It is
commonly accepted that humans are the most advanced life form on the planet
Earth. However, when one looks at our
ecosystem, it is clear that numerous life forms show amazing talents and
abilities which certainly could be construed as intelligent. Recent research efforts are finding
remarkable capabilities even within the most primitive of life forms,
prokaryotic bacteria. This article will
examine the apparently inherent phenomenon of intelligence and advanced
organization in life forms inhabiting the Earth.
Many biologists
believe that dolphins are the second most intelligent species on Earth after
humans. They are blessed with large,
complex brains that support self-awareness and the processing of “complex
emotions” according to dolphin expert Lori Marino. The highly developed emotional center is facilitated
by communication and a social lifestyle.
[1] Other animals also show
well-developed intelligence. As reported
by Bryan Johnson in “Top Ten Smartest Animals,” chimpanzees have the best
memories of the animal kingdom besides humans, exhibit organized thought, can
communicate with humans, use tools, and perform math on computers. Elephants demonstrate incredible memories,
self-recognition, and artistic expression.
They also can communicate, use tools, and display emotions. Crows are very social and can count,
distinguish between different shapes, learn by observation, and use tools. The octopus displays short and long term
memory, observational learning, and the ability to solve problems. Even the Portia Labiata Jumping Spider,
despite its tiny size, can solve problems, is capable of learning, and
demonstrates cognitive abilities. [2]
In large
groups, animals often show highly organized behavior. In a video clip released November 2011,
thousands of starlings put on a spectacular artistic display, which can be
viewed in the links provided in the references.
[3,4] Certain species of fish exhibit
similar behavior. [5] Colonies of ants, bees, and termites are
known to be very highly organized. A website
hosted by Bryn Mawr University shows how very simple behavior by the ants leads
to a complex social organization despite having no direction from a leader. Ants are capable of performing any of three
primary jobs: guarding the nest, cleaning up debris, and foraging for food. Any individual worker ant can perform all
three tasks, yet in a given colony, 50% of the ants forage, 25% clean, and 25%
patrol. The ants manage this
distribution of labor by secreting a chemical which identifies the type of work
they are doing; therefore, they can identify what other ants are doing. If an ant is a forager and too many foragers
are encountered, the ant automatically switches to one of the other two tasks,
so the distribution of work always balances out. [6]
Ant colonies are capable of solving problems, for instance, the ability
to dispose of dead bodies at the maximum distance from entrances to the colony
[7] and “The Traveling Salesman Problem:” determining how to stop at multiple
destinations in the shortest distance.
[8]
This type of
behavior is described by scientists as “emergence,” or the concept that complex
group behavior is possible from the simple actions or behaviors of individuals
despite not having a leader. [9] Human beings will also tend to produce
spontaneous order in the absence of a leader or other direction, for instance,
behavior at a traffic circle (roundabout).
[10] Even the simplest life forms
demonstrate emergence according to Valerie Brown in her article “Bacteria ‘R’
Us.” Vibrio fischeri, a marine bacteria,
are capable of producing a bioluminescent chemical when enough of them are
gathered together, a phenomenon called “quorum sensing.” They exhibit this talent in symbiosis with
bobtail squid, exchanging a protected environment for helping the bobtail squid
hide from predators. She further goes on
to mention two other forms of emergent behaviors, “swarming,” or the ability
for a colony to move as a unit, and the development of fruiting bodies, which
consist of a group of bacteria merging together into a spore in order to
survive harsh conditions. [11]
Brown notes that
bacteria have been demonstrated to have a wide variety of chemical
communications with one another to the point where biologist Herbert Levine
describes it as a language. He even
proposed that their communications allow them to engage in intentional behavior,
a form of intelligence. Brown gives the
example of bacteria that have antibiotic resistant genes actively advertising
that capability to other bacteria. She adds
that bacteria are capable of telling the difference between “self” and “other,”
and between their relatives and strangers, suggesting that they may even think. Reporting on an article written by Marc van
Duijn, et.al at the University of Groningen in The Netherlands: “The presence
of ‘the basic processes of cognition, such as perception, memory and action’ in
bacteria can now be ‘plausibly defended.’”
