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Chapter One

Human Senses

There's a battle going on, a war of minds. The current vogue is held by those who extol the complete supremacy of humans over other forms of life. Humans are superior. Our intellect is magnificent, our senses are acute, our language is unparalleled in the realm of living things, and our personal powers are immense. Humankind is unique in adapting items for use as tools. `Man is a tool-using animal,' wrote Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), who felt it was the use of tools that made us humans what we are. We are taught that humans alone amongst all species have a language, and that only humans can modify their environment to suit themselves. We have lived with a sense of the supremacy of our species for thousands of years, believing that humans are here to subjugate and control all other forms of life. René Descartes (1596-1650) wrote that, no matter how it appears, animals are incapable of suffering. In the words of Thomas Peacock (1785-1866), writing in Headlong Hall , `Nothing can be more obvious than that all animals were created solely and exclusively for the use of man.'

It is generally assumed that one of the special features which marks humans out from the lowly brutes is the use of tools. Darwin himself observed that chimpanzees can use a stone to crack open a seed. Later observers watched them use sticks to extract insects from a crevice. Jane Goodall has painstakingly described how a chimpanzee `fishes' for termites with a stick. If the stick was bent, the animal would turn it round to use the other end, bite off the damaged end, or pick a new stick and start again. Sometime chimps would pick a leafy stem from a tree and painstakingly strip off the leaflets before using it to winkle out their food. This is an example of an animal not merely using a tool, but actually making one. Sea-otters use stones from the sea-bed to crack open shellfish, and finches use plant spines to probe in crevices of bark for insect larvae to eat. Thrushes and other birds choose stones as anvils, and use them to break open the shells of garden snails which they collect for food. Bower-birds collect brightly coloured objects to decorate the interior of their elaborately constructed bowers. Some fish use beads of water, spat at speed, to bring down insects from the air above. Groups from amoebae to insects use sand and stone to construct a safe home. Assassin bugs of the family Reduviidae use lures to attract their prey; one species employs the shed skin of termites as a bait to attract living termites, which it then kills and eats. All sorts of animals are capable of adapting their environment for a range of purposes, and many use tools.

Against the exploitive attitudes stand the animal welfare campaigners. Many movements which campaign for the humane treatment of animals have sprung up in recent years. The death of Linda McCartney in 1998 was celebrated as a symbol of a life devoted to animal issues; she was proclaimed as the animals' princess in parallel with Diana Spencer, who had been hailed as the `people's princess'. There could be no better illustration of the growing impetus behind organisations that support animals.

These movements were foreshadowed by the writings of Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), the philosopher and economist who founded the doctrine of utilitarianism. To Bentham, the crucial question was not whether animals could think, but whether they could suffer. In 1983 two philosophers entered the fray. These writers, Peter Singer and Tom Regan, argued that the status of animals should now be recognised. To misuse animals, wrote Singer, is to disregard their interests; to Regan, it was to deny them their rights. Reverence for plant life has also become more fashionable. There is nothing new in this, for bringing plants like mistletoe and holly into the house during the dark days of winter dates back to when they were subject to worship. Crop plants have long been regarded as fertility objects, and there are traces of that ancient belief in many cultural traditions. There is a statue of the Maya corn god at Copán in Honduras, for example, and woven strands of wheat are still made into corn dollies in rural England. There have been reports that the Prince of Wales `talks to his plants'. Although the practice sounds rather quaint, there are clear benefits in conversing with plants. Our exhalation of carbon dioxide (CO ₂ ) provides a boost to plant metabolism, and anybody who spends time caring for their plants is more likely to note any problems or diseases before matters become serious.

Our thoughts are at a crossroads. The argument against too great an affinity with animals is easily expressed: animals have no rights, for rights imply duties. This is a convenient argument, but a meaningless one. `Duties' and `rights' are unrelated, other than in this semantic construction. The paralysed victim of a motoring accident, the congenitally disabled, deaf-mutes and paraplegics have rights to care and consideration, but are in no position to undertake arduous duties. Animals are employed in medical research when they are sufficiently similar to humans to give useful results. If they are so close to humans, the animal campaigners argue that they should be treated more like humans too.

