Plant Neurobiology?

In reference to my July 25 post on "plant intelligence," coincidentally the September/October 2024 issue of SKEPTICAL INQUIRER contains an article by Massimo Pigliucci titled "Are Plants Conscious?" In his view, a science labeled "plant neurobiology," based on the idea that plants could have intelligence or consciousness, constitutes a "category mistake." Neuroscience studies "brains and their associated nervous systems," physical features of animals but not plants. He concedes that plants in a sense process information. As for responding to "environmental cues," he points out that all living creatures do that. He objects to conflating those general terms with the specific types of behavior we call "cognition" and "intelligence" in animals. Moreover, the claim that plants feel pain is extremely unlikely because, as far as anyone knows, pain and awareness of any other physical sensation require a nervous system. He proposes, "Plants are fascinating in part precisely because they are so different from animals."

If plants feel pain, by the way, consider the ethical implications of eating them. I'm reminded of the satirical song "Carrot Juice Is Murder," by the Arrogant Worms. "I've heard the screams of the vegetables, watching their skins being peeled. . . ."

Carrot Juice Is Murder

The PBS network features a miniseries about the vegetable kingdom called GREEN PLANET, hosted by Sir David Attenborough:

Green Planet

Stop-motion photography produces sped-up films of plant growth to illustrate that these organisms are far from inert and passive. Attenborough's narration talks about phenomena such as seedlings and saplings competing with their neighbors for light and air, or fungus in the nests of leaf-cutter ants telling the ants what type of leaves it wants. That kind of language and the accompanying dynamic videos make it temptingly easy to view plants in anthropomorphic or at least theriomorphic terms.

Noticing how English ivy climbs our window screens seemingly overnight after heavy rains, regardless of how often it's trimmed back, I could easily imagine the vines have "conscious" intentions and preferences.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love amonng the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Plant Intelligence

A new nonfiction book, THE LIGHT EATERS, by Zoe Schlanger, delves deeply into the potential of plant intelligence. According to the blurb, she explores the abilities of plants "to communicate, recognize their kin and behave socially, hear sounds, morph their bodies to blend into their surroundings, store useful memories that inform their life cycle, and trick animals into behaving to their benefit, to name just a few remarkable talents." Here are two articles about THE LIGHT EATERS and the amazing ways plants interact with their environment:

Being Green

The New Science of Plant Intelligence

This topic raises the question of what "intelligence" means. I've always thought of it as a product of consciousness. Yet most people accept that advanced computer programs are in some sense intelligent without being conscious. If plants have intelligence, that quality must not necessarily require consciousness. And what does "memory" mean when applied to a creature without a brain? Do plants engage in "behavior," or should that word be restricted to animals? Botanical research has come a long way since THE SECRET LIFE OF PLANTS (1973) popularized the claim that they enjoy music and benefit from being talked to.

The second article linked above meditates on these questions and related philosophical issues. We human beings have an innate compulsion to "order the universe into comprehensible categories" and a tendency to "rank ourselves at the top." About plant communication, the author of this essay advances the astonishing proposition, "It also changes the notion of what a mind is. We have taken it to be the product of a brain attached to a nervous system, but perhaps a mind is a complex, self-organizing system networked across the entire organism. Perhaps the whole plant is a mind."

Schlanger defines intelligence as "the ability to learn from one’s surroundings and make decisions that best support one’s life,” a criterion plants fulfill. However, the temptation to anthropomorphize them should be resisted. For one thing, as many SF authors have highlighted, they must surely "think" on a different time scale from us. Rather than trying to see plants as human-like, we should appreciate their very alienness.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Learning Without Brains

Can creatures without brains think? Many of them can learn, so are they thinking? This article highlights several brainless life forms capable of learning:

Organisms Without Brains

Of course, this premise depends on what we mean by learning. If we think of that activity as a process that requires consciousness, a brain is probably essential. However, the article defines learning as "any change in behaviour as a result of experience." By that definition, creatures such as jellyfish, some plants, and even slime molds can learn, remember, and modify their reactions to the environment accordingly. For example, the beadlet anemone as a rule "violently opposes any encroachment on its territory by other anemones," yet it doesn't show aggression toward its genetically identical clones. Slime molds remember routes to food and use those experiences to guide future foraging. The Venus flytrap also acts as if it has a memory. Another article explores the potential "intelligence" of plants in more detail, discussing how chemical and electrical signals in their transport systems may carry information.

Can Plants Think?

I've probably mentioned in the past a story in which one character asks another, "With what does a plant think, in the absence of a brain?" The skeptical second character who scoffs at the idea of plant cognition might be wrong after all.

The concept of brainless organisms capable of remembering and learning raises the question, again, of how we could be sure of recognizing an intelligent alien if we met one. Suppose they have modes of intelligence that, unlike ours, don't need anything that seems analogous to a brain? How easily could we realize they are actually thinking?

If "learning" means "any change in behaviour as a result of experience," considering what we watch and read in the daily news, we might well doubt whether some Earth-humans with allegedly functional brains have the ability to learn!

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Do Plants Think?

A relatively recent (2021) article on plant intelligence, which includes an interview with Monica Gagliano, a professor in Evolutionary Ecology at Southern Cross University in Australia:

Plant Intelligence

It's known that plants can communicate with each other to "warn" their neighbors about potential attacks. Some plants also use animals to defend against pests, such as by releasing chemicals to attract wasps that prey on caterpillars. Researchers have discovered evidence that plants may have "memory" of a sort. In the interview, Gagliano defines intelligence as decision-making in reaction to one's environment. She insists that "you do not need a nervous system or a brain to embody this kind of behaviour and decisions." She goes so far as to declare, "Of course plants are intelligent, as much as bacteria and amoebas, and fish and birds and humans."

Bacteria? That wide-ranging application of the concept may come as a shock to many people's mental categories, as it does to mine. We typically think of intelligence as requiring brains and involving sapience or at least consciousness. I'm reminded of a vintage horror story that begins with a conversation about the nature of mind, in which one character rhetorically asks, "With what does a plant think, in the absence of a brain?" The other character scoffs, while the first maintains that intelligence exists everywhere in many shapes. When or if we eventually travel to extrasolar planets, we might plausibly discover plants or a vegetative group mind possessing a capacity for thought we'd recognize as similar to our own. However, mutual communication might be hard because organisms the size of trees or larger might think on a slower time scale than we do—like Tolkien's Ents, only much more so.

