Learning From the Octopus

by Rafe Sagarin

  Consider the value of redundancy to an insurgent force or the army of a small country. With little financial resources, the mega weapons held by the superpowers they may be fighting, like aircraft carriers, long-range missiles, and even fighter jets and attack helicopters are well out of range of their financial capabilities. Yet insurgencies have been remarkably successful in fighting much stronger forces, and their relative success has been improving throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.2 In an article titled “The Toyota Horde,” military analyst William Owen offers the frightening scenario that such poorly financed fighting forces could be dramatically more successful if they just continue to embrace and increase their redundant capabilities. In particular, by spending their limited resources on many small fighting units supported by highly maneuverable small trucks (again, those implacable old Toyota pickups) with small-caliber weapons and rocket-propelled grenades, they can inflict massive damage, both military and political, on a much larger force that is typically penned into a smaller number of options for engagement. According to Owen, insurgencies don’t even have to win these battles; just slowing down a heavy costly force is a small victory in itself—not unlike the natural phenomenon of “autonomy,” wherein some species can shed parts of their body (like the tail of an iguana) to distract and buy time to escape from a predator.3

  Likewise, Navy Postgraduate School professor John Arquilla warns us of “the coming swarm,” referring to terrorist groups’ plans to use small forces to attack multiple sites at the same time, a form of attack that will easily foil plans by well-resourced countries like the United States to use “overwhelming force” against one or two sources of attack.4 Arquilla suggests that the only way to fight such a swarm is to create a swarm. Rather than focus on “overwhelming force” or “elite” forces, he says, we should focus on many small forces that are just “good enough.” These strategies mimic nature in more ways than one—they employ redundancy and they exploit the pathway of adaptive evolution, which is not toward perfection, but toward competency in the current environment.

  But the kind of simple redundancy that assumes and accepts the failure of many of the individual links in a security system should give us pause, because we are a species that cares for our offspring and for our fellow humans, and if you are reading this you are likely part of a society that doesn’t condone mass sacrifice of people for a larger cause. The “Toyota horde” and the “coming swarm” are only effective because a lot of redundant people (in the minds of the insurgencies) are likely to die in these distributed engagements. And while insurance actuaries can work out the probabilities of death or dismemberment for people of different ages and careers to optimize the profit gained from their insurance portfolios, developing security protocols that will only work for a small subset of the population at the expense of all the rest is a non-starter, ethically and politically.

  What is more feasible is to look for models from the “imaginative” redundancy built into nature. With this kind of redundancy, there are multiple problem solvers, but each employs different methods. This means that not only is there a backup if one system fails, but there is a different type of backup that won’t fail in the same way against the next threat. And once again, this natural security system is found at every level of biological organization.

  For example, consider how the proteins that carry out the essential life functions are constructed. An RNA (a single-strand molecule that “complements” or matches the other strand of the double-stranded DNA molecule it was created from) provides the template for each type of protein based on thousands of combinations of four base molecules (the U, C, A, and Gs of the genetic code). The four base molecules are arranged in patterns of three molecules, known as codons, to make each of the thousands of amino acids that make up a protein. There are only twenty different types of amino acids but there are sixty-four possible codon combinations of the four letters that code for them (the 4 bases in 3 possible positions = 43 = 64). From a strict efficiency standpoint, this would appear wasteful. But from a natural security perspective it makes sense. The genome is under continual attack by “translational parasites” such as viruses, which essentially mimic the RNA template of their host in order to create proteins (or in the case of HIV, double-stranded DNA) to gain access to the cellular structure of their host. The virus version of RNA, and the codons that make up the RNA, must be a good match with the host in order to get the host to effectively produce viral molecules. By having many different ways to code for its own proteins, the host can avoid getting mimicked by the virus.5 It is a strategy essentially like regularly changing your computer password to avoid, among other problems, viruses.

  What is interesting about this redundant strategy is that the basic process of RNA translation is virtually identical across most species on Earth, but there is enormous variation when it comes down to how codons are translated into other molecules like proteins. So, a remarkably simple system of replication, consisting of just four basic building blocks, provides an important line of defense to millions of organisms against millions of different viruses. It’s like giving an identical (and huge) box of Legos (the old Legos, before they molded every conceivable shape for you in the factory) to millions of kids around the world and seeing the diversity of things they come up with.

  This kind of more specialized redundancy is often a sign of evolutionary advancement. Sure, those multi-legged centipedes have been around a long time, but with all those legs doing essentially the same thing, they haven’t been wildly successful like their cousins the beetles, which have specialized their multiple limbs into functions for flight, defense, reproduction, fooling enemies, and so forth. Beetles have come to dominate the Earth, long outlasting the dinosaurs of the Jurassic period with whom they initially evolved, and now appearing in over 350,000 species. No wonder that when biologist J.B.S. Haldane was asked by a theologian what his study of nature revealed about the Creator, he reportedly replied, “He has an inordinate fondness for beetles.”6

  Although beetles dominate the Earth, there are many more examples of this kind of imaginative redundancy in nature. We intuitively think that cactus spines are a defensive measure against herbivores, but their primary purpose is more likely to create a kind of lattice work of shade that keeps the cactus cool and reduces water loss in the brutal desert heat. And while they don’t do a bad job of protection against some grazers, they actually work much better as protection for pack rats, which routinely gather viciously spiny cholla buds and use them to defensively armor their dens. This repurposing actually has a benefit for the cactus, as the pack rat spreads the cactus buds to new environments.