Selfishness and life

A currently held view is that selfishness lies behind life's interactions. People are kind to others because, in the end, it may benefit themselves; humans and other species care for their offspring in order selfishly to perpetuate their kind. The idea dates back several centuries at least. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1697) famously saw life as `war of all against all' and described life itself as `nasty, brutish and short': no hint of cooperation or altruism here. In the 1960s the idea of deterministic selfishness became the core of a study by a London zoologist, William Hamilton, who proposed that the cardinal principle of `aid given to relatives' was a key to the survival of a species. Hamilton attracted a cult following, for this was a controversial new idea. One of his readers was George Price, who resolved to study genetics in order to overthrow the new idea. Instead of disproving the idea of `genetic selfishness', his studies substantiated the principle. Price and Hamilton collaborated for a time, but Price became increasingly disturbed. He withdrew from formal academic life, turned to religion, and eventually killed himself in a squalid tenement.

A decade later the concept was popularised by Richard Dawkins of Oxford as the `selfish gene'. The idea found fertile soil at a time when self-interest came to be the guiding principle of personal advancement, with opportunism as the motivation of society. Selfishness could hardly emerge as a prime mover of society without being dignified in the latest fashionable scientific theory, and the `selfish gene' was that theory. In it we are portrayed as little more than robots, blindly conforming to inbuilt responses that are controlled by and designed for the benefit of the genes using us as a vector. The theory has been criticised for making humans `no more than animals'.

My view is quite the converse: that animals are, in many ways, comparable to humankind. They communicate with their fellows and care for each other, showing emotions like rage and fear. Play in animals is perhaps an indicator of the celebration of life in species other than ourselves. Many animals play. Birds will repeatedly slide down an icy slope, or tumble in an air-stream, for no apparent reason other than enjoyment. Young elephants play together for prolonged periods, as do young dogs, cats and foxes. At Churchill, Manitoba, hungry polar bears at the end of their winter fast have been seen to approach husky dogs. On one occasion, instead of attacking and eating the dogs, as often happens, a dog and bear were seen to exchange gestures of mutual acceptance and then play together in the snow. At one stage the bear covered the dog with its massive body; later the dog and bear embraced each other. When the bear lay in the snow to cool off from the exertion, the dog stayed attentively close. This was play, not for any long-term benefit to the genes, nor for any ulterior purpose of long-term selfish intent, but apparently for enjoyment. Young macaque monkeys of the Joshinetsu Plateau in Japan even make snowballs. The youngsters gather snow, much as children do, and roll it into balls along the ground. The adult macaques are above such behaviour, though they have been observed to play with snowballs already made by the young ones. Play is an important part of many animals' routine. Interestingly, researchers have ascribed violence among young humans to a lack of play during childhood. It may be that the socialisation induced through play is a crucial part of mental development. Some parents today do not play with their children as their parents did with them, often leaving the children with computer games or other activities in which they indulge on their own. It may be that this leaves a behavioural void which will cause problems in adult life.

The spectrum of animal life teems with examples of animals having fun, and with displays of altruism, loyalty and self-sacrifice. In many ways, the courage and devotion of creatures often militates against the survival of their genes. The `selfish gene' is a crude cybernetic concept, born of the common culture of microelectronics and computer control, and is belied by the complexity of communication and the zest for life which many animals exhibit. If there is a real hidden purpose of life, it is to propagate the germ-cells. All life is essentially microbial. Humans are immortal, for our germ cells go on from one generation to the next, while the great waddling forms that produce them (that's to say, you and me) are nothing more than expendable fruiting-bodies. Humans are an ovum or sperm's way of conquering dry land. So is a marigold.