Another article on plant intelligence I came across queried whether, if plants can think in some sense, we would be obligated to stop eating them. If so, we'd be stuck with rather narrow diets, composed entirely of foods we could harvest without killing any complex organism (dairy products, unfertilized eggs, fruits, nuts, honey, the leaves of green vegetables that regenerate throughout the growing season—that's about it). Fortunately, the writer of that essay reassured us we wouldn't, since animals regularly consume plants as part of the cycle of life. Besides, many plants have parts (e.g., fruit) especially meant to be eaten by animals for the purpose of spreading seeds.

Remember the Shmoos in the old "Li'l Abner" comic strip, delicious animals that rejoiced in sacrificing themselves as food?

Shmoo

Maybe on a world shared by intelligent plants and humanoids, some vegetative life forms would partake in a symbiotic partnership whereby they produced renewable offshoots to feed sapient animals in exchange for helpful services such as fertilizing and pest control.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Our Viral Symbiotes

About 8% of our DNA may have come from ancient viruses that infiltrated our cells, where they established permanent residence.

Viral "Fossils" in Our DNA

The human genome includes 100,000 pieces of "ancient viral DNA." Recent studies of what function, if any, this "fossil" DNA might perform in our bodies suggest that it may play a vital role in boosting our immune systems. Amazingly, viruses that invade our cells sometimes not only become part of our chromosomes but become inheritable. The article summarizes the process thusly:

"When a type of virus known as a retrovirus infects a cell, it converts its RNA into DNA, which can then become part of a human chromosome. Once in a while, retroviruses infect sperm and egg cells and become 'endogenous,' meaning they are passed down from generation to generation."

In science-fiction treatments of traditional monsters such as vampires and werewolves, this ability of some retroviruses could be invoked to rationalize how a naturally evolved creature of a different species could convert a human victim—or willing host—into a member of the "monster" species.

When Walt Whitman declared, "I contain multitudes," he wrote truer than he could have suspected. That quote features in the title of a book by Ed Yong, I CONTAIN MULTITUDES: THE MICROBES WITHIN US AND A GRANDER VIEW OF LIFE, about microbiomes inside animals and especially humans, in the context of a vision of our bodies as "living islands" with millions of inhabitants.

On a totally different topic, but harking back to some of my earlier posts, here is a detailed article about the intelligence of octopuses, to which I've alluded more than once in the past. As the article says, they're probably the closest to intelligent aliens of any species we currently know. Cool!

Another Path to Intelligence

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

How Many Brains Does a Creature Need?

Leeches have 32 brains. Well, sort of. Each of its separate segments contains its own neuronal ganglion. As one answer on Quora puts it, "precisely it does not have 32 brains but a single brain that exists in 32 parts throughout the body," yet because each ganglion works independently, we might say it literally has a brain for each segment.

Is It True That a Leech Has 32 Brains?

Here's a page with thirteen wild and wonderful facts about animal brains:

13 Facts About Animals' Brains

Starfish have their neurons distributed through their arms instead of concentrated in a central location. A spider's brain is too big for its head and extends into its legs. Octopuses, similarly, keep two-thirds of their neurons in their tentacles instead of in the central brain. Thus, like spiders, they can perform amazingly complex feats with their limbs. The octopus, in fact, has the highest brain-to-body mass ratio of any invertebrate. This article explores octopus intelligence, including their ability to use tools:

How Smart Are Octopuses?

On the other hand, although we consider ourselves the planet's superior life form because of our intelligence, the humble sea squirt doesn't appear to value brainpower very highly. In the transition from its immature, mobile phase into an adult rooted in one spot, it "eats" its own brain. Among other animals that seem to consider brains optional, a cockroach can survive a long time with no head (until it starves to death). Then there's the famous case of a chicken named Mike, who lived for eighteen months after being (mostly) decapitated:

Mike the Headless Chicken

So maybe we members of the species Homo sapiens ("wise human") should be a bit more modest about the power to rule Earth through our intelligence? Maybe alien visitors would single out ants or termites as the dominant species, since there are so many more of them than us, and their excavations produce significant effects on the landscape. Or how about grasses? Not only do they cover much of the globe, they obviously employ us as their servants to help them spread and thrive.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Urban Wildlife

The July 2022 issue of NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC includes an article titled "Why Cities Are Going Wild." It's about wild animals who've adjusted to living in urban areas, often by feeding on the stuff human residents discard. For instance, numerous black bears hang around in Asheville, NC, with a human population of about 95,000. I was surprised to read that coyotes have established themselves in most major cities and in all states except Hawaii. Chicago, for instance, hosts about 4,000 coyotes. Many omnivorous mammals are "changing their behaviors as they learn urban survival skills." Bears learn when it's trash pickup day. Coyotes look before crossing the street. Nobody who lives in a neighborhood with raccoons would be surprised at their talent for breaking into closed containers. Skunks also display cleverness in adapting to urban environments.

Studies have found that not only do city-dwelling wild animals behave differently from their rural and wilderness cousins, such as becoming more nocturnal to avoid people, often they also prosper in terms of gaining weight and producing more offspring. The latter phenomenon doesn't always grant long-term advantages, though; in some populations of urban bears, fewer cubs survive to maturity than in the wild.

Animals can hardly be blamed for "invading" our spaces. In many areas they were there first, and our cities and suburbs have spread to encroach on their territories. Here's an article focusing particularly on big felines in two "megacities," Los Angeles and Mumbai, where mountain lions and leopards (respectively) have learned to coexist with people:

Big Cats, Big Cities

Authorities in those cities have experimented with ways to share space with the big cats, such as building bridges for them to overcome the problem of habitat fragmentation. (I can't help visualizing a leopard reading a "Leopard Crossing" sign at the end of a bridge, even though that's obviously not how the system works.) Public education reduces human-animal clashes and promotes a live-and-let-live policy. "Both cities have learned that trying to capture, kill or relocate the cats isn’t the answer." Moving the creatures away from the urban centers doesn't help prevent conflicts, because they or others like them just move back in. One California wildlife expert points out, “It’s better to have a stable population, than one where hierarchies and territories are disrupted.”