  As a hunter, the octopus has camouflage, keen problem-solving skills, shape-shifting abilities, strong tentacles, an ink cloud to distract and hide its movements, a strong jaw, and in some species, poison. As a hunted prey, the same octopus has those same features—redundant offensive and defensive systems that all work a little differently from one another. Acacia trees have sharp thorns that protect them from grazing, but those thorns also provide a home for highly aggressive and territorial ants, which further protect the tree from grazers and parasites.

  Basic repetitive redundancy is not enough to be truly successful, but even the more advanced redundancy of specialized functions would soon run into the same problems as basic repetition if those functions didn’t change to adapt to changes in their own body and in the surrounding environments. The emergent result is more than just the increasingly popular concept of resilience, which implies an ability to return to (or resist being driven away from) a state of stability. The ability to change is essential because natural systems are so dynamic (this is also why some ecologists push back on the idea of resilience as being too focused on maintaining the stability of natural systems).

  It is in fact the combination of redundancy and the inevitable variability and change of nature that provides both the drive for evolutionary innovation and the means to carry it out. In
the early days of molecular genetics a scientist named Susumo Ohno postulated, mostly on circumstantial evidence, that the main force behind the creation of whole new adaptations was not natural selection, which he argued “merely modified” existing innovations, but the continual process of genome replication, which inevitably rearranged all those redundant parts through mistakes in transcription, or accidental deletions or repetitions of parts of the genome, into novel combinations.7 While biologists agree that natural selection is still an essential force in evolution, modern molecular genetics generally supports Ohno’s supposition, finding that the enormous levels of redundant features in the genome are both the building blocks and the legacy of evolutionary change.8

  At the far opposite end of the spectrum of biological complexity, ecosystems provide a good example of how creative redundancy can lead to secure systems. Ecosystems are complex groupings of many different kinds of species (e.g., soil microbes, worms, squirrels, trees, and humans) and the chemicals (water, nitrogen, carbon) and energy (solar, kinetic, potential) that flows through the system. All those independent players and the changes and variations in each and every one of them would seem to result in a disorganized mess; but, in fact, the opposite occurs. The diversity of species present seems to impart long-term survival to an ecosystem. It can afford to lose a few species, and if the remaining species are improving their survival, they may take up the ecological niches—the places (e.g., deep crevices, wave-swept reef crest, holdfast of a kelp plant) or ways of living (e.g., being a predator or a parasite) left by the departed species.

  Our friend Ed Ricketts, traveling with John Steinbeck to the Gulf of California, or Sea of Cortez, in 1940 recognized the ability of species to fill gaps left by removed species. The gulf is an immensely rich ecosystem formed in the long narrow gap between mainland Mexico and the Baja California peninsula, but even in 1940—before Cabo San Lucas had a single light to guide ships around the tip of the Baja peninsula (now it is a mega tourist development bathed constantly in the light of high-rise hotels, snarled traffic, and discos)—Steinbeck and Ricketts could see the emerging threats to the ecosystem. During their trip, they boarded a Japanese shrimp trawler and were horrified to see the fishing practices, which involved dragging a heavy net across the sea floor, picking up everything in its path (Ricketts, in these innocent pre–Pearl Harbor days, was also a little perplexed as to why the fishermen were taking so many depth soundings). Only a small percentage of the catch was shrimp; the rest (nowadays referred to as bycatch) was thrown overboard, usually to die because the sedentary creatures were ripped off their bottom habitat and the air-filled swim bladders of bottom fish exploded with the rapid pressure change. At the time Ricketts noted, “And it is not true that a species thus attacked comes back. The disturbed balance often gives a new species ascendancy and destroys forever the old relationship.”9

  Forty years later, in 2004, I was fortunate to take part in an expedition to retrace Ricketts and Steinbeck’s famed journey, so that we could see what had changed in the Gulf of California—how the old relationships, severed by massive coastal development, intensive commercial and recreational fishing pressure, and climate change, had given ascendancy to new species filling the open niches. One of the expedition organizers was Bill Gilly, a neurobiologist from Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Station, a stone’s throw from Ricketts’s old lab and the Monterey fishing harbor from which Ricketts and Steinbeck started their journey. Neurobiologists like Gilly love squid because they have the largest single giant axon nerve cell of any animal (and maybe also because the rest of their bodies are delicious when marinated and tenderized and grilled over a barbecue). That makes them a good system to study electrical impulses, ion channel function, and other things we’d like to know about nerve cell function. If regular old six-inch market squid have such lovely neurons, you can imagine what a draw the jumbo Humboldt squid, which grows to seven feet, would be to a neurobiologist. And it was these jumbo squid, reported to be amassing in huge numbers in the central Gulf of California, that really attracted Gilly to help put together the retracing of the RickettsSteinbeck expedition.

