Ecological Intelligence (7 page)

A
long a spectrum of rough-and-tumble games, ambushing, chasing, and hide-and-seek, every mammal in its own way knows how to play. Play has its neurological substrate in the thalamic region of the limbic system and its contribution toward the survival of each mammalian species is a profound one. Looked at a little more critically, play is about affiliation and bonding, about prowess, future ranking, and the honing of skills. It is also a mode of self-discovery, of finding one’s physical boundaries and limitations, of games that end in tears, and of establishing rules—ask any child who grew up with brothers and sisters. Play and learning go hand in hand. Through play we stretch not only our muscles but, through wordplay, our vocabulary and our imagination as well. And lest we forget, wordplay is central to political and economic one-upmanship. Let no one say there is no point in play…

The wilderness says

“Don’t fool yourself!”

Like the brain of their reptilian relatives, the paleomammalian brain, too, is not concerned with the poetry of moonlight. It is not concerned with meaning or the philosophical significance of events, but it nevertheless carries the early chemistry of fair play. One only has to spend time with wolves, elephants, baboons, and chimpanzees to recognize in their social systems that these animals, especially the females, are aware of the difference between acceptable and unacceptable behavior within their groups. In other words, it would appear that some-where in the transition between the second and the third brain, justice and morality—a sense of right and wrong—begins to define itself.

To illustrate this, Sarah Brosnan, a doctoral research worker at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta, Georgia, has come up with some fascinating evidence to support the evolutionary significance of fair play. Working with South American capuchin monkeys,
Cebus apella
, she devised an experiment where pairs of female capuchins were trained to exchange stones for pieces of cucumber. This in itself was significant for, as Brosnan reminds us, not many species are willing to relinquish their possessions intentionally. She then changed the experiment. Dividing the monkeys into two groups, she placed them in separate but adjacent cages. The capuchins in one group would be able to observe the exchanges between the handler and their colleagues in the other group. Brosnan then deliberately changed the stones-for-food formula in one of the groups. In exchange for their stones, she began rewarding group A with grapes while continuing to reward group B with cucumber. Her bias went even further when, in some instances, she purposely rewarded the “favored” group for not having performed at all. The cucumber group meanwhile, hoping to earn a higher salary (grapes) in exchange for their products (stones), continued to get paid in cucumbers. Unfair? The monkeys certainly thought so. What follows is amazing but not surprising. The cucumber group stopped their exchanges with the handler, preferring to withhold their stones rather than be given an inferior reward. As the experiment progressed, not only did group B refuse the cucumber, in some cases they hurled the unwanted food at the handler. In this patently biased experiment, it is not difficult to imagine human beings responding in the same way. It tells us a lot about the evolutionary origins of trade unions and revolution.

We come now to the emergence of the neomammalian brain—that incredible matrix beneath our skulls without which there would be no sense of music, mercy, morality, or meaning. What is it that makes us different to our animal brothers and sisters, and where should we look to find the answer? I suggest we look once more at the human genome and to our nearest primate cousin, the chimpanzee,
Pan troglodytes
. If the genetic difference between a human and a chimpanzee is as little as 2 percent, then that tiny fraction has to be seen as colossal.

We might as well be comparing different galaxies, for within that fractional difference lies a consciousness that is uniquely human. We are indeed creatures of the wild, but unlike our animal kin—and thanks to those additional convolutions of gray matter, especially the frontal lobe (the chimpanzee has vastly less of it)—we have become creatures of culture and conscience also. Remove the convoluted frontal cortex from a human brain and you will be faced with an individual who is both disturbed and disturbing, grossly lacking in insight and without any sense of consequence. Without the frontal lobe, we lose what is arguably the most important ability of human socialization—the capacity to deliberately inhibit or to delay our actions. Take away the frontal lobe and we lose our ability to say, “Wait a minute…let’s think about it.” We lose our ability to regulate our behavior.

