Synopsis Of The Fourth Chapter Of Nature’s IQ By Balazs Hornyanszky and Istvan Tasi
As an avid participant of the compass-based sport of orienteering in the 1980s, one of the roles I was frequently assigned to was that of ‘course designer’. Meeting the needs of the many orienteering enthusiasts who turned up on competition day was a formidable task that required the cooperative efforts of a large number of individuals. Errors in communicating course layout or map design could have been navigationally disastrous for all concerned. Of course few of us need reminding of nature’s own ‘grand schemes’ of cooperative synchrony epitomized in the colonies of over eleven thousand ant species that today grace our planet. Workers, soldiers, fertilizing males and queens ‘play their instruments’ in an orchestra that is in part directed by the activity of a family of molecules called pherormones.
In all, entomologists have identified a staggering thirty pherormones used by ant cohorts for transmitting precise messages between specialized groups, on everything from the whereabouts of food to the imminence of danger. The resulting functional inter-dependency amongst ants is all too evident in even the broadest brushstroke accounts of their activities:
“Ants have to have mandibles suitable for cutting leaves; they have to know that their business is to carry pieces of inedible leaves into the anthill; they have to know that once in the anthill, they [must] chew and spread the substrate…they have to have an appropriate system of communication to be able to carry out their mass operations (they can completely rob a tree of its foliage in a single day)…Before her mating flight, the future queen puts a bit of the home mushroom crop in her buccal pocket and leaves the anthill with it. In her new hole, she begins to nurse this culture, which will then serve the sustenance of the new anthill..Further complicating this picture is the fact that even within a single ant species, there are often several types of groups with completely different bodily structures and tasks…mutually dependent on one another” (p.64)
How might such a system of functionally interdependent units have evolved piecemeal? In keeping with the Gouldean realization of the predominance of stasis in the fossil record, the latest evidence unequivocally shows ant colony organization having remained largely unchanged over the last 60 million years- a bludgeoning blow to Darwin’s step-by-step evolutionary axiom if ever there was one. Those choosing to clutch on to Darwinist dogma remain clueless about how today’s specialized ants evolved from some ill-defined primordial insect from a bygone era. After all, the all-or-nothing aspects of ant colony communicative living make each member’s efficient fulfillment of assigned roles in everything from mushroom growing to ground defense critical for the survival of the colony as a whole.
Anthills aside, examples of functional inter-dependencies in nature abound, the electric eel perhaps being the next hot favorite. Equipped as it is with sophisticated electricity emitting and receiving organs that serve to transmit signals with its close neighbors, this formidable creature sports a thick fatty layer that affords vital protection against the dangers of self-electrocution. While the summer sounds of crickets similarly function to locate mating partners, bees use a sun-oriented ‘8’ dance to inform their hives of the precise whereabouts of food. For the eel, the cricket and the bee both the accompanying perception ‘apparatus’ and the brain regions that help decode the incoming signal are indispensable parts of their respective communication systems. Without them all would be lost.
Fish stand out as perhaps the most surprising of all animals in their use of acoustics. Several species are known for their grunting, croaking, growling and humming-style vibrations often identifiably directed at their own kind. Individuals of the same species have to carry an innate capacity to deconvolute the relevant species-specific sounds from the cacophony of noises that shroud their environs. In this regard, one has to stretch the imagination to claim that per chance the frequency range of sound emission would simply match up with that of sound detection in any given species. Australian biologist Michael Denton hammered home a similar message in his book Nature’s Destiny over a decade ago.
For the collective sum of case studies outlined in Nature’s IQ Hornyanszky and Tasi are unswervingly steadfast in asserting that the origin of “species-specific communication systems” remains outside the bounds of gradual evolutionary change. With a sense of irony they justifiably question today’s received wisdom: “when did members of different…species carry on conciliatory discussions in order to be able to understand messages of fellow members of the same species?”. In reality, for the Darwinian mechanism to hold true numerous mutations would have had to appear in multiple, geographically proximal individuals if all were to speak and understand the same ‘language’. This unlikely state of affairs, coupled with the finding that an invariable repertoire of communicable sounds and visible signals exists amongst members of the same species, provides the fodder needed to bolster the case against blind evolution and in favor of intelligent design.
When the ancients wrote of ants as “[wise] creatures of little strength” (Pvbs 30 vs 25), they clearly understood the sophistication in their capacity to work together for the common good of a larger whole. Today science has extended such observations and brought into sharp focus a world replete with communication systems that defy the Darwinian paradigm. Biologists would do well to take note.
For more information and to order Nature’s IQ go to http://www.arn.org/arnproducts/php/book_show_item.php?id=129