Otters, Shells, and Genomes

Science News is asking questions about animal intelligence in an article about otters and tool use in a March 21, 2017 article. The article entitled, “Tool use in sea otters doesn't run in the family,” suggests that using rocks to crack open snails and other shells to get at the rich food inside, may truly be a learned behavior that each generation must discover.

Those who read this blog regularly will know that I am fascinated with the intelligence of animals. (You can read a quick summary here and find links to other articles on this subject in the same place.) Most of the writing and reading I have done on this subject has emphasized the learned aspect of such behaviour. There is a great deal of evidence to suggest that crows teach other crows the techniques related to breaking open mussel shells and staying away from strangers. So, it is not surprising that researchers are having a difficult time finding the gene responsible for tool use in otters. However, I would caution us that just because a gene carrying this propensity has not been found, does not mean that the gene does not exist. The author of the paper even admits this when she suggests that “sea otters may all be predisposed to using tools because their ancestors probably lived off mollusks, which required cracking open.” Could it be that all otters carry the gene for tool use and only use it when necessary?

I am thankful for authors who give us interesting summaries of research papers. At the very same time, I am cautious about how that data is characterized. I encourage us to read with great discernment, “wise as serpents and gentle as doves.”

Results of Tardigrade Paper Questioned

It only took a few days for the results of a new Tardigrade study to be called into question. No one questions the hardiness of Tardigrades, aka Water Bears; but are they the great scavengers of DNA that the Cambridge Researchers suggested? (See the paper by Eyres, et al.) A paper published by researchers at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Oxford concludes that the genomic research from Cambridge may have been contaminated by other genomes. (See also Science News here.) Of course the Cambridge team acknowledged this and worked hard to prevent such contamination; but the fact is, with incredibly sensitive PCR reactions and hardy sequencing of small amounts of DNA, contamination is always a possibility.

The Cambridge team will likely be working through the Christmas break to see if they can redeem the results of their previous study. But, with the suggested level of contamination, they might do well to move to another lab where they can start with a fresh supply of Tardigrades that will not be prone to the same sources of contamination. Perhaps the only thing hardier than a Tardigrade is cellular DNA. This lends a further significance to the concept of selfish genes. 

Science is Stranger than Screenplays

With Batman and Superman preparing to do battle in our movie theatres[1], perhaps you have wondered, "What is the most invulnerable creature on our planet?" The armadillo? The Blue Whale? Lions? Elephants? No, there is one creature that is much more durable than all of these. It can survive being boiled and frozen; in fact it can live in temperature ranges of −272 °C to 149 °C. It can tolerate the vacuum of space while being exposed to more ionizing radiation than any other creature. It can also survive without food or water for decades (some have been rehydrated after 120 years of desiccation).[2] No, it is not that fictional life form from the Alien[3] movies. Truth is sometimes stranger than our fictional screenplays.

The Tardigrade, or Water Bear, pictured here, wins the gold medal for invincibility. However, you would need a very small ribbon to hang the award around its neck; Water Bears are only visible with a microscope and measure approximately 1.5 mm across their longest dimension. They are certainly weird looking animals and would likely scare the wits out of any of us if they were more like half a meter in length. Fortunately, unless you go looking for them, you will never see one. They like to live on mossy surfaces where they thrive on microscopic drops of secreted liquid. They can also live in our water supply, the gutters of our city streets, and our cupboards.

Researchers (and yes there are those who study these tiny animals in the wild) have recently made a remarkable discovery about Tardigrades. They have the ability to scavenge and incorporate DNA from other living creatures. (Note well, the paper related to this research has been subsequently questioned and researchers are working to confirm or deny the results of this research.) In one recent study, it was found that "the Hypsibius dujardini tardigrade incorporated into their own DNA genes from more than 1,300 bacterial species, 40 archaea, 91 species of fungus, 45 plant species and six viruses."[4] When severely dehydrated, Water Bears, and other organisms around them, spill out DNA from broken cells. The unique thing about the Tardigrade is that when water returns to the environment, they can quickly sew their DNA back together and sometimes incorporate other free-floating DNA. It is likely this feature that has made them so invulnerable to extreme conditions. Move over Superman, there is a new god-like creature in town. Perhaps someone needs to turn this match-up into a movie.