For me, the most intriguing information in the NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC article is that raccoons seem to be evolving greater intelligence as they're challenged by increasingly complex human efforts to deter them. People's attempts to thwart trespassing raccoons have led to an "innovation arms race." If we're "actually creating smarter animals" by giving them "increasingly difficult problems to solve," could raccoons be poised to take over the "intelligence" niche if we ever go extinct? Or maybe to share that role with us in some future post-apocalyptic reversion to a preindustrial world? After all, they already have a head start with hand-like paws. In the novel WICKED and its sequels, sapient animals live alongside the human residents of Oz (although as second-class citizens). Imagine a sapient raccoon delegation calling on a city or state government to demand equal rights.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Communicating with Pets

Netflix has a new series called THE HIDDEN LIVES OF PETS. Although it sounds as if it should reveal what our pets do when we're not watching, it actually deals with the intelligence, sensory perceptions, etc. of domestic animals. Dogs, cats, and birds feature prominently, of course, but also such creatures as rabbits, small rodents, turtles, and even soccer-playing goldfish. The episode about communication between people and animals includes a lot of video footage about a dog named Bunny who has become famous for learning to use electronic push-buttons to "talk." This system goes way beyond the battery-operated collars that attempt to translate canine barks and body language into verbal messages (prerecorded and linked to various dog behaviors by the owner):

Petspeak Collars

Here's an article about Bunny, who became the subject of a research project at UC San Diego after she and her mistress, Alexis Devine, amassed millions of TikTok followers:

Bunny the Talking Dog

This dog communicates by pressing buttons on a floor mat, each activating a prerecorded word. As the article mentions, this system is similar to the experiments in which apes learn to select symbols on keyboards to express their wants. At the age of 15 months (in November 2020) Bunny had mastered 70 buttons, including terms such as "scritches," "outside," "play," and "ouch." More problematic words such as "more," "now," "happy," and even "why" are included. While watching the video clips on the Netflix program, I wondered whether an animal could really grasp an abstract concept such as "why." Our dog responds appropriately to quite a few words in addition to the basic commands, such as "upstairs," "downstairs," "inside," "outside," "food," "leash," and "plate." All those refer to concrete objects or actions, though.

Scientists at the Comparative Cognitive Lab "comb through" the Bunny videos rather than checking only a sample. “We want to make sure we’re not just getting cherry-picked clips.” They also watch for the possibility that the dog might be reacting to subtle cues from her human partner instead of recognizing what the buttons represent. And could she "understand" words at all in the sense we mean it? Even Bunny's owner believes she's "made an association between pressing a button and something happening" rather than learning language as we do. On the other hand, human infants start by simply associating sounds with objects, too. Fitting the words into the brain's inborn grammar template comes a little later.

The Petspeak collar and Bunny's button mat remind me of the "voder" the Venusian dragon in Robert Heinlein's BETWEEN PLANETS uses to "talk." Since the highly intelligent dragons don't have vocal organs suitable for human speech, the dragon character wears an electronic device that converts his communications into audible English sentences. It doesn't duplicate the STAR TREK universal translator, being programmed only for dragon-to-English conversion, but in the distant future something like it might be used to communicate with extraterrestrials.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

The Most Intelligent Animals

Well, maybe not THE most in absolute terms, but this page lists six of the top candidates:

6 of the World's Most Intelligent Animals

The only one that surprised me was the pig. While I knew they were smart, I didn't know that in some categories they're thought to rank with dolphins. The other five on the list are the two most obvious, dolphins and chimpanzees, plus ravens, octopuses, and elephants.

Each paragraph on the page includes links to several other sites offering more information about the particular species and how its intelligence has been studied.

Although not mentioned on that web page, other species that would plausibly evolve sapience might include raccoons and bears. Both of them have the ability to manipulate objects and are already smart enough to defeat with ease many human attempts to keep them out of buildings, vehicles, and containers. Until our family bought better-designed garbage cans some years ago, we had to tie the lids on to protect the trash from raccoons. As for bears, you've probably seen photos or videos of them breaking into houses and cars. Scary! Maybe Yogi and Boo-Boo have a basis in fact.

As usual, this topic makes me wonder whether we'd recognize human-level intelligence in analogous alien species if we met them on distant planets. Their languages might not consist of sounds as ours does. (Maybe sapient octopuses would communicate by changing their colors.) Suppose lack of manipulative appendages, as with dolphins, prevented them from inventing material technologies we would recognize as such? What if, like dolphins and octopuses, they inhabited an environment (e.g., water) difficult for us to explore? Also, an ethical question comes to mind: If we don't exercise sufficient respect toward quasi-intelligent species we already know about on our own planet, will be behave ethically toward creatures we've yet to meet on strange new worlds?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Slime Mold Intelligence

Slime molds, a type of gelatinous amoebae, despite having no brains, have the capacity to form memories:

Slime Molds Redefine Intelligence

One species "can solve mazes, mimic the layout of man-made transportation networks and choose the healthiest food from a diverse menu." When chopped into multiple pieces and scattered through a labyrinth, a specimen not only reunited its separated bits but modified its behavior to find the most efficient routes. As well as mapping their surroundings and retaining memories of areas they have explored, they apparently "navigate time as well as space, using a rudimentary internal clock to anticipate and prepare for future changes in their environments." The article describes some of the intriguing experiments that revealed slime molds' abilities. Lacking brains or nervous systems, nevertheless they "choose conditions most amenable to their survival" and "remember, anticipate and decide."

