The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times(22)
“Recently I got an email from Sarah telling me that Methuselah had turned out to be a splendid partner, fertilized Hannah, and she had produced dates. Huge, luscious dates. Sarah sent me one—it arrived in a little cloth bag—and I was one of the first people to taste a date from the reincarnation of two Judean date palms from the long-gone forests of forty-foot palms that once grew throughout the Jordan Valley. The taste was utterly fantastic.”
Jane closed her eyes and smacked her lips, recalling the sweet flavor of that resurrected date.
“Of course,” she continued, “many species of animal have an amazing tenacity—a really strong will to live. The coyote that continues to spread across the United States despite the persecution from hunters. And rats and cockroaches—”
“I’m not sure it makes me feel more hopeful knowing that rats and cockroaches are going to survive long after we are gone!” I said.
Methuselah, above, grown from a two-thousand-year-old seed. Sarah Sallon, who worked to coax him from his long rest, was finally able to germinate a female seed, Hannah. Between them they produced mouth-watering dates. (DR. SARAH SALLON)
“Well, cockroaches are one of the most resilient and adaptable species.”
“I certainly know that, having grown up in a big city. Cockroaches and rats were our wildlife. And pigeons, too.”
“I know lots of people hate those species, but in fact, when they live out in nature, they are just part of the tapestry of life, each with a role to play. But just like us, they can take advantage of opportunities. They thrive on the food we waste and seize the opportunity for good living among the garbage so often found around human dwellings.”
I wanted to find hope in Jane’s stories of resilience, but I was still troubled. “So nature is extremely vibrant and strong, and it can adapt to the natural cycles that take place on the planet, but can it recover from all the harm we are doing to it?”
“Yes, I truly believe nature has a fantastic ability to restore itself after being destroyed, whether by us or by natural disasters. Sometimes it restores itself slowly, over time. But now, because of the terrible harm we are causing on a daily basis, we often need to step in and help in the restoration.”
“So, Jane, I’m hearing that life is fundamentally resilient and can withstand great adversity. Are there any special qualities that we can learn from the resilience of nature?”
Adapt or Perish
Jane pondered for a bit. “Well, one really important quality of resilience is adaptability—all successful forms of life have adapted to their environment,” she said. “The species that have been unable to adapt are the ones that have failed to make it in the evolutionary sweepstakes. It’s our extraordinary success in adapting to different environments that has allowed humanity—and cockroaches and rats!—to spread across the world. So the big challenge faced by many species today is whether or not they can adapt to climate change and human encroachment into their habitats.”
“Interesting,” I said. “Tell me more about why some species adapt and others perish.”
“For some species,” Jane replied, “the life cycle, or specialized dietary needs and so on, is so preprogrammed that they may not be able to survive change. Other species are more flexible. It’s fascinating to see how a species can survive if one or a few individuals manage to change—and pass on their behaviors to others in the group. While some individuals will die, the species as a whole will survive. Think of the plants that become resistant to the herbicides sprayed on the land by industrial agriculture and the bacteria that become resistant to antibiotics and end up as superbugs.
“But the stories I really love to tell,” Jane continued, “are about highly intelligent animals who pass on information through observation and learning. Chimpanzees, for example, are a wonderful example of how a species can learn to adapt to different environments in a generation.”
“In what way?” I asked, always eager to hear Jane’s chimpanzee stories.
“The chimps in Gombe make a nest and go to bed at night, which is what most chimpanzees do. But the chimps in Senegal, where the temperatures are soaring and getting ever hotter, have adapted. They often forage on moonlit nights because it’s much cooler. And they will even spend time in caves, which are very unchimp-like habitats.
“And chimps in Uganda have learned to forage at night for a different reason. Their forest is being increasingly encroached upon as villages expand and people need more land for farming. And so, with their traditional foods becoming scarcer, the chimps have learned to raid farms adjacent to the forest and make off with farmers’ crops. That in itself is remarkable, as chimpanzees are typically very conservative in their habits and almost never experiment with new foods at Gombe. And if an infant tries to do so, the mother or elder sibling will hit it away! But the Ugandan chimps have not only developed a taste for foods such as sugarcane, bananas, mangoes, and papaya, but they’ve learned to make their raids in the moonlight—when they are less likely to encounter humans.
“But if we want an example of a really adaptable primate—in addition to ourselves, of course—we have to turn to baboons. They are quick to try any new food and, as a result, are extremely successful as a species, occupying many different habitats. And in Asia various species of macaques are also extremely adaptable. And, of course, because of their appreciation of human foods, they are considered pests and persecuted by us.”