Learning From the Octopus

by Rafe Sagarin

  6 “Cretaceous tertiary extinction event.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Tertiary_extinction_event#Duration. Accessed August 2, 2010.

  7 Turco, R. P., O. B. Toon, T. P. Ackerman, J. B. Pollack, and C. Sagan. “Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of Multiple Nuclear Explosions.” Science 222, no. 4630 (1983): 1283–1292.

  8 Warden, John K. “Ambassador Linton Brooks on New START and the Next Treaty.” April 16, 2010. http://csis.org/blog/ambassador-linton-brooks-new-start-and-next-treaty ; Oelrich, Ivan. “New START and Missile Defense.” July 27, 2010. http://www.fas.org/blog/ssp/2010/07/new-start-and-missile-defense.php .; and Kaplan, Fred. “Reagan’s Nuclear Defense Strategy: Myth and Reality.” Cato Institute Policy Analysis. January 30, 1982. http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa006.html. All accessed August 9, 2010.

  9 O’Donoghue, James. “The Second Coming.” NewScientist, June 14, 2008.

  10 Vermeij, Geerat J. Evolution and Escalation: An Ecological History of Life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987.

  11 Personal communication with Air National Guard Major Noel Lipana, September 15, 2009.

  12 Eisler, P. “Insurgents Adapt Faster Than Military Adjusts to IEDs.” USA Today, July 16, 2007.

  13 “COIN Adaptation in Afghanistan and Iraq.” Presentation at the Conference on Organizational Adaptation. Edinburgh, Scotland. June 24, 2010.

  14 Weiner, Jonathan. The Beak of the Finch. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994.

  15 “Instant Evolution Helps Make Up for Vanishing Pollinators.” NewScientist, July 10, 2010.

  16 Kenney, Michael. From Pablo to Osama: Trafficking and Terrorist Networks, Government Bureaucracies, and Competitive Adaptation. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007. P. 104.

  17 Neuman, William, and Andrew Pollack. “Farmers Cope with Roundup-Resistant Weeds.” New York Times, May 3, 2010.

  18 Romano, Jay. “Bedbugs.” New York Times, September 27, 2006. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/b/bedbugs/index.html. Accessed August 10, 2010. Berenbaum, May. “This Bedbug’s Life.” New York Times, August 7, 2010.

  19 Mayo Clinic Staff. “MRSA Infection.” http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/mrsa/DS00735.. Accessed August 10, 2010. “Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methicillin-resistant_Staphylococcus_aureus . Accessed August 10, 2010.

  20 National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. “The 9/11 Commission Report.” Washington, DC, 2004.

  21 Dawkins, R., and J. R. Krebs. “Arms Races Between and Within Species.” Proceeding of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 205, no. 1161 (1979): 489–511.

  22 Kenney, Michael. From Pablo to Osama: Trafficking and Terrorist Networks, Government Bureaucracies, and Competitive Adaptation. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007. P. 118.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  1 www.marmotburrow.ucla.edu.

  2 Atran, Scott. Statement Before the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats & Capabilities. “Pathways to and from Violent Extremism: The Case for Science-Based Field Research.” March 10, 2010.

  3 Kenney, Michael. From Pablo to Osama: Trafficking and Terrorist Networks, Government Bureaucracies, and Competitive Adaptation. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007. “Traffickers and terrorists enjoy an important advantage over their government opponents: they know when, where and how they will carry out their activities: law enforcers do not.” P. 204.

  4 Ibid., p. 207.

  5 Atran, Scott. Statement Before the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats & Capabilities. “Pathways to and from Violent Extremism: The Case for Science-Based Field Research.” March 10, 2010.

  6 Barr, Andy. “Rep. Mike Rogers: Execute WikiLeaks Leaker.” Politico. August 3, 2010. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0810/40599.html. Accessed August 4, 2010.

