DUMB ANIMALS? DUMB PLANTS? SMART MAN? REALLY?

A few decades ago, naval architects were desperately searching for a submarine hull design which would allow the new atomic subs to quietly and efficiently move through the oceans for long periods of time. After coming up with clunker after clunker, one bright designer came up with the idea of copying one of nature’s darlings, the whale. Nature had designed the whale’s shape to allow for endless swimming for years at a time. All the new sub had to do was slip and glide along for six or seven months at a time.

The whale was copied, the sub built and an American atomic submarine stole the world’s headlines from Sputnik in 1958 by submerging and sailing under the polar ice cap. What nature had perfected in millions of years, man was able to copy in few.

There is an old expression warning us about attempting to “reinvent the wheel.” What the whale did was prevent us from reinventing bad wheels. Smart submarine hull design was created by the Bible’s “great fish” and not by man, who was pursuing some pretty dumb efforts.

Most people think that animals are dumb, insects are brainless, and plants are intellectually dead. But a few people have come to believe that the lower species possess intelligence of such magnitude that man had better start paying attention.

Recent experiments have shown that dogs have remarkable empathy for humans. Compared with dogs, monkeys are pretty much out of it when it comes to empathetic intelligence. Actually, so is man. The average dog seems to have more empathy for his master than his master has for his spouse. If people could marry their dogs, the nation’s divorce lawyers would be out of work.

But to give the monkey his due, there is no finer example on the planet of physical intelligence. On the basketball court, Michael Jordan had incredible physical intelligence. It was said that every cell in his body knew where every other cell was at any given moment. Yet even the greatest basketball player of all time looked pretty physically challenged when compared to the average monkey. In fact, monkeys are so renowned for their physical intelligence, that the Air Force refers to well-coordinated fighter pilots as having “monkey skills.”

Designers and engineers have been creating “squirrel-proof” bird feeders for centuries. But the average backyard squirrel seems to be able to outwit man every year. Sooner or later, man will admit defeat and re-label bird seed bags as “squirrel feed.”

Experts often refer to the crocodile as “having a brain the size of a walnut.” We are expected to infer that crocs are pretty unintelligent, a feeling reinforced by that mouthy guy on Animal Planet who never gets bitten by one. But the crocodile seems to get a lot of survival intelligence out of that small brain of his. He has survived every catastrophe nature has thrown at him: tsunamis, earthquakes, floods, droughts, food scarcity, comet crashes and even man. After all, he has survived since the age of dinosaurs. Compared to the venerable crocodile, man is just an unfertilized egg.

Contrary to popular opinion, plants are very intelligent, too. Did you ever try to catch a fly with your bare hands? An impossible human task which is routine for the plant known as the Venus flytrap. On a broader scale, the average plant or bush or tree is a magnificent, complex factory engaged in the process of manufacturing chlorophyl out of sunlight. We may even discover that plants have nervous systems which are unrecognized by modern science. Someday Bill Clinton may stare affectionately at his geranium and mutter, “I feel your pain.”

If we drop almost all the way down the biological scale to the bacterium or virus, we encounter a rare form of intelligence that is breathtaking: adaptability intelligence. While man takes many generations to adapt to violent changes on the planet, the world of bacteria and viruses has produced some geniuses in rapid adaptability intelligence. More and more, harmful bacteria have figured out how to adapt to antibiotics and survive their onslaughts. Some virulent bacteria have sufficient intelligence to adapt to an antibiotic in a year or two. This presents a terrible financial dilemma for the drug companies, who cannot make a living unless their new discovery can be protected through patents for a minimum of 17 years. The shortage of flu vaccines is an obvious example. The shortage is caused by the fact that few drug companies are willing to produce a flu vaccine for an illness capable of changing strains annually.

Six decades ago, Swiss inventor George de Mestral got tired of plucking burrs from his clothes and out of the fur of his dog. Curiosity got the better of him, so he plopped the seeds of the offending burdock plant under a microscope. Lo and behold, he discovered the hook-and-loop system that he was later able to develop into what we now call Velcro.

Even though submarines now have whale-inspired hulls that move sleekly and silently though the oceans, their propellers make them difficult to maneuver. But now Nekton Research has created a mechanical fish that maneuvers about using fins instead of propellers. It took naval architects more than one thousand years to discover the obvious -- when it came to maneuver IQ, fish had it all over man.

Since the time of Ben Franklin, man has been stuck with the inflexibility of silicone eyeglasses. But for billions of years a sea creature called the brittlestar has had thousands of tiny lenses inter-connected by fluid-filled channels containing a pigment which absorbs light. Thus, unlike man, the brittlestar can regulate visual contrast by adjusting the fluid. Now a scientist has adapted the brittlestar’s biological technology to lens arrays for people. Imagine having sunglasses which immediately adjust contrasts when moving from deep shade into bright sunlight. Or imagine the application to expand the versatility of cameras.

Just as man has begun to unlearn the concept of “reinventing the wheel,” some progressive souls have embarked on a crusade to “un-invent the wheel.” The calvary moved over uneven ground faster than wheeled carts. Donkeys and mules were more useful than vehicles for carrying supplies in mountainous terrains. And don’t forget the wheeled moon vehicle that got so stuck on the moon. As a result, there are nature-aping, multi-legged vehicles coming down the development pike.

Embarrassed by its non Jackson-like moonwalk, NASA is busily working on a space vehicle that uses four legs instead of four wheels. Its California office is designing an eight-legged vehicle that moves like a scorpion. Not to be outdone, the army is working on a robotic dog for battlefield use. But the specifications have left out the empathy bit, probably feeling that robot dogs can be trained to obey orders.

To conserve fuel, future planes may have wings which adust their shape in flight as birds do. But those commercial flights better pack a few extra martinis for those passengers too accustomed to fixed-wing flying.

Your next fabric may have the properties of pine cones, which can open and close according to changing temperature and humidity conditions. Of course they will have to work on the texture. Pine cone undies sound a bit chafing to me.

And your next cell phone screen may be derived from moths’ eyes, which absorb light but do not reflect it, for personal survival reasons. To the cell phone user, the benefits of moth-inspired screens are better light, less reflection and longer battery life, because less energy will be needed for illumination.

Can you just imagine the conversation going on between two moths observing a man using his cell phone in the park?

“What a stoop!” exclaims one.

“Yeah, who in his right mind would reflect all that light?” says the second.

Well, there you have it. Every creature on earth is more intelligent than man in something or other. In the future, we may have to reevaluate just who the “dumb animals” really are.