  Curiously, although Ricketts was fascinated by jumbo squid and ordered them for his laboratory in the rare times they washed up in southern California (one of the few photos of Ricketts shows him in a rubber apron holding one of the monsters), he made no mention of them in the narrative or scientific appendix to the Sea of Cortez journey—he and Steinbeck just didn’t see them in the gulf. Forty years later they are impossible to ignore. They amass in huge aggregations and with their strong tentacles and huge beak-like jaw eat everything, including one another. Just as Ricketts predicted, while overfishing has stripped the gulf of most of the huge top predators, like sharks and billfish, a new species, the jumbo squid, has gained ascendancy. It is the new top predator, and for now it is filling the niche left by the departed giants. But as with the old giants, the squid are attracting a growing fishing industry that is eagerly pulling in millions of tons a year of the creatures to sell to the Asian market.

  The ultimate lesson from the history of the demise of the Gulf of California may mirror that of ecosystems around the world. That is, if too many species depart, the ecosystem redundancy is lost and the whole ecosystem will collapse. Biologists Paul and Anne Ehrlich likened this to taking rivets off a machine such as an airplane.10 Pulling a few off likely won’t cause catastrophic damage, but exactly which rivet, when pulled off, will lead to the wing falling off? We don’t know, and it’s not an experiment we want to try when our lives depend on it.

  Although as a society we seem to have multiple ways to bring down even the most robust ecosystems (which is in turn beginning to impact our own survival; see Chapter 10), our own bodies employ redundant strategies for our survival quite effectively. Our senses are a good example. Having multiple ways to observe the world gives multiple lines of defense against different threats. We can smell something burning, hear someone’s cries for help, see something suspicious, taste spoiled food, and feel for hidden contraband. We typically think of our sensory systems as linking a particular sense to a key part of our body that is linked to a key part of our brain—we see with our eyes, and the information is processed in our visual cortex; we smell with our nose, and the information is processed in a dense package of nerves known as the olfactory epithelium. The amount of redundancy built into these systems tells us something about how keen our senses are. Dogs, for example, have their olfactory nerves packed into an epithelium that is seventeen times bigger than that in humans.

  But these relationships between senses, sensory organs, and neural processing centers are not fixed, but adaptable themselves. Geerat Vermeij illustrates this well. When he lost his sight at a young age, his visual cortex wasn’t left as vacant space in his brain. Rather, he feels, as he began to rely more and more on his tactile sense, the parts of his brain devoted to tactile information processing literally took over his visual processing center, so that, in his words, he can now see with his fingers. By contrast, special education instructor Daniel Kish adapted to early blindness in a completely different way—learning early to use his auditory ability to “see” his surroundings by making clicking sounds and listening for the different echoes that came back to him when reflected off different shapes and materials.11 In addition to hard work and prodigious intellects, environment and cooperation have been invaluable to the incredible contributions these men have made—both acknowledge the benefits of growing up with strong mentors in an age and in locations where blind people were accepted as equally valuable to society (not the case for the vast majority of blind people in human history). Yet at the core, their basic survival is attributable to having redundant and adaptable sensory systems.

  At a higher level of human organization, redundancy is equally important. This is because a single person, despite having several different senses and a complex mind, still only observes a small part of the world. Through that limited portal, they may come u
p with biased or just plain inaccurate solutions to problems. Ironically, this may be especially true if that person happens to be an expert in the topical area of the problem. The “paradox of the expert,” as originally described among psychologists, considered the idea that the more information your brain was storing about a particular topic, the more time it would take and errors you might commit in retrieving a particular piece of information. Although this might not be actually true due to tricks of neural architecture and practice in retrieving relevant information that experts usually possess, the term has more recently attracted a broader meaning, referring to commonly observed phenomena that sometimes the best experts on a topic come up with exactly the wrong answer.

  One way to avoid this paradox is to have a lot of people, both experts and motivated nonexperts, try to solve a problem. The idea is that large numbers of problem solvers should even out the preconceived biases of experts and also buffer against the small percentage of nonexperts who come up with exceedingly bad ideas, or are maliciously trying to offer the wrong answer. Moreover, the adaptive redundancy of a lot of different minds works two ways—it can lead to a convergence on a most probable solution, or it can increase the chances of finding a truly novel solution. When it comes to security, we can’t ethically conduct experiments on the effectiveness of redundant problem solvers. Fortunately, there are already both well-established and newly emerging forays into this form of problem solving.