---

[1] Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016); IMDB; http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2975590/

[2] "Tardigrade," Wikipedia; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade#Ecology_and_life_history

[3] Alien (1979); IMDB; http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078748/?ref_=nv_sr_2

[4] Science News; November 25, 2015, "Water Bears Are Genetic Mash-Ups;  https://www.sciencenews.org/article/water-bears-are-genetic-mash-ups The validity of this study has since been called into question. See the follow-up blog at http://bit.ly/1maOaCB.

Legion Two

We have seen God move in mighty ways as he speaks to us as a community and not just as individuals. One evening in one of our house churches we were studying Mark 5:1-20, where Jesus delivers and heals the man called Legion. Although we share the duties of leading the study, it happened to be my turn to lead. I had prepared by reading the passage, studying some commentaries, getting the historical context, all the things that a good preacher would do. As I was leading the discussion, Daphne brought up a difficult question. Now in our group we have many divergent personalities and perspectives. Daphne is a vegetarian and she is a vegetarian because she has a very soft heart for animals. I on the other hand, am a farm boy raised in rural Alberta who respects animals but believes that they are part of God’s provision for humans. I love a good steak or a pork roast. Daphne and I have learned to appreciate each other’s perspectives and enjoy some good-natured humour at each other’s expense as we would share a meal together at church. Daphne was disturbed by the fact that Jesus allowed the evil spirits to enter the herd of pigs which led to the pigs plunging down a steep hill and drowning in the lake.


As a theologically trained person I began to wrack my brain trying to come up with a good reason for why this might have been done. None of the commentaries I had read had addressed this issue. I suspected that it had something to do with God’s judgement against the owners of the pigs and I vaguely remembered something like that from Bible college. But fortunately before I said too much I opened the question to the rest of the group. Another member said, “It makes me think of the high value that Jesus placed upon the man named Legion. Jesus loved this man so much that He was willing to allow the death of 2000 pigs to demonstrate the value of this man’s life.” We continued the conversation talking about the value that God places even on the sparrows and how this man had been cast out by his community and was driven out into the tombs where he lived among the corpses. The community did not want to have anything to do with him and treated him like garbage but Jesus showed him love and community. This made some sense to our whole group and we believed that this was the message God had for us that night.


The next day, I received a phone call informing me that a friend of mine had tried to take his own life and was in the hospital. As I went to visit him it occurred to me that this man had something in common with “Legion.” My friend (I will call him Legion Two) was very much rejected by society. He was a twice convicted high risk sex offender whose victims were children. Society at large tends to consider such people impossible to rehabilitate and chases them out of their communities. I had become part of a Circle of Support and Accountability group (a highly effective ministry of the Mennonite Central Committee) and had been holding him accountable and supporting him so that he would not reoffend for about three years.


Legion Two told me that he felt hopeless, unloved, rejected, and hated. He had tried to end the emotional pain. I shared with him what our house church had been studying the night before and told him of the value that Jesus had placed upon another person whom the world had rejected. Legion Two broke down in tears. This was a key turning point in this man’s life and his spiritual journey toward Jesus.


Our community had heard a message from God as together we grappled with a challenging passage. And God spoke to another person through our community. This was a tremendous encouragement to our body of believers. I was glad that I had not simply preached to a crowd and that we had a format that allowed God to work in this manner.

Follow-up to "Things That Can't Be Explained"

I was thinking about what Alan Lightman had said about the Osprey flying over his head as he watched from the deck of his house as I went for a run past portions of False Creek. It occurred to me that I too had had an unusual, hard-to-explain encounter with animals a while ago. The full blog can be read here but here is an excerpt from it.