I once read a story in which two characters argue about the potential intelligence of some nonliving entity. One man asks, "With what would it think, in the absence of a brain?" The other one counters, "With what does a plant think, in the absence of a brain?" Do slime molds and plants "think"? If we equate intelligence with abstract thought, probably not; if we define it as the ability solve problems through adaptation, intelligence could be attributed to almost any kind of organism. If a centuries-old redwood has thought processes, they might operate on a time scale so different from ours that it couldn't communicate with us. If we visited a world dominated by sapient slime molds, would we recognize their intelligence and vice versa?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Bird Brains

Research published in the journal SCIENCE in 2020 raises the possibility that crows have mental abilities formerly thought of as restricted to our species and other higher primates:

Crows Are Self-Aware

It's been known for a while that corvids (crows, ravens, jays, etc.), like monkeys and apes, use tools and recognize faces. These birds bring gifts to people they like and never forget people who injure or offend them. Experiments show, however, that they also apparently think about their own thoughts. A brain structure called the pallium, performing the same function as the cerebral cortex in mammals, holds densely packed neurons in greater quantity than in even some much larger animals such as elephants. This arrangement makes up for the smaller body and brain size of birds. The firing of neurons in the crows' brains during the experiment described in the article suggests that crows think about problems in somewhat the same way we do.

Parrots are highly intelligent, too. They don't just "parrot" human speech but often utter words in the proper context, such as asking for what they want or saying "Hello" when people arrive but not when they leave. As the famous African Grey named Alex demonstrated, parrots can work with numbers, too. They also pass some intelligence tests on the same level as five-year-old children:

Parrots Pass Classic Test of Intelligence

Here's a Wikipedia article on bird intelligence:

Bird Intelligence

For me, one exciting implication of these facts is that we now realize an animal doesn't require a large brain to be intelligent. Sapient aliens on other planets wouldn't have to resemble us in size or shape. Imagine a world dominated by brainy birds. With wings instead of arms, birds have limitations on their ability to use tools. What if they evolved with six limbs, though, like all the higher animals in the manga series A CENTAUR'S LIFE? Birds on a planet where the standard higher-life-form body plan includes six limbs rather than four could have legs, wings, and hands. Thus they could develop a civilization with material artifacts recognizable to us as products of higher intellect.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

The Internet of Trees

An old song laments, "I talk to the trees, but they don't listen to me." Apparently, however, trees listen to each other. Some of them communicate among themselves by means of a symbiotic fungus connected to their roots:

Plants Talk to Each Other

Mycelia—thin threads that make up the underground portion of mushrooms, far more extensive than the part we see aboveground—"act as a kind of underground internet, linking the roots of different plants." In a symbiotic relationship, mycelia that colonize the roots of plants "help the plants suck up water, and provide nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen," while the host plant supplies the fungus with nourishment in the form of carbohydrates. The fungus also enhances the host's immune system. In addition, through their mycelial connections some plants "help out their neighbours by sharing nutrients and information – or sabotage unwelcome plants by spreading toxic chemicals through the network." By transferring nutrients such as carbon, phosphorus, and nitrogen, large trees have been found to "help out small, younger ones using the fungal internet."

The article compares this network to the global communication among trees in the 2009 movie AVATAR. The fungal internet also brings to mind Clifford D. Simak's 1965 novel ALL FLESH IS GRASS, which portrays an invasion by a "planetwide biological computer that works through photosynthesis," manifesting in the form of purple flowers, as discussed on this website:

Intelligent Plants in Science Fiction

Do plants in fact have some form of intelligence? A few scientists think they might, according to this article about plant neurobiology:

New Research on Plant Intelligence

Of course, plants don't have neurons. They do, however, display reactions analogous to memory, learning, and response to stress. Their roots shift direction to avoid obstacles without coming into physical contact with the obstruction. Experiments have shown plants producing defensive chemicals when they "hear" a recording of a caterpillar eating a leaf. So it all depends on what we mean by "intelligence."

If we visited a planet dominated by a global hive-mind composed of sentient trees, would we be able to communicate with it? Or would the time scales on which our thought processes operate be too different for mutual comprehension?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Canine Conversations

A speech language pathologist, Christina Hunger, claims to have taught her dog, Stella, to "talk":

Can That Dog on Instagram Really Talk?

The communication method depends on a soundboard like those used by some apes, with the animal pushing buttons that stand for words. They produce sound recordings of words such as "outside" and "play." According to the author of the above article, Jane C. Hu, a cognitive scientist, there's little doubt that Stella "understands" the meanings of some buttons in the sense that she knows certain actions, in terms of choosing a button to push, cause certain results. Was she deliberately combining words to form a message when she pushed "outside" followed by "Stella"? Maybe. I'm highly skeptical, however, that she combined "good" and "bye" to make "goodbye" or that "'Later Jake' (Jake is Hunger’s partner), in response to him doing a chore, meant 'do that later'," and Hu seems to agree. Granted, it would be big news to discover "a dog could plan future events and express those desires," but does Stella's performance prove her capable of abstract thought to that extent?

I'm neither a cognitive scientist, a linguist, nor a zoologist. Reacting as an interested layperson, though, I don't go so far in the skeptical direction as a critic of ape communication I read about somewhere who dismissed an ape's situation-appropriate use of "please" as the animal's having been trained to push that particular key before making a request. How is that different from a toddler's understanding of "please"? He or she doesn't start out knowing what the word "means." It's simply a noise he has to make to get adults to listen when he wants something.

Another catch in interpreting Stella's dialogues with her mistress, as pointed out by Alexandra Horowitz, a psychology professor and expert on dog cognition, is that the dog's "vocabulary" is limited by the available buttons. Also, it's possible that Stella, instead of acting independently, may be responding to unconscious signals from her owner. Yet we know dogs do "understand" some words in the sense of associating specific sounds with things, people, and actions. A border collie (recognized as one of the most intelligent breeds) named Rico is famous for his 200-word vocabulary. After being ordered to go fetch any one of the objects whose name he knew, he could get it from a different room, a procedure that eliminated the risk of his picking up cues from a human observer:

Rico

Psychologist Steven Pinker, author of THE LANGUAGE INSTINCT, takes a dim view of attempts to teach animals some form of human language, as if learning to "talk" would prove the animals' intelligence. He maintains that rather than trying to induce apes and dolphins to communicate like us, we should focus on understanding their own innate modes of communication. He may have a point. If IQ were measured by how many different odors one could distinguish, how would our "intelligence" compare to that of dogs?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Creating Enhanced Brains?

