More supernature

There’s a book review in the Guardian that gives a spotlight to a fascinating idea – shadow ecology, a stealth biosphere based on an alternative organic chemistry, undetected, right here on Earth, not even imagined until now.

This idea is perfectly congruent with natural selection. At the point when life was formed on Earth there was a lot of biochemistry, energy and time. Most of the history of life on Earth is dominated by single-cell life. By many measures bacteria are still the dominant mode of existence. Multi-cellular life is the comparative exception. There would be no currently available niches for multi-cellular shadow life.

Our conception of life has expanded. Life has been discovered at the bottom of the ocean living in endothermic ecosystems, in extremely acidic or saline conditions, under ice sheets and in deserts. But this life uses the same basic chemistry as our own. If a shadow biosphere exists why have we failed to find it after a more century of biological science? It might be because scientists have been suffering from a lethal theoretical conceit but it might be because it’s not there.

The link between theory and reality is investigation, and there are some tests being proposed to test for possible shadow-life. An example, life as we know it uses the left half of DNA strands as code. “Right-handed” organisms in a culture should respond to right-handed amino acids. Finding creatures using entirely different replicating molecule would be even more exciting.

If found it means something very interesting. We compare how photosynthesis, which evolved once, to the eye, which evolved 50 to 100 times. It is assumed that life arose once on Earth, but maybe it evolved twice, three times, many times. This improves the chances of life arising elsewhere in the galaxy.

Supernature

Cryptids are a fascinating branch of the monster family. Cryptids are unrecognised, often mythical plants or animals, though some cryptids go on to become recognised species (the Okapi was once a rumour, later to be proven true). Here is a Wikipedia list of cryptids, everything from extinct creatures to out and out hoaxes.

The fascinating ones are of course the myths, the true monsters. There are a few themes; human/animal hybrids, water dwellers and beasts in the forest. These are respectively ancient sublimations of the outlaw, the foreigner and awe in the face of nature. Water and the forest serve in morality tales: drowning in water = sorrow, losing one’s way in the forest = madness.

Cryptids are part of rural cultures around the globe. Nature has been largely expunged from daily life core capitalist countries, especially the daily life of the upper classes. When nature reappears it often seems like a violent invasion, a natural disaster or a premonition. There’s an interesting chapter in Mike Davis’s Ecology of Fear. Strange things have begun to happen in suburban California as houses have been built increasingly not on farmland but in wild chaparral and desert. The result is brown bears in hot tubs, coyotes in dustbins, mountain lions stalking people on mountain bikes.