As I walked along the seawall of False Creek a seal popped its head out of the water and began swimming at the pace of my walk. A second seal raised its head and swam beside it. The two swam along beside me for a while before diving below the surface and disappearing. I commented to God that it seemed like He had given me a sign to reassure me but that it was so brief that it would be hard to know. As I continued to walk, the two seals appeared and kept pace with me again before diving and disappearing below the surface. I said to God, "If I were a man like Gideon I might ask for a third time." As if on cue, the two seals appeared beside me a third time, swam beside me for a few more meters, swam out into the middle of the bay, disappeared below the waves, and did not return.

Of course there are several scientific explanations for an experience like this but it is not easy to explain the feelings that both Alan Lightman and I experienced in these situations. If we are simply products of chance and proximity to a star, why do we feel such a sense of holy awe and mystery with incidents like these?

Things That Can't Be Explained

It is refreshing to hear an atheist and physicist admit that there are some things that he can't explain. Alan Lightman, in an essay entitled "Does God Exist?", has this to say.

I believe there are things we take on faith, without physical proof and even sometimes without any methodology for proof. We cannot clearly show why the ending of a particular novel haunts us. We cannot prove under what conditions we would sacrifice our own life in order to save the life of our child. We cannot prove whether it is right or wrong to steal in order to feed our family, or even agree on a definition of “right” and “wrong.” We cannot prove the meaning of our life, or whether life has any meaning at all. For these questions, we can gather evidence and debate, but, in the end, we cannot arrive at any system of analysis akin to the way in which a physicist decides how many seconds it will take a one-foot-long pendulum to make a complete swing. These are questions for the arts and the humanities. These are also questions aligned with some of the intangible concerns of traditional religion.*

Many of the "new atheists" like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Stephen Hawking, and the late Christopher Hitchens have been trying to convince us that they can use science to prove that God does not exist. What they are really doing is coming close to showing that it is possible to imagine a way in which the universe could exist without a need for God. This, of course, is far different than proving that God does not exist. Lightman explicitly states that some things are just not provable in the way that a physicist proves a theory. We cannot set up an experiment that could be used to once and for all prove that God does not exist. Such things are outside of the realm of science. Lightman knows this and I suspect that the new atheists also know this but will not say it because it does not serve their rhetoric and their ultimate goal of getting rid of religion.


Philosophy, theology, art, and poetry are not science. Such disciplines often defy description by science and are in fact legitimate means of exploring the questions of ultimate meaning and reality. We cannot allow proponents of a rationalistic science to convince us that the only tools we are allowed to use are those on the scientists tool-belt. Despite statements to the contrary, philosophy is not dead; and neither are theology, art, and poetry.

Lightman has a marvelous story within the essay of how he and his wife had spent several years watching osprey nest near their summer home. They studied the birds in their spare time and made notes about their behaviour. They knew much about the birds from a scientific perspective. But one day something "other" happened. He describes it this way.

. . . one August afternoon, the two baby ospreys of that season took flight for the first time as I stood on the circular deck of my house watching the nest. All summer long, they had watched me on that deck as I watched them. To them, it must have looked like I was in my nest just as they were in theirs. On this particular afternoon, their maiden flight, they did a loop of my house and then headed straight at me with tremendous speed. My immediate impulse was to run for cover, since they could have ripped me apart with their powerful talons. But something held me to my ground. When they were within 20 feet of me, they suddenly veered upward and away. But before that dazzling and frightening vertical climb, for about half a second we made eye contact. Words cannot convey what was exchanged between us in that instant. It was a look of connectedness, of mutual respect, of recognition that we shared the same land. After they were gone, I found that I was shaking, and in tears. To this day, I cannot explain what happened in that half-second. But it was one of the most profound moments of my life.#

*Lightman, Alan. "Does God Exist?" Salon.com. October 2, 2011. http://www.salon.com/2011/10/02/how_science_and_faith_coexist/singleton/ (accessed February 9, 2012). The whole essay is worth reading.
#(Lightman 2011)