Here's an article about a neuroscience experiment involving "ARHGAP11B, a gene found only in humans," which "is known for its role in expanding neocortex, the part of the brain responsible for higher cognitive functions":

Brain Gene

When the gene was inserted into fetal marmosets (very small monkeys), the neocortices of their brains grew larger and developed more folds, an important feature "because those folds increase the surface area available for brain cells, or neurons, without making the brain too big for the skull." The experiment suggests that this gene was vital in the process of our primate ancestors becoming human. Also, study of the gene may contribute to understanding of and treatment for brain disorders.

One aspect of this discovery that intrigues me is the implication that high intelligence doesn't necessarily require a huge brain. The range of organisms that can display near-human intelligence (hypothetically, on extraterrestrial planets, for example) might be broader than we've assumed. The extraordinary brilliance of such birds as parrots, although presumably unrelated to this gene, confirms that small-brained creatures can be smarter than we might expect.

What about using this kind of genetic manipulation to increase human intelligence? Not surprisingly, a scientist quoted at the end of the article strongly warns against using the technique to "improve" human brains. The treatment given to Charlie in FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON comes to mind. What about creating enhanced animals? As shown in science fiction from H. G. Wells's THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU to Cordwainer Smith's Underpeople stories and beyond, such a procedure, if successful, could raise a host of problems, not least what rights sapient animals should have. Robert Heinlein addresses that question in his novella "Jerry Was a Man" (1947), about an uplifted chimp in a society that essentially uses his kind as slaves.

And what about the miniature brains grown in vitro, which I've mentioned here before?

Mini-Brains

Suppose they were injected with the neocortex-expansion gene? The idea of an artificially grown brain with intelligence but not consciousness raises the intriguing though rather creepy SF prospect of organic computers. Of course, as the article above explains, these clusters of cells are not and, in the present state of research, never could become actual brains. Still, they would make a cool story premise.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Mysteries of Pacing Part 2 Romance At The Speed of Thought

Mysteries of Pacing

Part 2

Romance At The Speed of Thought 

Part 1 of this series is:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/09/mysteries-of-pacing-part-1-siri-reads.html
and is about how digital assistants can now read the text you type back to you aloud.

OK, it's not a dramatic reading and is paced very slowly compared to how a reader reads a book to themselves without subvocalizing.

But it can help a writer spot grammatical and stylistic quirks that could well annoy most readers.

In learning to "pace" your storytelling, you are both adopting a style (or Voice) and targeting a readership.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/10/index-to-targeting-readership-series-by.html

I don't know if there have been any studies of genre-taste vs I.Q. or any other measure of "intelligence" currently being tested.

But I do know that Science Fiction originated as "The Literature of Ideas" written by scientists for scientists as the recreational play-time for the extremely intelligent.

If you survey the early days of Science Fiction, you will find Ph.D. attached to the names of writers quite a bit more often than in other fiction genres.

It was once thought women had generally lower I.Q. than men.  Consider that!  Today, employers are having a hard time getting women interested in learning "coding" (computer programming), and nobody really knows if that's cultural, genetic, I.Q. or gender-related.

Today, with the extreme emphasis on "equal opportunity" and equal pay in the workplace, we are striving with all humanity's might to erase differences among us.

In the early years of Science Fiction, the fans of the genre (who were actually, also the writers) repeated the mantra, "Different is dead."

For the most part, fans and writers considered themselves socially rejected because they were different from the majority.

What is that difference?

Nobody knew then, and until today, as far as I know, it has not been defined.  It isn't I.Q.

However, we saw the same pattern among the devoted and active fans of STAR TREK.

There is a quality of some sort that distinguishes this tiny slice of humanity.

It may be 1%, but I think the slice is more like 10% who read at least one novel a year.

I have also seen the persistent statistic that book-buyers, readers in general are only about 5% of the total population even in a Literate country like the USA.  Books just aren't the central interest of most people.

Among those who center their lives around novels, reading, writing, publishing, reviewing, book clubs, and associating with people who have read the same books, there is a vast difference in taste in entertainment.

Some read Chemistry textbooks, or the encyclopedia for fun.

Some read best selling, popular fiction -- Tom Clancy, Stephen King -- things you see made into action-packed films.

Some prefer cerebral mysteries - who-dun-it or procedurals, open and closed.  Some prefer relax by concentrating on solving the puzzle of the mystery, and some prefer to solve the puzzle of Romance (e.g. What Does He See In Her?)

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/06/theme-character-integration-part-1-what.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/09/theme-dialogue-integration-part-1-whats.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/09/theme-dialogue-integration-part-2-whats.html

And some, of course, read Romance.  Among readerships, Mysteries and Romance are the biggest categories, though Westerns used to rank with them, all trailed by Science Fiction.  Times have changed, as have the very definitions of what constitutes each of these genres.

But one element that unites all genres is that each genre has a unique style preferred by its readers.

Historicals can use long, involuted sentences, flowery language, and obscure names for articles of clothing, all slowing down the reader's eye, tripping up the mind, evoking images.  Mysteries have to "play fair" with the reader, not hiding the facts needed to solve the mystery, but obscuring them amidst many irrelevant words.  Westerns have to be terse, action packed, and fast paced as does Science Fiction.

Each imprint within a genre has a preferred style.  In Romance, for example, certain imprints require a certain number of sex scenes with a particular amount of nudity and explicit description.  So which publisher you aim to sell to determines a lot of the style you must mimic or adopt.

I have not been able to identify a certain level of intelligence (I.Q.) common to readers of particular genres.  But studies you can find on Google have identified connections between scores on I.Q. tests with reading speed.

Google turns up this interesting statistic:
---quote-----
The average person in business reads no faster than people did 100 years ago. The average reading speed is 200 to 250 words a minute in non-technical material roughly 2 minutes per page.
-----end quote-----

The average screenplay films about 1 minute per script-page.

If it's true that reading speed goes as I.Q., then higher I.Q. individuals would likely tend to read faster, even when reading fiction.

I suspect that no matter your I.Q., you can train yourself to speed-read with fair comprehension (in any subject area you are well familiar with), but you can read faster than your emotions can biochemically shift.

In other words, reading fiction, especially Relationship based fiction, has an upper speed limit dictated not by word-comprehension-speed, but by the body's ability to produce emotional responses.

