This week, a paper appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal (de Kock et al 2023) [1]. The researchers found that generations of turtles had been using the same seagrass beds for thousands of years. It’s one of the few times scientists have referenced the long-term, ecosystem-linked behaviour of any animals. It’s gratifying to read the summary’s opening line. It says that: ‘the persistence of most species and their key habitatsWhat is habitat for animals and people? Habitat, hence the word "habitable" describes the natural surroundings in which any animal (or human) lives, that houses basic needs, such as food and shelter. Vegetation, for example, is habitat for animals. On its own, habitat is not necessarily stable or sustainable, which is why it differs from an ecosystem. Habitat in disrepair More is intimately tied together.’ It’s becoming more common for scientists to appreciate the importance of animal impactWhat is Animal Impact? Without wildlife, Earth would not be habitable for humans, because it's animals that stabilise ecosystems. It’s a fundamental law of nature that animals (and humans) exist because we are the most likely lifeforms to minimise environmental chaos. Animal impact, therefore, is a measure of how much all wildlife is collectively responsible for creating a habitable Earth. The More. The study led me to ponder, is sea turtle civilisation the oldest in Europe?
Green turtles live for a hundred years and drag their heavy bodies onto land to lay eggs. They epitomise the slow pace and indefatigable effort and tolerance an animal needs to be the most likely to survive for millions of years. For this reason, turtles might be among the animals most likely to outlive the human race. There is still time left for us to learn from their good behaviour. Drawing by Simon Mustoe
Civilisation doesn’t mean survival
Of course I use the word ‘civilisation’ loosely. National Geographic defines civilisation as: ‘a complex way of life characterised by urban areas, shared methods of communication, administrative infrastructure, and division of labour.’
But this is a rather colonial definition. Australian First Nations people would certainly object to this definition. Their civilisation has lasted for 65,000 years and was not characterised by ‘urban areas.’
Even where turtles are concerned, communication and division of labour apply. Both are facets of any animal culture that is likely to survive. We grossly underestimate the significance of culture, cooperation and the way animals share knowledge with each other. This has tainted our attitude to wildlife.
Calling turtle habitat civilisation may be drawing a long bow but if we consider ‘civilised’ to mean, equitable, long-lasting, stable and occupying one place, then modern sea turtles have enjoyed a very civilised existence. In contrast, our civilisations don’t survive well at all. Sea turtles have, after all, been around for 110 million years.
The longest-lasting known human civilisation in Europe was the Minoan, which lasted about 2,000 years. The Romans lasted fewer than 500 years. The palace of Westminster has only been the UK centre of power for about 900 years. The oldest animal civilisations tend to last a lot longer and European sea turtles have managed cooperation for over 3,000 years.
Animals build their own ecosystems to survive in
As I describe in my book Wildlife in the Balance, it is a trait of all animals, individually, to constantly destroy and rebuild their environment to suit their survival.
It can only be this way. Green turtles eat seagrass. If in doing so they didn’t create more seagrass, then they would go extinct. These simple truths are somehow missing from our interpretation of wildlife. We have vaguely learnt to consider our impact on turtles. But we fail to recognise the enormous and consequential impact they have on the ecosystemsHow ecosystems function An ecosystem is a community of lifeforms that interact in such an optimal way that how ecosystems function best, is when all components (including humans and other animals) can persist and live alongside each other for the longest time possible. Ecosystems are fuelled by the energy created by plants (primary producers) that convert the Sun's heat energy More we need for our own life support.
Seagrass is essential to life on Earth. You couldn’t be here without it. It fuels coastal ecosystems, protects us from the sea and is a breeding ground for the majority of fish we eat. Commercial fisheries underpin whole economies. The coastal towns you holiday at were even built around fisheries and seagrass. The cumulative total of animal impact and the stability it forms, stabilises climate. Climate is the ‘grand final’ of animal impact. Its the ticker-tape parade and festival that signifies the combined successes of all animals working together. That includes us.
Without turtles grazing seagrass, along with the nutrientEnergy and nutrients are the same thing. Plants capture energy from the Sun and store it in chemicals, via the process of photosynthesis. The excess greenery and waste that plants create, contain chemicals that animals can eat, in order to build their own bodies and reproduce. When a chemical is used this way, we call it a nutrient. As we More transfer(of nutrients) the thing that sets animals apart from plants, is that they can move. Some of the biggest migrations on Earth every day, are the movement of insects like caterpillars, from the stem of a plant to a leaf and back, before turning into butterflies and transferring the energy elsewhere. Large-scale migration of grazing animals and migratory songbirds moves More, concentration and amplificationAmplification (of nutrients and energy). Animals consume plants and other animals and in doing so, reintroduce important energy-containing nutrients back into the environment, at even higher concentrations and in patches. Amplification of energy is driven by migration and happens at every scale, from insects moving daily in and out of your vegetable patch, to African wildebeest herds and the seasonal More processes they create, it couldn’t exist. We couldn’t exist.