The notion of the unity of all life is found in many religious beliefs and was a preoccupation of Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961). In recent years the idea of the planet as an earth-goddess named Gala has become trendy. A living network cannot function without communication, however, nor without sensory activity on many levels. Now we can begin to understand how the universe of plants and animals is governed by a network of signals, like a vast natural World Wide Web. Life has had its own Internet for more than a billion years.

Looking for simple concepts (like selfishness) as a single governing principle parallels the reductionism of molecular biology in which theorists seek to locate the source of the grand designs of life in the minutest of events. This methodology is that of a technician, not a scientist. Science seeks to fit technical details into the fabric of understanding. I see science as a holistic enterprise. We have been through the era where people sought to model grand concepts as discrete examples through which a greater truth would be perceived. It is time to bring together the scattered ideas and findings of disparate groups of theorists and researchers and weave these threads into the tapestry of a bigger picture.

Admittedly, there is much to be learned by looking at the enzymes that cascade within our cells, or the cycles of energy that drive our internal chemistry. We can then begin to see how the machinery works. However, far more is to be understood by looking at life in the round. Few cell biologists ever study living cells under the microscope, yet within the single cell we find the seed of our senses. There are tiny cells that have built-in eyes, with a retina and a lens, just like ours. Even microbes can find their way around, tell friend from foe, and decide when to mate and with whom. This book shows how we humans with our traditional five senses are very far from being the only sentient species. The world is teeming with moving, responsive, communicating organisms -- animals and plants.

Apart from those five senses, humans have other levels of sensation to which we rarely pay much regard. Science does not even admit they exist. But many people will know the reality of subconscious sensation -- as, for example, when we wake up five minutes before the alarm clock is due to buzz. And everyone knows how you can suddenly look up to find someone staring at you, as though sensing their gaze boring into you from across the room. If someone in a group yawns (even in a film, or a television programme) then those who are watching feel an urge to yawn, too, and many of them do. We experience warning signs throughout our lives, and take them for granted, but science has yet to show how they work. It has long been taught that babies exist suspended in a blur of unreality for months on end, but it is becoming clear that they can watch you from their earliest days after release from the womb.

It is becoming apparent that the foetus responds to sounds, and reacts to pain with signs of distress. Recent findings reportedly suggest that a newborn baby can even indicate the recall of music heard in the womb in the early months of development. If this proves to be the case, we have been aborting unborn children at twice the age at which they can remember a tune. A leading article in New Scientist on 4 April 1998 ended with the following plea: `We should be open minded enough to allow doctors who treat or terminate foetuses to play safe and use pain control when they can.' A couple of generations ago doctors were prosecuted and struck off for the merest hint of assisting at an abortion, and now some scientists are claiming that the unborn child can respond to music. The unease we can feel at the pendulum swinging to its other extreme could best be gained by reading that sentence again, substituting `old people' for `foetuses'.

Single-celled organisms can certainly respond to their surroundings, and show astonishing abilities when constructing homes for themselves. The foetus shows a surprising level of ability to respond, and it would be foolish to conclude that the zygote (the newly fertilised cell from which the embryo develops) is unable to detect its environment. Sensation is a property of single cells, and an ovum will have its own senses. The possibility that these cells might have an awareness of the fertilisation process seems incredible, but the truth is that we know too little about the senses to decide one way or another.

Even our most familiar senses act in ways we do not fully understand. Should you cut yourself on a hidden piece of glass in the sea, it hurts only after you have noticed it. Until then, even a deep cut can remain silent and undetected. This effect can work in the opposite direction. A small child with grazed knees will grizzle and look around for a comforting parent ... but, if nobody is there to show attention, the crying stops and the child carries on as though nothing had happened. Animals do this too. In laboratory conditions, a baby monkey will flee to its mother if an unfamiliar mechanical toy marches into view. Once it has gained the reassurance it seeks, it will become bolder and try to find out what this new intruder is really like. As many creatures face problems in their daily real-life experiences, we have to concede the extent to which they are working things out and assessing possible solutions. It is true of a wasp colony with a damaged nest, even of a caddis-fly larva with a broken case. They repair the damage, solving practical problems as they proceed. When an ape plays with toys you can see it studying the object intently, working out what to do with it. These animals are thinking, much as we think.

