The Evolution of Plant Minds

     I was listening this past weekend to an NPR story about the history of chewing gum (see http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106439600&ft=1&f=1032).  I love some of the interesting topics and stories they have at times!  However, as I was listening, I couldn't help noticing how the sapodilla tree -- the source of chicle from which chewing gum was crafted -- began to take on a seemingly mystical aura.  Hey, maybe it was just my imagination after listening to so many such documentaries, but you'll recognize my point soon enough. The story told how the tree, when cut or wounded, oozed forth a sort of latex sap that stymied potential insect enemies or helped itself to heal.  Whether the author meant to or not, the tree seemed to take on a somewhat sentient quality, as if aware of how to defend itself.  This is not unlike many more articles, commentaries and documentaries I've observed over the years.

      Yes, over the years of time, I've been taught or exposed to wondrous intricacies of nature that seem too fanciful to imagine.  Plants evolve in order to survive.  Insects, like certain butterflies, evolve to feed, or prey, on only certain plants, which in turn adapt to thwart them.  Ants and other species, likewise take on a sort of mythical intellect and change, as time goes by, to adapt to threats, new environments and new predators.  All of nature seems caught up in this constant tumult of evolutionary change, and either disfigurement or reconfiguration seems to result, depending on how you interpret it.  This is all pretty amazing, and I wonder how much scientific study goes into each of these findings, as they are undoubtedly being made by scientists who are experts in their fields, right?  Therefore, even from my childhood, I have soaked it all in and treasured such reports and documentaries which shed amazing light on the world around me.  Thank you National Geographic!  Thank you PBS and all those hosts of nature films!  Thank you, too, NPR!

      I am endebted to so many for the enlightenment they've provided, and then, as an adult, I now pause to think.  Wow, how did all the trees and bugs and things do all that evolving?  They must be really smart, like the sapodilla tree which seems to know just how to ooze all that sap -- just the right amount even, to foil its bug enemies which bleeding itself dry!  Those other ants and butterflies and things must be smart, too, and they seemed to know just what to do to get better in order to survive.  The Monarch butterfly even learned how to taste bitter so birds wouldn't want to eat it!  Cool!  Bombadier beetles knew how to evolve their chemical shooting-power as a defense, it would seem, as well as skunks, likewise.  Hey, did any of them evolve asbestos suits or gasmasks to counter those? 

      How did the birds evolve?  Did little dinosaurs decide to fly to escape being eaten and developed wings for that?  They must have been smart in the first place to see that their friends were all getting eaten because they couldn't run away fast enough and that they needed to somehow get into the air to be safe, when they could only live on the ground already, right?  Maybe some tried to jump high to get into the trees or onto a mountain or high ledge to escape.  When that didn't work, did the wise little dinosaurs all notice and think about the failures of their friends, to learn from it all and ponder a solution?  Wow!  Really intelligent, and did some just go on from there to turn into monkeys and since that wasn't good enough, later, into humans?  Now, people are different colors, so perhaps people evolved colors to help them as camouflage, since the white people evidently lived up north in the snow and ice and black people lived in the shadowy African jungles; and, maybe other colors lived where the sand or stone, etc. was their color.  Maybe they just didn't know they were thinking it, too, making themselves evolve like all those smart bugs and dinosaurs.  So, perhaps I'll think real hard and make myself have even better camouflage genes.  -- No, not jeans, genes!  I just have to evolve : evolve so that my skin (and all my kids') starts having camo patterns of varying shades of green, brown, black, tan and grey!   ZZzzzzzzaaaPp!! -- reality check!

      No, people, all the bugs, plants and animals didn't just somehow evolve, nor could they know quickly enough what to evolve into or how to do so.  For instance, there are multiple routes to flying.  We have the simple ones, like birds, bats, butterflies and bees, and then we have the more complex, like airplanes, gyrocopters, helicopters, jets and even the simpler balloons and dirigibles.  The latter also are complex, as multiple gases are able to be used : hot air, helium, and hyrdogen are past examples.  Now, how would a little dinosaur, as bright as it might be, have technical knowledge about something it knows nothing about?  IF it were smart enough to think on it, what if it started to evolve into two different, yet diverging directions of flight -- how would it succeed?  Which would it pick : puff up its thoat into a huge, frog-like balloon filled with bio-chemically-produced helium?  So, it floats and burps to come back down -- cool!  What if, well, it produced hydrogen gas and a bombadier beetle shot it or it got too close to a campfire?  Yuck!  Well, the other little frogs must then take notes to learn from its misfortunate attempt at evolution.

      No, I think that we ourselves, the human race, are a testament to the fact that the world and all nature did not simply evolve.  To do so is too fantastical -- even more so than faith!  Hey, even belief in alien beings from space is easier than belief in evolution.  I tend to be more compelled to believe in something like the old chinese proverb that says "The fast hit the slow, and the strong hit the weak", as far as nature is concerned.  Some get eaten, and the ones more gifted with traits helpful to their survival....tend to survive to pass on genetic material of a similar nature, and so on.  That...has led to the changes we've seen over the course of time.  Evolution?  I think that is just a knee-jerk reaction that some haters of religion use to ignore things of faith and morality, like a "cop-out" people use to do whatever they please without feeling bad about it and to keep from feeling afraid before they die.  Of course, that doesn't help any of us little frogs down here who can't see whatever happened once they are gone, does it?  The mere lack of any answer from them after they evolved too late to save themselves from death does not validate the confidence they placed in evolution.  I've read that there have, in all truth, been very many notable scientists through the years who have actually believed in both creation as well as science -- even God, too (Yikes!).  Yes, I think we need to more rightly define evolution as simply another religion -- or maybe an anti-religion or a philosophy -- and make "science" a more scientific endeavor.  Too many findings coming out are not unbiased enough to be touted as science.  Science is based on facts, stripping away the variables and eliminating the possibility of error.  It does not push unmerited, spurious claims upon the public as true, diligently denying all opposition or research based merely on a hypothesis or guess.  To blindly force a belief in evolution alone on the public is really in direct violation of the scientific endeavor itself.