So the writer aiming at an audience of I.Q. 130+ people would have to use a lot of words to showcase a given emotional pitch.  You don't want the reader to zip through a scene and not feel the impact even while fully comprehending what happened.  It's like watching a movie on Netflix where the lips don't sync with the sound-track voices.

Aiming for an audience of I.Q. 90 people, the writer would use fewer, sharper, smaller words to depict the high impact emotional scenes so the reader doesn't have to read as fast to keep the emotional sweeps in sync with the words.

The objective would be to get the rise and fall of emotional tension in the story to match the reader's progress through the words.  A match like that would produce the greatest, most memorable, and most talked about reading experience.

So which kind of story should naturally engross which kind of I.Q. readership?

What material do you aim toward which I.Q. segment?

Would the story that entertains a low I.Q. person also enthrall a high I.Q. person?

Science Fiction, as I noted above, is the Literature of Ideas, of hypothesizing about abstractions.  Romance is about imagining the Happily Ever After.  Both are about making those abstract imaginary situations into concrete Reality.

Genre publishers have focused science fiction on making scientific advancements real via war, explosions, mayhem.  Romance publishers have (hitherto) constrained Romance genre to non-violent relationships.

All of those constraints have been lifted, especially with small publishers, and self-publishing via electronic means.  The Gatekeepers no longer have a gate to keep.

As a result all sorts of exploration is currently in progress, novels pouring out online, looking for readerships.

Here is a graphic that purports to depict the social spectrum by I.Q.  This is a result of meta-analysis of data collected over many decades, now being re-analyzed in ways that weren't possible when the data was collected.

The methodology and results are sketched in this article:
http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/users/reingold/courses/intelligence/cache/1198gottfred.html

Which, near the top, has a note [see illustration] which is a link leading to this graphic:

http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/users/reingold/courses/intelligence/cache/1198gottfredbox2.html

This article explains a factor of Intelligence called g.  Just the letter g.

This entire thesis on human I.Q. may be completely wrong, or have no actual basis in reality, but it gives us a jumping off place to start thinking about the market for our fiction, and how the target reader chosen affects the style that will work best for the story you want to tell.

This graphic, with a breakdown of percentages of a given I.Q. level by social and Relationship activity, may give you an idea of how to Target an Audience by giving you an idea of what activities feature prominently in that Audience's common experience.

For example, the legend of the graph shows that 0% of young white men of  I.Q. 130 have been incarcerated.  Only 9% have been divorced within 5 years of marriage. Only 10% have been out of work for a month.  But only 5% of the total population has an I.Q. of 130.

Note the scale doesn't show all the way to I.Q. 200, but I've known people of I.Q. 220.

The I.Q. 130 slice of the white male population may have been poor for a while, but they don't LIVE IN poverty.

Only 2% of I.Q. 130 women have had illegitimate children.

And 0% of I.Q. 130 dropout of High School.  College might be a different story - as there are way smarter ways to make a living than getting a degree that makes you "over-qualified" for the most fun stuff you want to do.

Look at the line that says Career Potential and think about those 4 segments as you choose a readership to target.

To get the most book sales, you need to target a bigger readership.  The number of people under the middle of the distribution curve is that bigger readership.

So to sell a LOT of books, you need to target Clerks, Tellers, Police Officers, Machinists, and Sales people.

Notice how "Chemist" (e.g. scientist) is over the I. Q, 130 section of the curve -- that's where you find the preponderance of dedicated, avid, talkative, networked, science fiction fans.

There aren't enough to support a publishing imprint under the print-warehouse distribution model.  Certainly not enough to support a blockbuster film, or a TV Series that are just too expensive to make.

Hence purveyors of the Literature of Ideas have to include an element in the story that will entertain everyone down to I.Q. 90 -- for which purpose they have chosen "action" which is easy to understand but hard to actually do.  Very few fans of Action Genre are physically fit enough to perform the feats of speed and strength the Hero of the story executes routinely.

However, also notice that Romance, while as a genre has become focused on the more highly intelligent woman with the education of an even more intelligent person, still appeals to everyone across the spectrum.  Note also that these highly intelligent, over-educated women gravitate to Romance genre reading during the years when they are raising children (i.e. performing the duties of food service worker and nurse's aid 24/7).

Now, when you combine Science Fiction with Romance, you get a new genre that has the "reach" to engross I.Q. 130 and above, all the way down to I.Q. 90.  In other words, "Romance" acts as the "Action" ingredient to broaden the reach.

Explain the life-experience and point of view of one segment of this population to the other segments using Characters from the various segments, and you could find you have written a Classic.

The article which this graph illustrates only pertains to YOUNG and WHITE ADULTS in the U.S., so don't expect any rule to hold true across the real population.  There will be scatter blurring the categories.  Just see if you can absorb the implications and use them to extrapolate how the arrival of Aliens From Outer Space might impact these social segments differently.

Which segment might accept a human having an affair with an Alien?

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Animal Minds

I recently read two books by ethologist Frans de Waal, ARE WE SMART ENOUGH TO KNOW HOW SMART ANIMALS ARE? and MAMA'S LAST HUG, respectively about animal cognition and emotion. ("Ethology" means the study of animal behavior.) They're very lively as well as informative, drawing upon a lot of the author's personal experiences. De Waal makes a sharp distinction between emotions and feelings. He defines feelings as internal mental phenomena we can’t know unless the individual describes them to us. Emotions, on the other hand, are observable in the form of biological changes that can be described and measured. Through unbiased observation of nonhuman animals, he maintains, we can't avoid noticing that they have emotions similar to ours. Therefore, it's not a stretch to believe they have inner lives and consciousness analogous to ours. If we assume certain reactions by our human peers mean those people are experiencing the same internal states we experience when we react that way, it's at least a reasonable provisional hypothesis that the same assumption can be applied to other creatures. We're often reluctant to make that assumption because it challenges the idea of human uniqueness.