When René Descartes set science on its path of denying thought in such creatures, he fixed on the notion that the senses are merely an organism's means of responding mechanically to the external world. He devised a simple experiment which shows how our interpretation of reality depends very much upon circumstance. Half-fill three bowls with water at different temperatures: one as hot as you can stand, another with ice-cold water, and the third with water that is tepid. Dip your hands into the very hot and very cold bowls for a minute, and then put both into the luke-warm water. The hand that was in the cold water will feel warm; the hand from the hot water feels cold. At the core of Cartesian philosophy was the broad belief that every manifestation of the physical world, from gravity and magnetism to life and love, could be explained solely by mechanistic science. As for thought, it belonged only to those with the power of speech. The word, Descartes said, is the single and certain sign of the existence of thought. This view came to underpin a mechanistic view of life, heedless of the many examples of people who -- through disability -- could not speak, but possessed obvious intellect. Modern philosophers still cling to this mechanistic view, and molecular biologists are content to believe they are revealing life's realities as they mechanically decode its chemical components. I am convinced that such a narrow approach is no longer tenable. Molecular biology is a tool, not a science. It is a crucial component of the analytical method, certainly; but it will never disclose to us the way living creatures interact in the glory of a global community.

How unique are the five senses?

Our basic senses are well-developed, but they pale in comparison with the sensory abilities of some other animals. We have a good sense of taste, yet an octopus can sense flavours that are a hundred times weaker than anything we can detect. We have a fine sense of smell, but a dog has an olfactory sense a thousand times finer. Our ability to see in poor light is impressive, yet the dolphin has seven thousand times as many light-sensitive cells in its eye. We are good at detecting slight movements, but a cockroach is a hundred thousand times more sensitive to surface vibrations. We struggle to hear sounds below 50 cycles per second (Herz, or Hz for short). Gigantic creatures like whales and elephants communicate over prodigious distances using infrasound frequencies below 15 Hz. Even octopuses and cuttlefish are now known to sense frequencies below 10 Hz. Although we can sense millions of colours, there are garden flowers in which bees can see riotous patterns of which we can only dream.

Some of our senses are subliminal, and we can transmit and receive subtle messages of great power. The traditional way of testing a new drug failed because of this fact. Doctors assessing the drug would make up a placebo, identical in every external respect to the pill containing the drug but containing an inert material instead. They would hand out the placebos to half the volunteers in a trial, and real pills to the other half. Time after time these tests showed that the new drug was marvellously effective, but the results were not borne out by clinical experience. When the explanation emerged, it revolutionised the conduct of medical trials. The doctors were subconsciously signalling to their patients which pill was which. By some minute difference in posture or facial expression, or perhaps the movement of the hand or a twinkle in the eye, doctors intimated to the patients whether they were being dosed with the placebo or the pill. The patients with real pills were thus somehow reassured, and their subliminally acquired knowledge helped to make them well.

These false recoveries are now known as examples of the placebo effect. As a result, the double-blind controlled trial was developed. The trials are controlled because there are as many placebos as there are real pills; they are double-blind because they are two steps away from the research worker. The real and dummy pills are identified with a code number by the research team. They are then passed to a third party, who takes the anonymously labelled tablets to the nurse who is to administer them, and the nurse then hands them out. This breaks the sequence of subliminal hints which can prejudice the results.