But what is consciousness? This is an ancient question and because it is a subject that is both philosophical and physiological, any definition is going to be contentious. For a start, most of our perceptions, interpretations, and responses to the world around us are in fact unconscious—we are not aware that we are doing them. Does this mean that these activities are not a part of consciousness? The answer, of course, is no. Consciousness, if understood as evolutionary and survival oriented, must obviously include these hugely important “unconscious” attributes. It should also be obvious that certain aspects of consciousness are shared by all mammals.

We will deal with the subject of the unconscious in the following chapter, but because it could help to tease out the difference between human consciousness and that of other animals, I invite the reader to see consciousness in its awakened state. In other words, without demeaning the role of the unconscious, I wish to equate our varying levels of consciousness with varying levels of
awareness
. In a hierarchy, to be conscious includes being awake (level one), being alert (level two), being aware (level three), being self-aware (level four), and finally, being aware that we are aware (level five). It is obvious that to be alive and effective every living creature needs to be functional in at least the first three levels, and for “higher” animals, including humans, the first four. Mediated through the senses of sight, smell, touch, taste, and hearing, the first three levels are essential for a consciousness of external stimuli and events—the movement of an impala, the alarm call of a francolin, the smell of meat, of estrus, and the taste of blood. The fourth level, to be self-aware, implies an awareness, however crude or rudimentary, of one’s
internal
state. It is to be aware of the emotion or feeling-charged chemistry of hunger, thirst, sleep, sexual desire, protection, and escape and of being able to link this awareness to the external environment. It is important to remember that the awareness of one’s external environment is associated with emotion-charged nuclei in the oldest evolutionary part of our brains, the brain stem—a reminder that any creature with a brain stem has feelings.

The next level of awareness—to be aware that you are aware—is a massive jump from the fourth level. Dependent on the other levels of awareness, it describes a consciousness that can reflect upon itself, upon its history, its nature, and its coexistence with other creatures. Think about yourself for a moment. How do you see yourself, or expect to see yourself, when you look into a mirror? Is that you looking back, and what is that smudge of paint doing on your cheek? If you lean forward toward the mirror and watch yourself removing the smudge, then you are not only self-aware, but aware that you are aware. You understand the concept of “me.” That is me in the mirror. Surely such a consciousness sets us apart from our primate cousins? Well, the answer is no. Chimpanzees recognize their own reflections. It either knows, or soon learns upon looking into a mirror, that a blob of paint, deliberately daubed onto its forehead, belongs to it. It will also, in the same way that we groom ourselves, observe itself removing the blob until the image in the mirror is to its satisfaction. All other animals, on the other hand, with the possible exception of the African elephant and other primates like gorillas, seem to be utterly indifferent to their reflections. Instead, their consciousness is geared to the level of being awake, alert, and aware of what is going on outside the notion of a personal identity. This should not be construed as believing that animals are not aware of an internal world of feelings or that they are unintelligent. They do have feelings and they are intelligent. Aware of the frustration that comes with the failure to get what it wants, most animals are quite capable of engaging in problem solving as well as attending to certain stimuli rather than others. For example, wolves, dogs, elephants, and primates are known to initiate and terminate behavioral and cognitive activities such as play and herding, as well as assisting an injured or handicapped companion, including human companions. In his book
Good Natured
, Frans de Waal describes a chimpanzee offering guidance to a blindfolded handler by leading the handler by the hand to a source of food. Few will doubt that this kind of action is an example of fairly sophisticated thought processing or, if you like, a higher consciousness.

So, what really separates us from other animals? Let’s go back to that mirror. The difference between humans and our animal kin is probably related to the way that we look at ourselves in a mirror. It relates to the questions we ask of ourselves and to the stirring of the imagination when we peer into that looking glass. For instance,
How
did that blob of paint get there?
Who
put it there, and
why
? And what about the face that looks back? When studying your reflection, do you recognize someone who had a little bit too much to drink at last night’s party or wonder what happened to the youthful features that used to look back at you? Do you promise yourself that you are going to spend more time with the family or that you need a holiday?