  7 Brooks, Michael. “Do You Speak Cuttlefish?” NewScientist, April 26, 2008. Mathger, L. M., E. J. Denton, N. J. Marshall, and R. T. Hanlon. “Mechanisms and Behavioural Functions of Structural Coloration in Cephalopods.” Journal of the Royal Society Interface 6 (2009): S149-S63.

  8 Personal communication from Air National Guard Major Noel Lipana, September 15, 2009.

  9 Kenney, Michael. From Pablo to Osama: Trafficking and Terrorist Networks, Government Bureaucracies, and Competitive Adaptation. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007.

  10 Geddes, Linda. “How Consistent Criminals Give Themselves Away.” NewScientist, August 9, 2008.

  11 Birch, Hayley. “Bugging Your Bugs.” NewScientist, March 6, 2010.

  12 Webb, G. F. “The Prime Number Periodical Cicada Problem.” Discrete and Continuous Dynamical Systems, Series B 1, no. 3 (2001): 387–399.

  13 Department of Homeland Security. “Chronology of Changes to the Homeland Security Advisory System.” http://www.dhs.gov/xabout/history/editorial_0844.shtm. Accessed August 9, 2010.

  14 Lehrer, Jonah. “Under Pressure: The Search for a Stress Vaccine.” Wired, July 28, 2010. Sapolsky, Robert. A Primate’s Memoir. New York: Scribner, 2001.

  15 Tierney, John. “Living in Fear and Paying a High Cost in Heart Risk.” New York Times, January 15, 2008. Holman, E. A., R. C. Silver, M. Poulin, J. Andersen, V. Gil-Rivas, and D. N. McIntosh. “Terrorism, Acute Stress, and Cardiovascular Health.” Archives of General Psychiatry 65, no. 1 (2008): 73–80.

  16 Chittka, L., P. Skorupski, and N. E. Raine. “Speed-Accuracy Tradeoffs in Animal Decision Making.” Trends in Ecology & Evolution 24, no. 7 (2009): 400–407.

  17 “Oops, Sorry, I Thought You Were Someone Else.” NewScientist, April 26, 2008.

  18 Brooks, Michael. “Do You Speak Cuttlefish?” NewScientist, April 26, 2008.

  19 BBC News. “Two Escape from an Argentine Jail Guarded by a Dummy.” July 20, 2010. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-10706626. Accessed August 9, 2010.

  20 Brooks, Michael. “Do You Speak Cuttlefish?” NewScientist, April 26, 2008.

  21 Rundus, Aaron S., Donald H. Owings, Sanjay S. Joshi, Erin Chinn, and Nicholas Giannini. “Ground Squirrels Use an Infrared Signal to Deter Rattlesnake Predation.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 104, no. 36 (2007): 14372–14376.

  22 Orr, Bob. “Videos Demystify the Osama bin Laden Legend.” May 7, 2011. CBSnews.com. Accessed July 5, 2011.

  23 Husain, Ed. “Did U.S. Botch Message with bin Laden Videos?” Council on Foreign Relations. 2011. http://www.cfr.org/terrorism/did-us-botch-message-bin-laden-videos/p24939 . Accessed July 5, 2011. Scott Atran reports that commentators on radical Muslim websites after the video releases indeed saw the bin Laden videos as indications that he continued to live a devout life, despite his persecution.

  24 Jones, R. V. Most Secret War. London: Hamilton, 1978.

  25 Blumstein, D. T. “Fourteen Security Lessons from Antipredator Behavior.” Pp. 147–158 in Raphael Sagarin and Terence Taylor, eds., Natural Security: A Darwinian Approach to a Dangerous World. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.

  26 Ibid.

  27 Wald, Matthew L. “For No Signs of Trouble, Kill the Alarm.” New York Times, August 1, 2010.

  28 The Fire Marshal’s Public Fire Safety Council. “Fire Alarm Fact Sheet.” http://www.firesafetycouncil.com/english/pubsafet/safact.htm. United States Fire Administration. “Smoke Alarms.” http://www.usfa.dhs.gov/downloads/pyfff/smkalarm.html. Both accessed August 11, 2010.

  29 Dziekan, Mike. “Where There’s Smoke There’s (Not Always) Fire: An Inside Look at Smoke Detectors.” Society for Amateur Scientists. 2004. http://www.sas.org/tcs/weeklyIssues/2004–07–30/feature1/index.html. Accessed August 2, 2010.

  30 Chittka, L., P. Skorupski, and N. E. Raine. “Speed-Accuracy Tradeoffs in Animal Decision Making.” Trends in Ecology & Evolution 24: 400–407.

  31 “Fort Hood shooting.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Hood_shooting . Accessed August 11, 2010.

  32 Carre, J. M., and
C. M. McCormick. “In Your Face: Facial Metrics Predict Aggressive Behaviour in the Laboratory and in Varsity and Professional Hockey Players.” Proceedings of the Royal Society B–Biological Sciences 275, no. 1651 (2008): 2651–2656.

  33 Sell, A., L. Cosmides, J. Tooby, D. Sznycer, C. von Rueden, and M. Gurven. “Human Adaptations for the Visual Assessment of Strength and Fighting Ability from the Body and Face.” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 276, no. 1656 (2009): 575–584.

  34 Tibbetts, E. A., and J. Dale. “Individual Recognition: It Is Good to Be Different.” Trends in Ecology & Evolution 22, no. 10 (2007): 529–537.

  35 Marzluff, John M., Jeff Walls, Heather N. Cornell, John C. Withey, and David P. Craig. “Lasting Recognition of Threatening People by Wild American Crows.” Animal Behaviour 79, no. 3 (2010): 699–707. Cornell, H. N., J. M. Marzluff, and S. Pecoraro. “Social Learning Spreads Knowledge About Dangerous Humans Among American Crows.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of B: Biological Sciences (2011).doi: 10.1098 /rspb.2011.0957.

  36 Darwin, Charles. The Expressions of the Emotions in Man and Animals. London: John Murray, 1872.

  37 “Behavior Detection Officers (BDO).” http://www.tsa.gov/what_we_do/layers/bdo/index.shtm. Accessed August 10, 2010.

  38 Mills, Doug. “Faces, Too, Are Searched at U.S. Airports “ New York Times, August 17, 2006.

  39 Burgoon, J. K., D. P. Twitchell, M. L. Jensen, T. O. Meservy, M. Adkins, J. Kruse, A. V. Deokar, G. Tsechpenakis, S. Lu, D. N. Metaxas, J. F. Nunamaker, and R. E. Younger. “Detecting Concealment of Intent in Transportation Screening: A Proof of Concept.” IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems 10, no. 1 (2009): 103–112.

  40 Government Accountability Office. “Efforts to Validate TSA’s Passenger Screening Behavior Detection Program Underway, but Opportunities Exist to Strengthen Validation and Address Operational Challenges.” GAO-10–763. May 2010. Weinberger, Sharon. “Intent to Deceive?” Nature 466 (2010): 412–415.

  41 Yu, Roger. “Airport Check-in: TSA Behavior Screening Misses Suspects.” May 24, 2010. http://travel.usatoday.com/flights/legacy/item.aspx?type=blog&ak=93938.blog. Transportation Security Administration. “TSA SPOT Program: Still Going Strong.” May 21, 2010. http://blog.tsa.gov/2010/05/tsa-spot-program-still-going-strong.html?showComment=1274464283131. Both accessed August 10, 2010.

  42 Government Accountability Office. “Efforts to Validate TSA’s Passenger Screening Behavior Detection Program Underway, but Opportunities Exist to Strengthen Validation and Address Operational Challenges.”GAO-10–763. May 2010.

  43 September 30, 2010, response to August 26, 2010, e-mail request to TSA by the author from Oso-Correspondence@dhs.gov.

  44 Boarding data from FAA, available at http://www.faa.gov/airports/planning_capacity/passenger_allcargo_stats/passenger/. Accessed August 11, 2010.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  1 Much of this work has come out of the Center for Evolutionary Psychology at University of California, Santa Barbara, run by John Tooby and Leda Cosmedies. http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/. Accessed August 24, 2010.

