Super Organism

I just saw another example of life on the planet acting like life in a body.

Bodies have a genetic code they follow that is influenced by signals. Hunger makes a trigger go off that makes you want to eat. Injuries send signals that direct the body where to respond with an immune response or where to perform repairs.

I was listening to a podcast about microorganisms that cause a behavioral change in their hosts. There were several examples, starting with mice that get a parasite that causes them to stop fearing, and in fact start to love the smell of cats. Their behavior gets them eaten, so the parasite can propagate in the cat. There is a catapillar that gets a virus that prevents him from molting. They climb to the top of the tree and eat until they die. Then they explode open and rain virus particles down on the other caterpillars in the tree. They were also talking about viruses that pass on traits from one host to another, possibly speeding up evolutionary adaptations in a population.

There is a lot of talk lately about the function of the bacterial population that we carry around with us. Besides the beneficial work that some strains do for us, aiding in digestion and preventing harmful strains from infecting us, there is a great deal of interest in the possible ways that these cultures of bacteria are affecting our behavior. Evolution dictates that strains that change behavior in a way that threatens their hosts will soon die out, so it stands to reason that we will find many beneficial relationships between our internal bacterial passengers and ourselves.

This reminds me so much of how a well functioning cell behaves. Stimulus, response, but not necessarily the same response, given the atmosphere the stimulus is given in.

Many people have speculated on a phenomenon called Gaia, or the Earth as a superorganism. The sum total of all of the species, working together, each effecting the others. Many people have a hard time believing this could be true when you look at the imbalances, such as human population running away, or species being hunted to extinction. The people that theorize about Gaia always seem to come up with this Disney-like interpretation with all the animals in the forest talking to each other and living in harmony. What if it's not that simple or pure? What if brutality and consumption are part of the plan, and we do work together on a higher level? Would we even know what that looks like? Would we even know how to prove it, much less see it? I'm not saying this potential superorganism is in perfect harmony, or has some kind of purpose or way of exerting self-determination. I'm just saying that there are influences and relationships that are not at all obvious. We should be open to the things we see in the future that may prove that there are more connections than we ever suspected.