She also shares University of Chicago microbial geneticist James
Shapiro’s thoughts about their capability for information management: “‘(they) have
ways of acquiring information both from the outside and the inside…and they can
do appropriate things on the basis of that information. So they must have some way to compute the
proper outcome.’” Shapiro concludes “‘…
Our status as the only sentient beings on the planet is dissolving as we learn
more about how smart even the smallest living cells can be.’” [12]
Emergent
behavior in bacteria appears to have profound implications with respect to the
human organism. According to Brown, 90%
of the cells in the human body are bacteria, and biologists are finding these
bacteria have remarkable talents. They
“...communicate in sophisticated
ways, take concerted action, influence human physiology, alter human thinking,
and work together to bioengineer the environment.” She further reports that biologists are
finding that bacteria in our digestive system even influence our mental health. A study performed with lab mice injected with
a type of bacteria associated with food poisoning showed that the resulting gut
infection led to anxiety in the test mice, and conjectured the same effect
happens in humans through transmission from the bowel via the nervous system to
the brain areas involved with emotions.
A different type of bacteria was demonstrated to improve moods in mice
through activation of neurons producing serotonin. Quoting Brown: “The phrase ‘gut feeling’ is
probably, literally true.” These
findings may have profound implications on the treatment of diseases. [13]
Brown
suggests that the remarkable abilities of bacteria are throwing evolution into
question. Bacteria typically reproduce
by cloning. When bacteria come in
contact with one another, they can swap some of their genetic material by a
process called “conjugation,” and any bacterium may freely swap with any other. She suggests that bacteria control their own
evolution:
“Microbes
also appear to take a much more active role in their own evolution than the
so-called “higher” animals. This flies in the face of the more radical versions
of Darwinism, which posit that the environment, and nothing else, selects
genes, and that there is no intelligence, divine or otherwise, behind evolution
— especially not in the form of organisms themselves making intentional changes
to their heritable scaffolding.”
Brown
finally poses an incredible thought: could bacteria be the ultimate architect
of life on earth? [14]
Bacteria emerged
3.8 billion years ago, about 700 million years after the formation of the
earth. It then took nearly 3 billion
years for multicellular life to form (one billion years ago). About 550 million years ago was the “Cambrian
Explosion,” where complex animals formed seemingly at once, such as worms,
arthropods, and fish. [15] Molecular biologist Sean Carroll notes that
the genetic material required for this burst had been in existence long prior
to the Cambrian Explosion. [16] Given the remarkable capabilities seen in
modern bacteria, it is easy to further speculate that bacteria may have been
the architect for the DNA that sparked the Cambrian Explosion. After all, bacteria developed all of the
complex chemicals and processes required for life. Quoting Valerie Brown:
“…bacteria are supreme code monkeys
that probably perfected the packages of genes and the regulation necessary to
produce just about every form of life, trading genetic information among
themselves long before there was anything resembling a eukaryotic cell…” [17]
Biologist
Rupert Sheldrake proposes a concept that appears to relate to emergence. These biological fields, morphogenic fields,
are organizing fields that, he proposes, are specific to and govern the
evolution of a species. These fields support
a collective, instinctive memory that all individuals of a species may draw
upon and contribute to, as he relates:
“For
example, if rats of a particular breed learn a new trick in Harvard, then rats
of that breed should be able to learn the same trick faster all over the world…
There is already evidence from
laboratory experiments (discussed in A
New Science of Life) that this actually happens.” [18]
Psychologist
Carl Jung proposed a very similar concept, “Collective Intelligence,” which describes
a collective, instinctive memory. [19] These concepts may explain a particular ant
colony behavior. Bryn Mawr University
found that older ant colonies handle external disturbances better than newer
colonies in existence only a year or two, despite the life span of an ant being
only one year. [20]
Is it
possible that bacteria, with its amazing talents, could be responsible for morphogenic
fields and collective intelligence?
Quoting Valerie Brown:
“…(bacteria) constitute a kind of
distributed awareness encompassing the whole planet. That not only are bacteria
in a given local environment busy texting each other like mad, but the entire planet
may consist of a giant Microbial World Wide Web.”
Whether or
not this is true, it is clear, that bacteria are much more influential in the
ecosystem than ever imagined and that humans are the superior species needs to
be reevaluated. [21]
Emergence,
advanced organization, and intelligence are inherent phenomenon of life and are
exhibited in life forms at all points on the evolutionary tree. In fact, prokaryotic bacteria, one of the simplest life forms, show both emergence and intelligence and may well be a force behind
these talents in higher life forms. This
may well prove to be one of nature’s greatest ironies; that only through the
smallest of creatures does mankind enjoy its perch as the most advanced life
form on our planet. In order to protect
our fragile ecosystem, humanity needs to understand the interdependencies of
all life forms and, more importantly, revere life for the miracle that it is. Perhaps then, mankind through its own form of
emergent behavior will make its next evolutionary and transcendent leap. Quoting Aristotle: “In all things of nature
there is something of the marvelous.”
References:
[5] See 3.
[9] Ibid.
[10] See 7.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Ibid.
[17] See 15.
[20] See 6.
[21] See 11.
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