Ancient communities
May they all be one (John 17:21)
P. Mark O’Loughlin cfc
[April 2004]
I have spent a significant part of my life researching the echinoderm group of marine animals. The echinoderms are an original and ancient form of life, with a fossil record dating back to the Cambrian when that first ‘explosion’ of life forms appeared. The five classes of echinoderms that are living today (sea stars, sea urchins, brittle stars, feather stars and sea cucumbers) have all been present for the 500 million years since the Cambrian. And I find no evidence to suggest that there has been any significant change in the essential nature of their life form.
We are only recently seeing evidence, in this ancient animal group, of remarkable capacities for individual and social awareness, purpose, community living, social cooperation, sexual sophistication and maternal care. And it is remarkable because the individuals of this life form do not have a central nervous system and brain, and have no sense organs except for an optical cushion (eye spot) in some sea stars. The living aggregation of cells (soma) of each individual has many of the capabilities that we have associated exclusively with sense organs and central nervous system and brain. I like to use the descriptive phrase “somatic awareness” in attempting to describe what we are now observing.
Two German colleagues recently used SCUBA to study aggregations of sea urchins that had been reported in the Mediterranean. They found grazing ‘herds’ moving in compact and mutually isolated groups over beds of algal plants on which they were feeding. As a designed experiment the researchers picked up a few individuals from each of a number of such ‘herds’, and created an artificial group on a bed of plants which was suitable for feeding. All immediately dispersed! Their aggregations are evidently intentional communities! The divers then repeated the experiment with sexually mature individuals that also aggregate seasonally in close spawning groups on barren substrate. None spawned! Reproductive partnership is evidently selective! American researchers off California made similar observations, and also reported that in the herds they observed that individuals frequently moved to touch others with their spines. And they are not clumsy animals! I like to interpret this action as an “I’m here, and you’re OK” sort of echinoderm “high five”. On the western coast of Ireland marine biologists have noticed communities of echinoderms living in the same close groups during more than a decade of observations.
Some of my Japanese and American colleagues have begun to use manned and remote-controlled submersibles with video equipment to film echinoderm behaviour. I have watched video footage of brittle stars cooperatively capturing and eating squid and fish and crustacea. When one brittle star was able to wrap its arms around a prey, all of its immediate neighbours immediately “jumped” onto the prey to secure it. Without sense organs and a central nervous system, these echinoderms exhibit what is to me inexplicably sophisticated awareness and purposeful cooperation. I recently published a paper proposing that some of the deep-sea subantarctic sea cucumbers copulate, and my colleagues agree with the hypothesis. There are many cases of echinoderms of all classes protecting their brood of young both within and external to the body. One such case is a local sea star in which the females brood their young to maturity in their stomachs over a period of some months. These behaviours suggest to me capacities for social awareness and sophisticated cooperation.
One is readily cautioned for being ‘anthropomorphic’ (ascribing human qualities to non-human forms), but I am beginning to worry more about denying other forms of life qualities that we use to describe our human experience. I am coming to believe that the word “anthropomorphism” is subversive. With its philosophical assumption that human beings are unique and superior to all other forms of life, the fear of “anthropomorphism” has for too long denied us the capacity to really observe the living world around us with eyes that can see.
My understanding of the Thomas Berry School of eco-spirituality is that it holds three foundational beliefs about the natural world and earth and cosmos. A belief that there is differentiation and discreteness, which I readily perceive in the echinoderms. A belief that there is connectedness and communion, which is becoming increasingly evident for me in the echinoderms. And a belief that there is being and interiority. This third quality is less readily defined and perceived, but I am sure that echinoderms are aware. Just how reflectively aware remains a mystery, but I am not ready to deny the possibility.
As Brothers we have been invited “to engage in radical relationships of equality” with all of creation. My observations of the ancient group of echinoderm animals are leading me to recognise this invitation as less and less romantic and fanciful, and more and more grounded in reality. In the recent lecture series on “Sacred Earth”, David Ranson commented that the “nature of God is communion”. I found myself excited by this link bridging for me theology and eco-spirituality. May we indeed all be one. May we enter deeply into that universal communion of the sacred. May we be in God.
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