Animals are not the icing on the cake
Seagrass, like all plants, ferociously sucks energy from the Sun. Left to its devices, it overwhelms the ecosystem with damaging surplus energy as waste. Plants, without animals, collapse ecosystems. This has even led to a mass extinctionAnimal life hasn't existed for very long on planet Earth. In the last 500 million years, there have been five mass extinctions, defined as events that wiped out at least 75% of animal life. The Devonian mass extinction is considered to have been caused by the rise of plants on land, which polluted the oceans in the absence of animals. More in the distant past.
The UK’s Alan Titchmarsh from the popular show Gardener’s World was quoted in The Independent Newspaper this week, saying:
‘Rewilding does not increase plant diversity’ adding ‘that wildlife is “adaptable” and can learn quickly what plants are of value, no matter where they come from.’
Titchmarsh is talking about gardens, which often have little to do with ecosystems. The premise, however, is that animals rely on plants, whereas the opposite is the case. It’s a very common misunderstanding, even among conservationists. This leads to all manner of inappropriate intervention. It erodes stability and once again, explains why our civilisations don’t last very long.
Animals are not the icing on the cake. The vast majority of the world’s human population, gardens to grow food. For that, you need animals.
Learning from sea turtles
Learning to be better animals means observing nature and interpreting the natural world. Science is slow to catch up with the wisdom of what Indigenous cultures have known forever. But it’s heartening to see recognition of animal impact begin to commonly emerge in the scientific discourse.
I would add that the researchers’ final statement needs some extra thought. They say: ‘Our results validate this concept and open the possibility of its application to other species, facilitating species management, thus informing biodiversityWhat is the definition of biodiversity? When we ask, what is the definition of biodiversity? It depends on what we want to do with it. The term is widely and commonly misused, leading to significant misinterpretation of the importance of how animals function on Earth and why they matter a great deal, to human survival. Here I will try to More conservationWhy is animal conservation important? Animal conservation is important, because animals are the only mechanism to create biodiversity, which is the mechanism that creates a habitable planet for humans. Without animals, the energy from today’s plants (algae, trees, flowers etc) will eventually reach the atmosphere and ocean, much of it as carbon. The quantity of this plant-based waste is so More.’
What they’ve stumbled across, in actual fact, is evidence of the very reason why conservation is essential. Far from being applied to ‘other species’, the application is to all species combined. For it is the combination of actions of animals working together that maintains healthy ecosystems. We cannot ‘manage’ the animals in this, we can only manage our own behaviour.
This is the risk of mis-intervention. We fail by trying to do too much, by forcing change on complex systems we don’t understand and cannot control.
Stop fiddling and let nature work
For Europeans, each time one of our civilisations fails, we start again. This constant disruptionThe result of an action that creates a sudden change in the stability of an ecosystem or process. This tends to create a gap where there is free surplus energy and organisms will move in to fill the space. Disruption might be a tree fall, or the application of pesticide to farmland. Disruption is important to maintain dynamics in ecosystems More leads to inevitable hardship and uncertainty for us all.
We’ve taken the worst of this behaviour and focused modern politics around it. Today we foment political chaos(Of energy and ecosystems). Ecosystems are thermodynamically driven. Disorder occurs when energy dissipates and becomes more chaotic. For example, the release of hot air into the atmosphere results in that energy is freer to disperse (maximum entropy). The opposite is true when energy is locked into biological processes, when it is stored inside molecules (minimum entropy). Stability in ecosystems occurs More to enable short-term power grabs and change. It’s the antithesis of how ecosystems function(Of an ecosystem). A subset of ecosystem processes and structures, where the ecosystem does something that provides an ecosystem service of value to people. More and therefore, it cannot survive. It might even explain today, why we have significant rising cost of living and escalating environmental uncertainty.
The only difference between turtles and modern Europeans, is turtles are a lot better at surviving. The ecosystems they create for themselves stabilised under their activity. They have subsequently supported the same turtle lifestyles for millennia. This is a lot longer than any western civilisation has ever managed to last.
As we allow any wildlife populations to decline we lose the benefit they play in our own survival. But we lose something else too. We lose the ability to understand how we need to behave. We would all be better off for that extra bit of wisdom that we get from animals.
References
- de Kock W, Mackie M, Ramsøe M, Allentoft ME, Broderick AC, Haywood JC, Godley BJ, Snape RTE, Bradshaw PJ, Genz H, von Tersch M, Dee MW, Palsbøll PJ, Alexander M, Taurozzi AJ, Çakırlar C. Threatened North African seagrass meadows have supported green turtle populations for millennia. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2023 Jul 25;120(30):e2220747120. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2220747120. Epub 2023 Jul 17. PMID: 37459551.