Part of ARE WE SMART ENOUGH TO KNOW HOW SMART ANIMALS ARE? surveys the history of the study of animal intelligence. During the reign of behaviorism, the majority of scientists took it for granted that learning occurred the same way in all organisms, so nothing was lost by restricting most experimentation to easy-to-handle subjects, e.g. rats and pigeons. Why bother with difficult animals such as primates if there was no essential difference in the workings of their brains? Ethologists nowadays recognize that animal learning and cognition is inextricably linked to the particular species' methods of perceiving the world and interacting with other animals. There is also an increased willingness to accept that animals have desires, intentions, and goals, that they remember past events (not just in a rote learning, stimulus-response way), modify their behavior on the basis of those memories, and plan for the future. Parrots don't "parrot," for example; they use the words they know in appropriate contexts. Some of them demonstrate counting ability and recognition of numbers. Visually oriented species, including some birds, recognize faces as readily as we do.

De Waal objects to the preoccupation with comparing animal cognition to human capacities, as if nature conformed to the old model of a "Great Chain of Being," a linear ladder of species with us at the top. He considers it more realistic and productive to study each species as important and interesting in its own right, with its own techniques for dealing with its environment and other creatures. Why try to measure another species' intelligence by investigating how closely it corresponds to ours, when that other species experiences the world through biology and social structures different from ours? As he puts it, he emphasizes "evolutionary continuity" rather than the "traditional dualisms." The useful comparison isn't between human and animal intelligence, but "between one animal species—ours—and a vast array of others." Most scientists in the past thought only a few nonhuman animals had self-consciousness, on the basis of the "mirror test" (whether they show evidence of recognizing their own reflections as themselves). Quite a few other species have been admitted to the club now that researchers have realized it doesn't make sense to test such diverse creatures as elephants, dogs, birds, and dolphins in the same way as primates. "Theory of mind"—the awareness of what others know or don't know (useful in trying to hide food from others who might want to take it, for instance)—has been demonstrated in a wide variety of animals, some of which catch on quicker than human toddlers. Ethologists have also discovered that many behaviors previously attributed solely to "instinct" depend on experience, learning, and planning.

In MAMA'S LAST HUG, De Waal explores animal (especially primate) politics and society, whether any emotions are unique to Homo sapiens, empathy and sympathy, animals' sense of fairness, and the questions of free will and the meaning of "sentience."

It's fascinating to read about the many different creatures whose intelligence, emotional life, and social skills far exceed what previous generations of scientists believed possible. The octopus, for example, probably the most intelligent vertebrate, has "brains" in each of its tentacles, so that a severed arm can continue to move on its own for a while and even seek food. Contemplating the "vast array" of creatures on Earth is a great resource for inventing extraterrestrial beings who are more than humanoids in special-effects makeup. If we met aliens on an extra-solar planet, how would we judge whether they were intelligent in the same sense we are? If aliens landed here, would they realize we're intelligent, or would they view our cities the way we regard termite mounds and beehives?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Thought Floating on Different Blood

I've been rereading a couple of Mercedes Lackey's Elemental Masters novels. Magicians in this series work with one of the classic four elements (air, water, earth, fire). People with those powers can see and talk with elemental creatures (sylphs, salamanders, gnomes, fauns, and many others) invisible to non-magicians. Many elemental entities have human-level intelligence; some are more intelligent and powerful than human mages. Elemental magicians, able to communicate with nonhuman creatures, must surely have a different view of the world from us ordinary mortals. People in ancient times believed in a host of intelligent beings who populated the natural realm, such as nymphs, satyrs, dryads, minor gods of rivers and mountains, dwarfs, faerie folk, trolls, etc. I suspect, however, that few ordinary people ever expected to meet one of those creatures. How different our world would be if such entities existed openly, where any of us (not just magicians) might encounter them in our daily lives.

In C. S. Lewis's PERELANDRA, the protagonist, Professor Ransom, travels to Perelandra (Venus), where he finds three intelligent species (not counting the life-form of pure spirit who rules the planet). One of his Perelandran acquaintances expresses surprise upon learning that Earth's ecosystem has only one sapient species. How can we fully understand ourselves, he wonders, if we can't compare our thoughts to "thought that floats on a different blood"? How would our view of our own species and the world we inhabit change if we weren't alone on our planet?

Although I've often wondered about a hypothetical alternate history in which other human species or subspecies, such as Neanderthals and the "hobbits," had survived to the present day, I sadly suspect that the prevailing attitude toward other races wouldn't be very different. Neanderthals and other hominids, and maybe Yeti if they existed, would look too human. They might well get treated as inferior beings, similar to the way Europeans historically treated other races, only worse, because some anthropologists might classify such hominids as "animals"—a bridge between Homo sapiens and lower species, intelligent enough to be useful but inhuman-looking enough to justify enslaving them.

Demonstrably sapient but clearly nonhuman creatures, on the other hand, would probably evoke a different response. What if we shared Earth with centaurs, merfolk, or intelligent dragons? Or the semi-civilized talking animals of Narnia? Tolkien (in his essay on fairy tales) says animal fantasies satisfy the perennial human yearning to reestablish communication with the natural world from which we've been cut off. Would a common experience of living alongside other sapient species—or extraterrestrial visitors—make human racial differences seem insignificant, as STAR TREK optimistically postulates?

The TV series ALIEN NATION explored this question in thoughtful detail. It portrayed human-on-alien prejudice and hatred, human-alien friendships and love affairs, and the mind-expanding experience of exposure to another species' view of the universe. This series about a shipload of extraterrestrial refugees settling in California, all of whose broadcast seasons and follow-up TV movies are available in DVD format, deserves multiple viewings. Also, a number of tie-in novels were published, most of which I thought were quite good. If nothing else, the fact that the Newcomers have three sexes would give them a different outlook on life from ours. The body and the senses inevitably shape the mind's perceptions of reality. An intriguing spec-fic example of "thought that floats on a different blood."

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

The Value of Curiosity

Astrophysicist Mario Livio has recently published a book titled WHY? WHAT MAKES US CURIOUS. He maintains that curiosity is "the most human characteristic":

Why We're Curious

Livio identifies two types of curiosity, which differ in their observed effect on the brain. Encountering something "novel or bizarre" can activate the part of the brain associated with conflict. By driving us to investigate the strange thing, thereby relieving the mental conflict, "curiosity might be our way of reducing unpleasant feelings." The other category springs from being "motivated by the love of knowledge for its own sake." In that case, the satisfaction of curiosity activates the brain's reward center. Of course, what we know about evolution suggests that we wouldn't have developed a love for knowledge unless learning new things gave us an advantage.

