Natural Genius

This episode is dedicated to 'Animal Copyright' in communications. We 'see' communication, which cannot be seen but can be heard, smelled, felt or perceived, as a loud and clear message.

Communication deserves special treatment. In this first episode dedicated to communication, we centre on visual language. Animal species that transmit information whilst maintaining eye contact.

We see by observing many animals that man is not the inventor but the discoverer of different artifacts or techniques. We investigate the use and manufacture of cables, turnbuckles, ropes and anything that can be can be used as an element to tie, hang from or as a lasso.

Is it possible that animals have pharmaceutical knowledge of the power of certain substances? Why do species of curassow consume kaolin (china clay) after eating certain fruits? Arrowhead frogs devour poisonous insects that somehow manufacture batracotoxina, the most potent poison created by nature. What type of antidote does a certain sea nudibranquios possess?

Hygiene is synonymous of health, and the elaboration of techniques, above all for evolution of cleaning instruments, and this also implies a very elaborate and complex developmental behaviour. For now, many of these techniques do not have a plausible explanation, such is the case of the blazing saunas.

Of the inventions that emerge from the nineteenth century industrial revolution, those that have permitted travel of people and objects are the inventions that have most influenced the human capacity to dominate and conquer the corners of the world. This same migration capability in living things is also essential and hence deserves to be treated in a singular manner.

The evolutionary successes in which life has solved aquatic locomotion doubtlessly deserve a leading role in the episode "Animal Copyright". In fact, it is the second part of the theme dedicated to traveling methods.

Tools destined for hunting and warfare are equally as important as those destined to protect, be it self-protection, or protection of descendants. We look at this subject in detail by analyzing very sophisticated weapons such as firearms, corrosive, foul smelling or stinging substances. We also look at the most varied systems of acoustic alarms used to terrify the enemy.

Animals are extraordinary and surprising builders and their works vary greatly. In order to carry them out, they have either designed or made the most of a great amount of tools, utensils and building material. We will highlight the latter in this chapter.

Living creatures have designed an innumerable amount of sharp objects, be they for hunting or defense, or the battle of reproduction or territory. We compare all these tools not only from a morphological stance, which allows us to appreciate form and structure, but also from a functional point of view, highlighting how they occurred, how they are used and what purpose.

No other technology allows a better dispersion and colonization of new ecosystems than the control of temperature and humidity. Both in cold areas where it is necessary to find ways of protection from low temperatures, and in scorching areas where it is essential to defend oneself from solar radiation and to avoid loss of humidity.

It is most probably when eating that most morphological adjustments associated with special instruments can be found, as if they were refined pieces of cutlery.

At the end of the series, in the final episode, having recognized the tremendous capacity of animals that we often have thought of as irrational, we shall take a peek at a world whose technology and capacities still evade us in the twenty first century.