irresistible, all pervasive female noise of machines. The robo-fly technologists may have to return to see how nature achieves quiet flight before their creation can avoid being swatted - most horseflies give themselves away with their droning wings, but some rely on stealth and are almost silent.

Butterflies and moths also developed scales on their wings, and are good at escaping spiders' webs. Butterflies which fly in the light of day have evolved other uses for their scales - not only do they protect the body from UV light, but they are used for display purposes. Morpho butterflies must be one of the most conspicuous in the world - flashing their mirror-like blue wings as they fly along the riversides, seeking mates and chasing rivals. We know all about how our clothing can be used for purposes other than covering the need for protection against cold and sunlight - especially in advertising status, aggression and sexual attraction.

Birds are past masters at using their feathers for purposes other than flying and keeping warm - the peacock must be one of the most extravagant, but the South American Quetzel is a close rival with its shimmering metallic feathers. We did not see any of these magnificent birds, but we saw some Cock-of-the-Rock near Kurupung. The males are brilliant orange with an incredible almost hair-like growth of feathers over their beaks. The males have been driven down this route by evolving a system of mating, where the females are solely in charge of choosing their partners. The males are just used for mating purposes and have nothing to do with nest-building and rearing young. This system results in ever more extravagant features to advertise the health and worth of the male to impress females. The females are right in that the male has indeed to be strong and successful to survive in such a dangerous environment, encumbered with more brilliant colours and extravagant feathers than his rivals. The males gather together, trying to corner the best spots where the sun makes their orange feathers glow. They all display together, trying to outdo rivals in what is known as lek behaviour, because it is similar to the lekking behaviour of grouse. The rather drab females come and look over the displaying males with critical eyes, each eventually choosing the one that takes her fancy most. The males put themselves at great risk of predation, and exhaust themselves in the process, all as a consequence of being able to use feathers in advertising worth. (The birds of paradise in New Guinea have gone down a similar path.)

Once having chosen this path, one wonders if it is possible to reverse the evolutionary trend, because it would mean that females would need to change strategy and start choosing losers - the ones with more drab clothes, or that did not bother to come to the lek party at all. It could happen, presumably, if males became so rare that females had no choice, but then that is likely to be the prelude to extinction.

Vampire bats

Sleeping in hammocks at night we were very conscious of whining mosquitoes, and had good mosquito nets for protection. We were more worried about rabid vampire bats, which could easily find a toe touching the net and bite in silence. Bats have an incredible high technology packed into a small space - their eyes are vestigial but this alternative technology enables them to see in the dark. We have some very basic applications of similar technology in asdic for locating submerged objects, using pulses of sound and listening for the reflected echoes. The same principles are used in radar, which measures rebounded radio-waves.

Bats have perfected their technology so that they effectively can produce a picture of their surrounds for each squeak. This picture is probably somewhat like a single frame in a cine film - where blurring identifies moving objects. The bat sees these frames as a moving picture, by using a high rate of squeaking. The extraordinary external features of bats nose, face and ears are all connected with this navigation instrument while the internal ear structure is an amazing feat of micro- and nano-engineering. Sound waves are first transferred to solid vibration using an eardrum, and it is then passed through three bones, which can be moved to adjust the volume of the transmitted sound. The vibrations are then transferred to liquid in the cochlea, which is a masterpiece of high technology. It has a huge array of cells with hair-like projections distributed along its coiled length - at each point in cross-section the cells are precisely arranged like organ pipes from larger to smaller cells. (These hair-like projections are so important to hearing in bats that they are replaced as they age and break - this does not happen in our ears and we suffer progressive hearing loss.)

It appears as if the cells are tuned to specific wavelengths, so that they are stimulated to fire nerve impulses only for the sounds they are tuned to record. This is the mechanical part of the hearing process - the analytical part is far more complex and as yet beyond us. Much of the process of hearing actually occurs within the nerves, which can sum sets of vibrations, and accentuate important aspects over unwanted noise. It is in the brain that actual hearing takes place, and how this is achieved has a lot to do with the way the brain develops in response to vibrations picked up in the ear, and to learning and experience in the young bat.