Below are seven biological wonders that should help to confirm the sophisticated intelligence of nature. These are merely a sample of what we are discovering about the animals and plants that share this planet with us, a reminder that is particularly appropriate since our behaviour has initiated the sixth major extinction event in Earth’s history.
• Soil, which is not the same as dirt, is alive, “criss-crossed with a hard-to-fathom complexity of connections, a multitude of symbiotic partnerships between plant roots, mycorrhizal fungi and nitrogen-fixing bacteria.” (Rowan Hooper, “Going Deeper”, New Scientist, Feb. 22, 2025). Up to half of all the living biomass of soils is composed of these networks. Soil soaks up about a third of all carbon humans put into the atmosphere each year. It holds three times more carbon than the living biomass above ground, and twice the amount that is in the atmosphere.
• A fruit-sucking moth found in northern Australia and South-East Asia, Eudocima aurantia, tricks predators with colouration on its flat wings that make the moth appear to be a curled leaf. Its scales are a nanostructure that produces mirror-like reflections to create the illusion of curvature. This allows the moth to sit safely on fruit without being noticed (“Moth Uses Optical Illusion to Disguise Itself as a Leaf”, New Scientist, Feb. 22, 2025).
• In 1967, while exploring a disease that decimated potato crops, Theodor Diener eventually identified an infectious agent that was smaller than a virus. He called it a viroid. The scientific community paid little attention for half a century. We now know that a viroid is a single “naked” molecule of RNA surrounded by a protein. Like a virus, a viroid can’t replicate on its own, so it enters a cell and commandeers its systems causing the cell to die. We have since discovered that there are thousands of different kinds of viroids, mostly found in plants but also in fungi, animals and the human gut. Biologists debate whether or not viruses are “living”, so viroids pose the same question but at an even deeper level. “Should we view them as biological or merely complicated chemistry?” (“Small Wonders”, Michael Marshall, New Scientist, Feb. 15, 2025).
• A newly discovered fungus, Gibellula attenboroughii, affects two cave-dwelling species of spiders by taking control of their bodies, inducing them to move from their preferred hiding places to unusually high and exposed locations. Once there, the fungus consumes the spider, turning it into white fibrous mass. Once mature, the spores of the fungus can then be rained down on other unsuspecting spiders. This is similar to another parasitic genus of fungus, Ophiocordyceps, that affects ants and other insects. It, too, forces the insect to climb to high places, bursts through the head, and showers other insects with its spores. (“Behold the Fungus…”, Sheena Goodyear, As It Happens, CBC Radio, Posted Feb. 10, 2025).
• When one mouse finds another unconscious mouse, it attempts “first aid” (Chris Simms, New Scientist, March 1, 2025). After sniffing, pawing and licking the unconscious mouse, in more than 50% of the cases, the attendant mouse pulls out the victim’s tongue to facilitate breathing. In laboratory studies, when a plastic ball was placed in the mouth of the anesthetized mouse, in 80% of the cases the attendant mouse removed the obstruction. This is commensurate with similar “first aid” behaviour noted in other social mammals. Rats are known to attempt the rescue of a distressed rat rather than eat food that is immediately available.
• Salamanders (Aneides vagrans) have a trick for increasing their traction while crawling on rough vertical surfaces (Sophia Quaglia, New Scientist, Feb. 8, 2025). As they put down their feet, they extract the blood from the tips of their 18 toes, essentially creating a soft adhesive surface. When lifting their feet, the blood pulses in again, essentially launching them from the surface. This deflation-then-inflation technique is much more efficient for walking than using muscle strength. The analogy that describes this process is like the difference between a deflated basketball that lands on the floor and stays there, in contrast with an inflated basketball that bounces.
• Chimpanzees, it seems, drum to communicate. Recent studies in Africa have revealed that the drumming is so explicit that each individual chimpanzee can be recognized by its own rhythm, intensity and volume, in effect, a recognizable signature. Since the sound travels long distances, chimpanzees have a clear idea of who is where in the jungle. Chimpanzees in East Africa have distinctly different rhythms, a seemingly different drumming dialect than those in West Africa. (Quirks and Quarks, CBC Radio, May 24, 2025).
Ray Grigg for Sierra Quadra
Top image credit: Grass mice eating wild fruit – photo by Bernard Dupont from France (CC BY-SA 2.0)