Some interesting points brought out in the interview with Livio: How can curiosity be a "defining characteristic" of humanity, when many animals are curious, too? What about "Curiosity killed the cat"? He says animals aren't curious about the "how" or "why." He cites an experiment contrasting the responses of chimps and human four-year-olds to an odd phenomenon. Also: Curiosity is at least partly genetic (studies suggest about 50 percent inherited). Curiosity in the sense of "novelty-seeking" declines with age (after all, so much of the world is new to children, so they have to question almost everything), but the "thirst for knowledge" can be a lifelong pursuit. Curiosity is a necessary but not sufficient condition for creativity (to create, you also need "drive and persistence and talent").

Most memorable line: "Curiosity is the best remedy for fear."

If it's one of the most important traits making us human—setting us apart from other animals—could we use the presence of curious behavior in an alien species to determine that they are sapient? Would we ever expect to meet intelligent aliens who aren't curious? That seems unlikely, because the drive to investigate and learn about the environment should be a necessary survival feature for an intelligent being.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Bird Brains

Following up last week's post on animal intelligence, I want to suggest that you pick up a copy of the February NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC. It includes an article titled "Bird Brainiacs." The conventional dismissive reference to "bird brains" has been radically overturned in recent years. Originally, the avian brain, about the size of a nut, was thought to be severely limited by its lack of a neocortex. Now it's been discovered that birds' brains are much more complex than previously assumed, although structured differently from those of mammals. The article refers to the famous gray parrot genius Alex, who demonstrated that parrots can use English words in the appropriate context rather than simply "parroting" human speech. Parrotlets in South America are among the species that have a kind of "language" of their own, assigning "names" to individuals in the flock. Also described are crows that trade gifts with a girl in Seattle. Experiments show that bird pairs can cooperate to solve problems. Some birds fashion tools out of sticks and other objects. They occasionally show evidence of planning ahead, by stashing their manufactured objects for later use. No wonder some biologists call birds "feathered apes."

That birds, with their small bodies and brains, can be so intelligent makes alien creatures such as the treecats in David Weber's Honor Harrington series more believable. Treecats have human-level intelligence despite being about the size of Earth's domestic felines.

Other items of interest in this issue: The cover article reveals how thoroughly high-tech surveillance already pervades our society, explores its future potential, and discusses the positive and negative sides of this phenomenon. A short piece called "The Parent Trap" features highly realistic robotic babies used in high-school sex education classes. Reading about this program reminded me of human-looking sex robots discussed on a talk show I recently caught a few minutes of (on the TV at the blood bank) and the robots already used in elder care in Japan. Concerning the sex androids, naturally my first thought was what would happen if they awoke to sentience and revolted against their condition of, essentially, slavery.

Here's an article about the Japanese caregiving robots in a variety of shapes and sizes:

Robot Caregivers

Happy Candlemas / Imbolc / Groundhog Day! I've had it with winter already; how about you? In some countries, the Christmas season traditionally ended on Candlemas. So I'm perfectly justified in still displaying the wreath on the door. (Actually, I often keep it up almost until Ash Wednesday, but I can't cite a tradition for that.)

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Animal Minds

TIME magazine recently put out a special 95-page publication called THE ANIMAL MIND, which (according to the cover) is supposed to be available on newsstands until the middle of February. Pick up a copy if you can. It includes lavish photo illustrations and eight thought-provoking articles on topics that include animal communication, whether animals grieve, whether they're capable of friendship, why people like creatures such as dogs and detest creatures such as rats, animal rights, etc. The first article is titled, "Animals Have Brains, But Do They Have Minds?" As you probably know, seventeenth-century philosopher Rene Descartes dismissed animals, even the "higher" ones, as automata without consciousness. Nowadays, few scientists would deny that many nonhuman creatures have emotions and feelings of pain and pleasure. Some animals pass the "mirror test" for self-awareness (they recognize their mirror images as themselves, not mistaking them for other animals inside or behind the glass). Some species have been shown to understand cause-and-effect and abstractions such as "same" and "different." Among birds, parrots and corvids (e.g., crows and jays) display surprising intelligence. Some animals have "culture" in the sense of passing on learned behaviors to future generations. A "theory of mind" shows up in a few animals, which display awareness that other creatures don't necessarily know the same things they know. The boundary between human and animal minds becomes more and more blurry, as abilities once believed to be unique to humanity, such as tool use, have been discovered in other species. One driver for the development of high intelligence seems to be living in social groups. It takes more cleverness to learn to cooperate with members of one's group than to lead a solitary existence. Great apes, cetaceans (whales and dolphins), and elephants stand out for their superior intellect.

The October 2017 issue of PMLA contains an article by Bryan Alkemeyer on "Remembering the Elephant: Animal Reason Before the Eighteenth Century." In classical antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the early modern period, the creatures assumed to be most human-like weren't usually the apes, as we take for granted now. That honor often went to elephants. Elephants were thought to have remarkable memories, mourn their dead, altruistically share food with their companions, and perform quasi-religious rituals. With elephants as an example, Michel de Montaigne, in 1580, suggested that "there is a greater difference between one man and another than between some men and some beasts." As Alkemeyer puts it, these "largely forgotten perspectives on elephants challenge the concept of the human by suggesting that the category 'rational animal' includes beings with emphatically nonhuman shapes." Contemplating the possibility of human-like reasoning in the mind of a creature with a nonhuman shape would be good practice for first contact with extraterrestrial aliens.

One feature I especially like about Diane Duane's outstanding "Young Wizards" series is the way she populates the novels with many ET characters who are definitely "people" without being at all humanoid, including a species resembling giant centipedes and an ambulatory, sapient tree—as well as nonhuman "people" right here on Earth, such as cat wizards, whale wizards, and the sapient dinosaurs (discovered in THE BOOK OF NIGHT WITH MOON) in the alternate-dimension Old Downside.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt