An Invisible Chain of our Time

by Iam Willgreen

uses around 13,000 compounds to formulate up 100,000 recipes. All of them, mental practices apart, must use plants or its chemical basis, as Astra-Zeneca, Pfizer, Novartis and others must do. The origin is the same. Other occidental compounds are not in their list of drugs… like many diseases.

  What has been doing essentially every culture has been to use all those plants, minerals and animals that have had nearby, the cheapest way, accomplishing a social function, with the knowledge inherited from ancestors, charmed as everybody feels the traditions, and sometimes mistaking things, and ignoring the true like still we are doing despite we believe know a lot. Whilst, the plants continue growing around us, keeping its potential, waiting for some clever animal go to inspect them.

  What can tell all this to you? This has various renditions, according with the facts of industry (pharmaceutical, alimentary, chemical and agronomic) of the 50 former years.

  (1) First of all, you can understand now where come from all those compounds produced, the already known, initially discovered into plants and fungi, bacteria and animals, and all of them fulfilling a function on the Nature, at least until a few years ago. And you can understand where the chemists found the basis for their synthetic drugs, and where and how they look for applying all this (in animals and plants).

  (2) Every time we modify, block, accelerate or stop a process, by introducing a compound, actually also there are already a troop of compounds, systems, processes, all around this modification; and communication continues but with a new component between less of the former ones.

  (3) The success or failure of any trial or experiment, which looks for an intervention on Nature (into the body, organs, crops, etc.) needs an important and truly scientific method, statistically proved, which follows being a strong way to learn and decide. But still, none of these trials could from far take into account all the possibilities that actually occur in nature, and this failure is clear and evident, can be demonstrated statistically (the environmental history speaks enough of it), and has not been taken into account rather than an obligation to repair, but not for future research. When more severely the experiments are required, is when they must demonstrate the harmful effects, when we as customers are claiming.

  (4) As history shows with so many samples, the science, industry, research, are not bad boys, but are valuable tools and friends. However, the true enemies that we have include the uncontrolled use of knowledge, the uncontrolled use of science, the uncontrolled use of techniques, and the comfortable ignorance with which we accept all this. All this sounds to ethics, liability, when is the major leak in our world.

  (5) Today, you are not eating that you think is; barely you will see a true forest in your life; and almost you will not have the chance to see for longer a great bunch of very important species related to it, about 600 species of all kind. You can only see it if you go to the museum one day, where is currently the only and bigger log of biodiversity that we have, in shelves, still and quiet. It is shocking that we are keeping wildlife in closets, prepared under the ice, or in sealed buildings, and accepting this as normal, prudently.

  But there are other issues more to talk about, animals; and is not a simple matter. They are suffering many years ago the same threat that plant will suffer exponentially in the future. Follow me, please.

  3. Animals: so diverse, again simplified.

  Always beginning from the bottom.

  The beetle above, clever worker, is only one among million of species -only the beetles are estimated to be roughly 400,000 specie-, but are not the beetles the most threatened, at least until the current time.

  We do not see this but is there: upon a clearly visible beetle of 13 cm which “wanders” over the stem bark of a plant -like the beetle above-, perhaps with the aim of eating somebody, or perhaps taste the leaves, go more passengers without ticket on his back and belly: it could be a mite, another parasite beetle, from 2 mm long until 0.2 mm or less, and also the thousands of thousands of fungi and bacteria, whose sizes range from millionths of a meter to the ten millionths of a meter. These are hundreds of thousands and millions. Then, it is not only “a beetle,” a “simple beetle,” it is more: there is going a complex machinery of beings, each one with its biological formulas. It is clear that nobody cares, but it is necessary, essential and even beneficial. This entire kind of tiny people that you do not see, although being invisible are working for all of us, from the tiny till the bigger.

  The bugs around us are normal, are not a disaster: the opposite would be a worry case. However it seems to be. People hate a strange thing called insects, they do not know what it is for, and what are doing, and why are there. For most of people, insects are only annoying and unpleasant things. Also all little arthropods, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals are normal. Not only are there, but are essential, are accomplishing a role in a chain, unaware of its role.

  Our attitude towards the beings "that move,” the animals, does not strays too far from the one we have with those who “do not move” or “are not seen”. Simultaneously to our ravages, we are charmed to read the fabulous news about new species discovered, the extremely rare spiders in Borneo, the amazing monkey in Central Africa, the impressive giant squids, and so, all kind of "cute, cool things, colorful beings, riches that we have, strange animals which do strange and amazing things and sounds, the record taller, the record smaller, and so”: but in other words, all this news pushed over you are toys; are toys with which you are gambling, the toys with which you are happy.

  All that are illusions, strings of pearls from the treasure, but not the reality: in fact, despite your illusion, despite the amazing films, all that is disappearing steadily, is a nuisance and a hindrance for business. The enterprises support also charmed the organizations that offer and show some kind of beautiful world and hope. Meanwhile, the last natural places and species of the Earth disappear, slowly every day. Many directors of conservative projects, parks, programs for biodiversity, know it in a sheer way. They know clearly that this is a numbers game: they ask “can you awake millions of people who do not know you anyway, about issues they do not see, while they are solving their own problems?” Naturally, you cannot. If you let me it, let's go take a fast look upon these animals. Later, we will talk about whose of them have the possibilities to continue the trip of life with us, and why. We are only interested in something more than cattle.

  When biologists or geneticists, or biogeographers started to build the enormous tree of life (of course incomplete), they gathered species very different between them, with some features not exclusive, but generalized: these features are for example, the mobility, the consumption of oxygen (aerobic organisms), the sexual reproduction, the embryonic development (pass through a blastula stage, an exclusive characteristic), the radiated and bilateral symmetry, all sort of features that draw how each one adapts and develops. Some of them are fabulous, amazing and lovely, cool, but common sense can says you that are only news of colors. Many of these features are interesting by other reasons: for example, understand the evolution.

  One interesting feature for the common people between those features is heterotrophy. Asking and looking to the why of some features, we can understand how, where, and the when of other facts. The way an animal has to feed is not only a word that defines a function, is an inherited large ensemble of features that difference him from others: and one widely expression of the way for eating that plants and animals show, is the infection, parasitism, symbiosis… relationships where at least one is eating something from other, or may be breeding. As we approach the upper and more complex species, rises sharply the number of possible relations with the living environment. These features are not fixed, are variable in some groups or taxa. Ii is completely impossible say the basic about this realm, the animal, in few lines, but some key spots may be summarized here in order to focus facts that explain what can we hope about our biological nature. It so because, I guess you do not believe possible to be alien to these biological laws, do you
? You may be sure, even when an exception occurs, we can find a biological law that explains it.

  Eaters.

  Heterotrophy means that us, the animals, live thanks to obtain nutrients from other producers, and even from other heterotrophic animals. When we eat, all that is going with the meal ends inside: minerals, proteins, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, water, bacteria and virus, and other microorganisms also; and it occurs naturally, and then meets with more inhabitants of our gut caverns: and everything tastes good.

  There in the inside, an organized chain of events allows the good use of something just arrived, and the blocking of others: sometimes it is not possible; some foreigner being that has arrived cannot be stopped or destroyed. But this cycle that implies mutualism, predation, attack, growth, having problems, fend, and occasionally that someone changes and evolves, this will never disappear: that is the essence of the contact, relationship and the rubbing between beings, what is more complex for complex beings as us, heterotrophic eaters.

  A story in parallel that occurs with us is the story with arthropods, which are breeding from other animals and plants, and also