The Saharan desert is a vast, desolate place of little more than dunes of varying sizes and shapes, stretching for tens of thousands of square miles. Imagine an ant scurrying over grains of this desert. We’ll call him Adam Ant.
Adam and his community of ants do what comes naturally to all species: they work to survive and thrive. They find food; they procreate; they defend their territory; they play an occasional game of cards.
What if Adam were to believe that the whole of his dune and even all the dunes existed solely as a stage upon which he and his kind play out the drama of their lives? If Mr. Ant thought that the entire desert, including the sand, the sky, the sparse vegetation, the mice, the beetles, the side-winder snakes — all of it — were mere scenery and props for his ant-like passion play, we would likely conclude that little Adam was afflicted with delusions of grandeur.
But can you blame him? Who doesn’t want to be the center of the universe?
Our planet is no more than a single grain of sand in the vast Sahara of the cosmos. Yet, as believers will tell us, our great Galaxy of galaxies exists as a theater. And we humans are the reason for the season. The trees, the mountains, the moon, Mars and Jupiter, the Milky Way, comets, the innumerable stars — these are Stage One for a species of clever apes.
With what we’ve learned about “our” incomprehensibly immense universe, about the history of the Earth and the evolution and extinction of whole legions of species, how is it possible to continue to cling to the idea that we are the center of creation?
Why would a god go to the extreme of creating many trillions of stars and — as has been verified only in our lifetime — innumerable planets if, in the end, all he really cares about are the crawling little upright things on a single, watery sphere? How could this amazing and immense universe be all about a particular batch of entwined DNA strands and the bodies it moves around in?
If you’re stumped, I have an answer. It goes something like this: “Once upon a delusion of grandeur . . .”
Self-importance is limited only by the size of one’s imagination.
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[photo is of an ant and its shadow in the Chihuahuan desert, NM]
In the nearby Intercoastal waterway of Florida you can see dolphins break the surface of the water to breath, exposing their dorsal fins as they roll back under. Couples, trios, quartets. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a solo dolphin. Maybe that’s why I like found this ScienceDaily article quite interesting -
Dolphins Use Diplomacy in Their Communication, Biologists Find
According to the experts, the tonal whistle sounds (the most melodious ones) allow dolphins to stay in contact with each other (above all mothers and offspring), and to coordinate hunting strategies. The burst-pulsed sounds (which are more complex and varied than the whistles) are used “to avoid physical aggression in situations of high excitement, such as when they are competing for the same piece of food, for example,” explains Díaz.
Okay, “diplomacy” is probably stretching it. But maybe not. Dolphins are such alien creatures. Highly social. How social are they? What is the stuff of their social lives? Our understanding of them is likely rudimentary at best. But at least there’s progress.
The above NASA pic is of rover tracks on Mars. Long and winding rover tracks that lead to a new world. What alien species (alien to Mars) landed an exploratory vehicle there? Homo explorus.
Older phrenology -
Phrenology (from Greek: ????, phre-n, “mind”; and ?????, logos, “knowledge”) is a hypothesis stating that the personality traits of a person can be derived from the shape of the skull. It is now considered a pseudoscience. [Wikipedia]
Newer? -
Brain structure corresponds to personality
Personalities come in all kinds. Now psychological scientists have found that the size of different parts of people’s brains correspond to their personalities; for example, conscientious people tend to have a bigger lateral prefrontal cortex, a region of the brain involved in planning and controlling behavior. [Eurekalert]
Certainly, this newer hypothesis is off to a much better start. Consider the methods for the study.
For the study, 116 volunteers answered a questionnaire to describe their personality, then had a brain imaging test that measured the relative size of different parts of the brain. A computer program was used to warp each brain image so that the relative sizes of different structures could be compared. Several links were found between the size of certain brain regions and personality. The research appears in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
Is there really something to it? Certainly seems plausible. But I wouldn’t jump to a conclusion, pro or con, just yet.
There is something from the article I would like to jump all over, however. This statement got me grunting:
Psychologists have worked out that all personality traits can be divided into five factors, commonly called the Big Five: conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, and openness/intellect.
Psychologists have worked this out? Costa & McCrae’s trait model is certainly the most tested, most used personality inventory. And yes, it has been found to be a useful tool for this or that. But I strongly doubt it stands the test of time.
My greatest beef with the model are the traits themselves. Particularly neuroticism. My study and interest in evolution tells me this trait and others are at least somewhat off-the-mark. Human animals are highly adaptive, and our personalities are multi-dimensional and varied for likely many reasons. I suspect that a future, better trait model will have characteristics that more accurately reflect real-world social dynamics.
But that’s just the guess of a conscientious, somewhat neurotic intellectual.
In many ways, birds are like humans. Or maybe humans are like birds. No, that’s not right. Maybe both are animals and, as distantly related animals, share some attributes.
For instance, the behavior of both male humans and male birds is influenced by testosterone levels. While male birds don’t have external testes (can you imagine flying with those? — running upright is bad enough!) they do have internal testosterone-producing gonads. And new research has found that male birds with intermediate blood levels tend to do better.
In Costs and Benefits of Testosterone in Birds we learn that having high enough testosterone is good for a male bird’s mating success and survival. Testosterone gives a guy bird the starch in its spine (not the technical language) to acquire and defend a territory as well as the sexual drive to find/attract mates and . . . mate with them.
But while “enough” is good, “even more” is not better. In fact, it’s worse. The experimenters found that of the birds with their levels experimentally manipulated, those with levels near the wild average did the best. Too high means too much risky behavior, which leads to health-endangering fights and predation, etc. Too little means poorer territory (which includes poorer access to food and less desirable/safe nesting sites)as well as poorer reproductive success.
In another bird study, scientists found Wild Birds Opt for Conventional Food Over Organic, Study Shows.
Lead researcher Dr Ailsa McKenzie:
“We showed that when given free choice, wild birds opt for the conventional food over the organic, and the most likely explanation is its higher protein content.”
It may simply be an unfounded stereotype, but many human males, and a fair share of females, too, seem to prefer a fat and protein laden steak dinner over high-vegetable-content alternatives. For dessert: a calorie-rich but nutrition-poor piece of pie. Why? It’s elemental: our evolutionary history placed a premium on what was then higher value foods: protein and calories. Green leafies — a belly full of that would give you the energy to last a day at best. And for building muscles salad alone gets a failing grade.
While animals — birds and humans and thousands of other types — live in a present environment, their body plans and functioning physiology was shaped years ago, in one past. How well do they fit their immediate environments? Only time will tell.
It’s been said before. If a species isn’t cute it better be useful. To us. Otherwise, we humans with our huge bootprints might just squash it. Oops, another extinct species! Our bad.
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P.S. Carnival of Evolution #24 was posted yesterday. Featuring one of my posts. And a whole bunch of other good stuff as well.