  2 Stancliff, Dave. “History Shows Why We Should Get Out of Afghanistan.” Times Standard, September 27, 2009. http://www.times-standard.com/davestancliff/ci_13432321. Accessed August 25, 2010. A detailed history of different countries’ blunders into Afghanistan is in Coll, Steve. Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001. New York: Penguin, 2004.

  3 Dawkins, Richard. The God Delusion. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006. Hitchens, Christopher. God Is Not Great. New York: Hachette, 2007.

  4 Wilson, Edward. O. The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth. New York: W. W. Norton, 2006.

  5 Xatal.com. “Which UCs Are the Most Selective?” November 13, 2009. http://xatal.com/california/which-ucs-are-the-most-selective/. Accessed August 25, 2010.

  6 Villarreal, Luis P., and Victor R. DeFilippis. “A Hypothesis for DNA Viruses as the Origin of Eukaryotic Replication Proteins.” Journal of Virology 74, no. 15 (2000): 7079–7084.Villarreal, Luis P., and Guenther Witzany. “Viruses Are Essential Agents within the Roots and Stem of the Tree of Life.” Journal of Theoretical Biology (in press).

  7 Villarreal, Luis P. “From Biology to Belief.” Pp. 42–68 in Raphael Sagarin and Taylor Terence, eds., Natural Security: A Darwinian Approach to a Dangerous World. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.

  8 Den Boer, S. P. A., B. Baer, and J. J. Boomsma. “Seminal Fluid Mediates Ejaculate Competition in Social Insects.” Science 327, no. 5972 (2010): 1506–1509.

  9 Doving, Kjell B., and Didier Trotier. “Structure and Function of the Vomeronasal Organ.” Journal of Experimental Biology 201 (1998): 2913–2925.

  10 Doty, Richard L. “The Pheromone Myth: Sniffing Out the Truth.” NewScientist, March 1, 2010.

  11 Sergeant, M. J. T., T. E. Dickins, M. N. O. Davies, and M. D. Griffiths. “Women’s Hedonic Ratings of Body Odor of Heterosexual and Homosexual Men.” Archives of Sexual Behavior 36, no. 3 (2007): 395–401. This study, for example, provides the nonintuitive finding that heterosexual females prefer the smell of homosexual, rather than heterosexual, men.

  12 Ravilious, Kate. “Messages from the Stone Age.” NewScientist, February 20, 2010, pp. 30–34.

  13 Oomoto. “History of Oomoto.” http://www.oomoto.or.jp/English/enHist/histm-en.html. Accessed August 23, 2010.

  14 Henrich, J. “The Evolution of Costly Displays, Cooperation, and Religion: Credibility-Enhancing Displays and Their Implications for Cultural Evolution.” Evolution and Human Behavior 30, no. 4 (2009): 244–260.

  15 Ibid.

  16 “The Puzzle of Human Cooperation.” Nature 421 (2003): 911–912.

  17 Atran, Scott, Robert Axelrod, and Richard Davis. “Sacred Barriers to Conflict Resolution.” Science 317 (2007): 1039–1040.

  18 Ibid.

  19 Atran, S. “The Power of Moral Belief.” Pp. 141–144 in Raphael Sagarin and Taylor Terence, eds., Natural Security: A Darwinian Approach to a Dangerous World. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.

  20 Leonard, Tom. “America’s Armed Militia on the Rise.” Telegraph, December 31, 2009. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6917525/Americas-armed-militia-on-the-rise.html. Accessed August 26, 2010. Southern Poverty Law Center. “The Second Wave: Return of the Militias.” Montgomery, AL: SPLC, 2009.

  21 Koerner, Brendan I. “Secret of AA: After 75 Years, We Don’t Know How It Works.” Wired, June 23, 2010. http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/06/ff_alcoholics_anonymous/all/1. Accessed August 24, 2010.

