Dave Freedman - Natural Selection

They all turned toward the beach.

“Goddamn,” Darryl said.

Phil almost whistled. “Wow.”

Craig just shook his head. “That’s why they were so close to shore.”

Lisa’s eyes narrowed. “Let’s get over there. Carefully.” She reached for her cell. “And I’m calling Jason….” Whatever the Princeton brain expert was telling him, she knew he’d want to hear what they’d just found immediately. She just hoped his phone was on.

BANDAR VISHAKERATNE put down his pencil and rose from a stool. The preliminary analysis was complete. The scientist had just worked nonstop for an entire day, literally twenty-five hours straight, not taking any breaks, not even a visit to the snack machine down the hall for junk food. He was exhausted. He grabbed his blazer, yawned twice, and entered a tastefully appointed hallway.

Seated on a wooden chair embossed with the black-and-orange Princeton University seal was Jason Aldridge. He was wide-awake, eyeing his cell phone and realizing he had messages. He put the tiny contraption away when he saw that the doctor had returned. “So, Dr. Vishakeratne, what did you find?”

Veesh-ah-ker-aht-nee. The neurologist had noted it earlier. Most people butchered his name with shocking regularity, but this American took tremendous care to pronounce it correctly. The linguistic touch didn’t make him Albert Einstein, of course, but it demonstrated respect as well an attention to detail that the doctor rarely found in anyone except himself. Vishakeratne decided on the spot that he liked Jason Aldridge. He gestured courteously.

“Please, come into my office. Let me share my analysis with you.”

They sat on two small leather couches on either side of a fancy glass table. Vishakeratne went over “general brain preliminaries” first. The human brain weighed 1,400 grams, about 3 pounds, and possessed a large cerebral cortex, or upper brain. Despite man’s apparent “brain superiority,” three—and now four—animals existed in nature that actually had brains that were heavier than man’s. The sperm whale’s weighed 20 pounds, the elephant’s 13, the bottlenose dolphin’s 3.75, and now the new animal’s, 5.81 pounds. Yes, brains varied in size just as any other organ did; just as someone might have longer legs, they might also have a larger brain. The heaviest human brain ever recorded weighed 4 pounds, a full pound heavier than the average.

Large nonhuman brains didn’t demonstrate nearly as much intelligence as they should have. Unlike man, other big-brained animals didn’t appear to use their brains, which led to the obvious question of why they had evolved to such great size in the first place. Vishakeratne had been one of the first to suggest the presence of an “animal intelligence” that humans simply couldn’t appreciate. Dolphin and whale brains, he postulated, were dedicated to support awesome sensory perceptions, such as sonar, rather than the communication and reasoning skills that human brains were largely limited to. Just as a brain that supported communication and reasoning skills had been critical to man’s survival, so had the dolphin’s and whale’s brain been critical to theirs.

The preliminaries continued when the eminent scientist noticed that Jason’s eyes were glazed over. It was as though the young ichthyologist was being polite but had heard it all before. He had. On the flight from San Francisco to Newark, Jason had read or skimmed every available piece of information on the findings of Bandar Vishakeratne. Not normally one to waste people’s time, the doctor switched gears immediately.

“Obviously, you’re here to discuss the brain you brought with you. Let’s do that.”

He pressed a button. Instantaneously, Andrea entered the large office, carrying the brain in a deep-rimmed white plastic tray, submerged in a few inches of water. She placed it on the glass table, careful not to drip, then left the office.

Vishakeratne began. “A number of items strike me as most unusual with this brain. The first, clearly, is its weight. Second is its shape. It’s most… strange. In fact, I’ve never seen anything like it. Before this, every brain I’ve seen has been rounded, perhaps elliptical, cylindrical, or oblong, but essentially rounded. But this”—he gestured to the lumpy gray matter on the tray—“as we can see, is flat….” His voice trailed off and he became quiet.

Jason studied the man. The skin above his forehead was crinkled. His eyes looked strained. “This brain didn’t evolve into this particular shape by accident. It happened for a reason. My preliminary judgment is that this is a highly specialized brain. A highly focused brain.”

Jason leaned forward. “Focused on what?”

Vishakeratne looked him in the eye, ominously so. “On hunting, Jason.”

“ ON HUNTING?”

“You said earlier this animal is a predator, and my analysis bloody well supports that. And not just any predator. A highly, highly efficient one. Almost too efficient, I’d daresay. This brain is capable of supporting sensory perceptions unlike anything I’ve seen before. Now, I haven’t determined which senses—sight, smell, hearing, various magnetic sensory abilities—are the strongest yet, but my guess is that they’re all are very strong on an absolute basis. Perhaps even unparalleled.”

“Unparalleled senses.” Jesus, Jason thought.

In rapid succession, Vishakeratne pointed to a series of bulging lobes on the soaking brain. “As you can see, all of this brain’s sensory cortexes—acoustical, visual, auditory—are very large; huge, in fact.” He pointed at one particularly large bulge. “This is its electrical cortex, the largest I’ve seen by far. Jason, the sensory capabilities of this brain are arguably too strong. No capable predator would need a brain like this. But”—he raised his index finger—“an incapable predator very well might. You said these rays are physically underqualified to be predators, but this brain, just like the human brain, would allow them to overcompensate for that.”

“So it evolved out of need, just like any other organ.”

“Of course just like any other organ.” It never ceased to amaze the neurologist. Everyone always assumed the brain was different from other organs, that it hadn’t evolved at all, but had simply appeared inside everyone’s skull by magic. “I assure you, Jason, despite its complexity, this brain evolved just like the giraffe’s neck.”

The giraffe’s neck was a famous example of how the evolutionary process worked. Due to its simplicity, it was frequently used to demonstrate the critical concept of variation. Variation was the fundamental building block that allowed the entire adaptive process to occur. Every body part and organ of every species—from the neck of the giraffe to the brain of man—had evolved as a result of prolonged variation over time. Giraffes were the example often used to describe this.

Thirty-five million years ago, giraffes were much smaller animals, resembling Great Danes, their necks just a few inches long. But just like any animal, prehistoric giraffes were all slightly different from one another. They varied in height, weight, fur color, and in literally billions of other ways, including neck length. In a litter of ten prehistoric baby giraffes, the typical animal’s neck might have been three inches long. But a few might have had necks that were just an inch or two, while a few others had necks that were four or five inches.

And what would it have mattered? Depending on the circumstances, a slightly longer neck might have given a prehistoric giraffe an advantage, a disadvantage, or simply had no effect at all in its quest to survive. But as it turned out, a longer neck provided a distinct advantage. Thirty-five million years ago, the land was filled with hungry herbivores, plant eaters, who fought hard to eat every plant as quickly as it grew. But some greenery—the upper leaves of the tallest trees—was simply too high to reach. But not for the longer-necked giraffes. These animals were able to reach previously unreachable leaves. As a result, they ate and prospered, while the short-necked members of their species starved and died off. The lucky survivors mated with one another and, in doing so, passed on their “long-neck” genes to the next generation. So what could have been a “mutant” long-neck gene instead became standard for the entire species. With a continued shortage of easily accessible greenery, the giraffes that had long necks continued to have an advantage. So over the years, as they survived and mated, the long-neck genes were repeatedly “selected,” and eventually, the entire giraffe species evolved into its current, modern form.