I find it highly significant that we have to go to such lengths. The greatest lesson here is our ability to sense such subliminal signs. Nobody knows exactly what kind of sense this might be, or how it works. Great lengths are taken to eliminate it, but I would be interested to know how to potentiate it, and how to harness this infinitely subtle sense for our own good. When I was first told about this method, during laboratory work when I was a very young aspiring scientist, it was made very clear that we had to be careful, or the patients might detect which was which and recover even if the pills were clinically valueless. There was a far more intriguing possibility: rather than seeking to extirpate the response, why not harness it? If the placebo effect can really rival the power of a medicine, it would be far better to try to use it to the benefit of humankind. Here is a hidden sense we must try to understand. This sense is a subliminal way of receiving information so potent it can act like a drug.

This book presents many observations that show how plants and animals have their own ways of feeling. Plants respond actively to their surroundings, and many of them move when touched. The species of mimosa known as the sensitive plant is famous for that, but the wild rock-rose and the garden pea show similar responses. We shall meet insects that take decisions and spiders that indulge in problem-solving. Animals communicate in extraordinary ways, and the language of the living world will emerge as almost a common form of expression among very different forms of life. Many animals other than humans teach their young to communicate. For example, a chaffinch (if not taught by its parents) is unable to sing properly. The young of many species need parental input at specific ages if they are to grow up to be normal adults. Does this have implications for today's children, sent to watch television or to play on a computer while the parents are preoccupied with bringing in the money? The need to learn has unexpected consequences. We use a range of gestures and movements to signify basic emotions. Many other creatures do this, too: you can recognise fear or submission in a household pet which knows nothing of the intricacies of our society.

Sometimes the symbolism of a gesture is arbitrarily determined. In the Balkans it has long been traditional to shake the head to signify `yes' and to nod for `no'. I once took an English youngster to a clinic in Bulgaria, where she was to be examined by a physician who announced with pride that he could speak English. He bent over the child and asked what the problem was.

`It is my ear,' she said, nervously. The doctor looked at the ear nearest to him, and pulled down the lobe.

`Have you pain?' he asked. There was a nod of assent. The doctor then pressed the tympanic bulla, just beneath the ear. He asked again, and another painful nod came in response. He pressed behind the ear, with growing confidence.

`Have you pain?' came his question for the final time. The child nodded firmly.

`Good,' said the doctor, and he crooked his fingers and thumb together in a triumphant flourish, `this ear is OK.'

I had to explain that a nod meant `yes', not `no'. The ear he considered to be clear was actually inflamed and painful. The words `yes' and `no' he knew; the problem lay in the fact that the nod and shake of the head had transposed meanings in his culture. Some aspects of body language are not always as instinctive as we think.

Nature and nurture

We still do not know how much of what we do is innate, and how much is acquired. It is the question of nature versus nurture . Are we the way we are, because that's the way we are? Or do we acquire our current ways because of what we are taught? Some scientists are currently searching for a gene that makes people violent criminals, and for another that could make people homosexual. There is a vogue, as you might expect in this mechanistic era, for believing that everything we do is determined by our genes with the inevitability of a computer program. I believe there is an answer to this conundrum of nature and nurture. Genotype (the genetic constitution of an organism) and phenotype (its acquired adult state) are inextricably linked, and our experience of the world is a powerful factor in releasing or suppressing our genetic potential. It is not a matter of competition between nature and nurture at all, but of the nurture of nature; that, and the nature of the nurture. This view gives full weight to the imponderable complexity of factors that affect us. It concedes our fundamental genetic nature, but recognises that how well we can make use of it (and how we come to fulfil our potential) depends very much on the nurture we receive. The resulting cascade of impulses is of unimaginable complexity, and the range of options we consider in our lives arises from the interplay of these inputs and from weighing their merits, one against the other. The reductionist idea that a single impulse must cause a specific response may apply to reflexes, but we step on dangerous ground when we try to extend this concept to judgement and assessment at a cognitive level. The senses act in concert, offering a series of stimuli from which reality is interpreted, and it is from this complexity that free will is born.

(Continues...)

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The Secret Language of Life

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