  22 Sosis, Richard, and Candace S. Alcorta. “Militants and Martyrs: Evolutionary Perspectives on Religion and Terrorism.” Pp. 105–124 in Raphael Sagarin and Taylor Terence, eds., Natural Security: A Darwinian Approach to a Dangerous World. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.

  23 Dobbs, David. 2011. “Beautiful Brains.” National Geographic, October, 2011: 36–59.

  24 Atran, Scott. Statement Before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security. “The Making of a Terrorist: A Need for Understanding from the Field.” March 12, 2008.

  25 Wheelock, Darren, and Douglas Hartmann. “Midnight Basketball and the 1994 Crime Bill Debates: The Operation of a Racial Code.” The Sociological Quarterly 48 (2007): 315–342.

  26 Atran, Scott. Statement Before the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats & Capabilities. “Pathways to and from Violent Extremism: The Case for Science-Based Field Research.” March 10, 2010.

  CHAPTER NINE

  1 Eshel, David. “IEDs.” Journal of Electronic Defense (2007): 39–42.

  2 Sachs, Joel L., and Ellen L. Simms. “Pathways to Mutualism Breakdown.” Trends in Ecology & Evolution 21, no. 10 (2006): 585–592.

  3 Brahic, Catherine. “‘Pandora’ Bacteria Act as One Organism.” NewScientist, February 27, 2010.

  4 Herrera, C. M., and M. I. Pozo. “Nectar Yeasts Warm the Flowers
of a Winter-Blooming Plant.” Proceedings of the Royal Society B–Biological Sciences 277, no. 1689 (2010): 1827–1834.

  5 Margulis, Lynn. Symbiotic Planet: A New Look at Evolution. New York: Basic, 1998.

  6 Haddock, Steven H. D., Mark A. Moline, and James F. Case. “Bioluminescence in the Sea.” Annual Review of Marine Science 2 (2010): 443–493.

  7 Lefevre, T., C. Lebarbenchon, M. Gauthier-Clerc, D. Misse, R. Poulin, and F. Thomas. “The Ecological Significance of Manipulative Parasites.” Trends in Ecology & Evolution 24, no. 1 (2009): 41–48.

  8 MacKenzie, Debora. “Parasite Lost” NewScientist, March 13, 2010, pp. 39–41.

  9 Horgan, John. “The End of War.” NewScientist, July 4, 2009, pp. 38–41.

  10 Cheney, K. L., R. Bshary, and A. S. Grutter. “Cleaner Fish Cause Predators to Reduce Aggression Toward Bystanders at Cleaning Stations.” Behavioral Ecology 19, no. 5 (2008): 1063–1067.

  11 Allee, W. C. Cooperation Among Animals with Human Implications. New York: Henry Schuman, 1951.

  12 Allee, W. C. “Where Angels Fear to Tread: A Contribution from General Sociology to Human Ethics.” Science 97, no. 2528 (1943): 517–525.

  13 Ibid.

  14 Allee, W. C. Cooperation Among Animals with Human Implications. New York: Henry Schuman, 1951, p. 195.

  15 Ibid., p. 197.

  16 Ibid., p. 199.

  17 Rischard, Jean-François. “Global Issues Networks: Desperate Times Deserve Innovative Measures.” Washington Quarterly (Winter 2002-2003): 17–33.

  18 Liebhold, Andrew M. “Warder Allee’s Escape from Obscurity.” Trends in Ecology & Evolution 23, no. 6 (2008): 297–298.

  19 “Warder Clyde Allee.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warder_Clyde_Allee . Accessed August 19, 2010.

  20 Margulis, Lynn. Symbiotic Planet: A New Look at Evolution. New York: Basic, 1998.

  21 Ibid., p. 37.

  22 Svensson, E. I. “Understanding the Egalitarian Revolution in Human Social Evolution.” Trends in Ecology & Evolution 24, no. 5 (2009): 233–235; Sigmund, K. “Punish or Perish? Retaliation and Collaboration Among Humans.” Trends in Ecology & Evolution 22, no. 11 (2007): 593–600.