The Tortoise and the Hippo - Blog

January 24, 2006

Geoffrey Hamilton

How inter-species friendships show that evolution has marbles in its mouth.

When animals of very different species bond the name inter-species friendships describes a behavior that completely baffles scientists who tout evolution as the answer for everything. Once again their theory comes up short and leaves these 'experts' unable to explain something that we see everyday with our pets.

Recently, in Tokyo, a snake was given a hamster as food but instead made friends with it. This is not unheard of. A lioness adopted five antelope over a period of time, she cared each for as long as she could. She even ate the last one after it died of organic causes, showing she was not confused about what she was caring for. The growing fame of the hippo and the tortoise, Owen and Mzee, shows that people are confused, most likely due to the experts that are brought in to 'help'. In an Amanda Onion piece for ABC News we have one floundering expert opinion after another.

"In this case, it sounds like 'any port in a storm'" said Katherine Houpt of Cornell University .

"When you look at sanctuaries and zoos, animals don't always have access to their usual crowd," said Joanne Oliva-Purdy, an applied animal behaviorist based in Leadville, Colo..

"It happens all the time," said David Barash of the University of Washington in Seattle. "I don't think there's anything that truly defies biological explanation." He gives other nothing answers like "a happy coincidence" and "There is a self-serving component to love and companionship," he added. "From a biological perspective it's a mechanism whereby natural selection has gotten critters to care for each other. Whatever works, works." Could he say less? It is very obvious he is just talking because he is expected to.

Gamegene theory and simolution actually do explain inter-species friendships. To begin with, all beings have a consciousness which is only a mechanism for playing games. Like a poker table, it's place where the stakes are made. Every being needs to play games. Whether it helps them survive and reproduce is unimportant and incidental.

When two species meet that have no prior history - no previous games played between them - or if the value of previous meetings of the same species were good (or anything but completely negative), they can play together. Like any game the meeting is unpredictable and can come down to any chance snort or fart and how the other can react to it.

In the case of the hamster and the snake, the snake might not have been hungry at first. As he grew to be hungry he began to enjoy watching the hamster play - the entertainment kept the snake from being bored. Slowly, the snake liked the hamster's touch and company. From the hamster's perspective it was lonely, and just touching the snake as an experiment led it to enjoy the smooth scaly skin. It may not be happy without that skin from now on.

Nothing about any of this was a forgone conclusion. It's only rare because the game is very rare. The case of the hippo and the tortoise is such a case and actually involves talk. What they do is use their own sounds which must have been worked out with various agreements over the last year. These kinds of games go on all the time with our pets and between the pets that we have.

What evolution needs is actual explanatory power, not spin doctors and snake oil salesmen. Where does natural selection actually explain anything regarding inter-species friendships? Nowhere.

GRH

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