[ExI] Bringing new life to dead matter

[Mike Dougherty]

On Wed, Jun 6, 2012 at 7:38 AM, The Avantguardian
<avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Human brains glitch too for equally mysterious reasons. Why do people with OCD wash their hands every 10 minutes? But those glitches does not keep them from being functionally conscious or, in the case of Howard Hughes, successful. That being said, human consciousness has had a million years or so of natural selection to optimize the process, so don't lose your patience just yet.

I read the wikipedia article on Pistol Shrimp as a distraction link
from other research.  I imagine shrimp to be ocean bugs, but this
3-5cm bug is capable of producing a cavitation bubble that generates a
80 kPa (about 11psi) shockwave to literally stun/kill prey.  Not only
is this weapon a pretty cool exploit of shrimp underwater "technology"
but these guys form symbiotic relationship with goby fish (2,3).  In
that case the shrimp evolved an effective attack and the Goby evolved
better eyesight; they work together as a team and improve survival
odds.  If we consider the entirety of the local ecosystem as single
entity, there might be a case for each of these creatures as modules
in a complex system.

The relevant point of interest in this story is that the ocean
environment has had a few million more years of evolution to
specialize the creatures into especially-suited (fittest) for that
[arguably hostile] environment.  It may be that the first sea creature
to crawl onto land was simply looking to get out of harm's way.


1 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pistol_shrimp#Snapping_effect
2 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pistol_shrimp#Ecology
3 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goby#Symbiosis