With that objective image of “me” looking back, an entirely subjective world comes into play and the result is a kind of dialogue or interaction with oneself. And it is ongoing. The world, in effect, becomes a mirror. With the realization that we are constantly interacting with the world, we are able to put ourselves into it, to see our reflections in it, and to reflect upon them. But we are also interested in what is going on behind the mirror. From astrology to the reading of tea leaves, we are constantly trying to decode and recode what we perceive to be the intentions of Nature. I don’t know that there is any other animal that is quite so analytical and speculative. Yes, other animals, too, have memories and some of them have dreams, but can they reflect upon their mortality? Can they speculate about their future? Can they say, “Hey, I wonder where I’ll be this time tomorrow?” To be aware that you are aware, or, to be more precise, to be aware that you are aware that I am aware of what you are aware of, and so forth, is the neurological legacy of an ancestor that began to understand the deeper significance of relationships and of time—yesterday, today, and tomorrow—and with that, the need to consciously plan for tomorrow. It was the gift of sequential thinking and of the molding of words into past, present, and future tenses. It marked the beginning of experimental science, of music and stories that begin “Once upon a time…” It was the beginning of an understanding of the impermanence of life, of cosmologies, of philosophies, of the human need for continuity, and of what would become organized religions. It was the redefining of the human identity. Without sequential thought and language, our ability to create ideas, symbols, and concepts about our world would not only be severely impaired, but, in all likelihood, impossible. Without language, it is unlikely that we could maintain an identity that is personal. To me, that fifth level of consciousness and language go hand in hand.

W
hat else can we find in that genetic fraction between us and our troglodyte cousins that might qualify us for a consciousness that is different to the rest of the animal kingdom? Perhaps the following attributes are the ones that make it so: aware that we are never far from the edge of the unknown, that we are mortal, and that we are not the masters of our fate, we are the only creatures that create humor out of our fate. As far as we know, we are the only species that contemplates an afterlife. We also appear to be the only animals capable of imagining what we might become, of seeing beyond ourselves and, as if pulled by that vision, of daring to go for it. We are the only animals I know for whom food, water, and air will never be enough for an existence that is meaningful and who have therefore learned to feed off their imagination and their dreams.

L
ooking back upon our molecular origins, to our geology, to those first cellular membranes, and to the eventual expression of a species capable of reflecting upon itself, it would appear that we are indeed the “salt of the Earth,” as Saint Matthew put it, not just in soul, but in science also. The relationship of the principal cations (the electropositive elements) in the blood serum of all animals, as well as of man, is constant. It is calcium : sodium : potassium = 5 : 10 : 160. This is a close representation of their respective proportions in seawater, differing only by a greater content of magnesium in the oceans as we know them today. According to McCallum’s theory (no known relation to the author) in 1901, this difference can be explained by the low precipitations of ocean magnesium in the Cambrian epoch just prior to the emergence of organisms from the surrounding water onto the land 550 to 570 million years ago.

The animals, then, are in us and with us; we share their genes and their juices. Made up of countless molecules, cells, and complex organs, each one of us is the carrier not only of the pattern of embryonic gill slits and tails, but the entire history of life also. It would appear that the aboriginal “water of life” still circulates in the blood of every animal, including us. To me it is both exciting and humbling to acknowledge that the sophisticated cells, tissues, organs, and systems of the living creatures of our time have their origins in the single-cell organisms that adapted to life on Earth nearly 3 billion years ago. It should not be that difficult to imagine, either. After all, suggests Lynn Margulis, “the fertilized human cell begins as a single water-borne cell which then begins to divide, taking only forty weeks to differentiate into a creature that is capable of living in air.” It would appear that we are, indeed, cosmic mongrels, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. I agree with writer and philosopher Jorge Luis Borge who wrote: “We would do well to practice a sublime astronomy…for if we see the Milky Way it is because it actually exists in our souls.”