Posted on

Nature is Intelligent. Am I?

It was serendipity that lead me to Intelligence in Nature by Jeremy Narby. I had been signing “to a wonder-full year” on my new year’s cards and stumbled on this book on my way out the door for my walk. I was looking for a short book to listen to on a Saturday. This one was it. And it was wonder-full.

Jeremy takes us on his learning journey as he explores whether we should/could consider non-humans intelligent and he does it in remarkable, off-the-beaten path places: bees, slime mold, butterflies and parrots.

On a gray January, my world filled with light as I learned some astounding things:

  • South American birds like macaws, parakeets and parrots “were behaving in ways strongly reminiscent of humans, holding loud get-togethers and food fests and self-medicating by using the most detoxifying clay.” (Chapter 1)
  • Slime molds can find the shortest path through a maze. (Chapter 8)
  • Ants will dry out seeds to prevent mold. (Chapter 4)
  • And researchers might need to ask better questions to get the answers they seek: “when animals are found not to accomplish a given task, this is not proof of their stupidity. In most cases, the problem lies with the person conducting the experiment and involves incapacity of the researcher to develop experiments that pose the problem correctly and allow one to answer it properly. If you will: a negative result shows nothing in the final analysis; a positive result shows something, but when an animal cannot do something, the question remains is it incapable of doing it or have I not been clever enough in my research concepts and experimental design?” (Chapter 5) And when we design experiments well, be recognize colours, shapes and abstract concepts.

I liked Jeremy’s classification of nature’s intelligence as “chisei.” Using a word from a foreign language–to me as an English-speaker–allows me to consider intelligence in its many forms. It is not surprising that we consider mammals like my dogs and cat intelligent. They are responsive and adaptive. It is fascinating to hear that we do not have the knowing to understand nature in it’s glorious intelligence.