The new series recently shown on discovery channel, 'Life' is an amazing picturisation of what life is actually about. The show tells us that its all about survival. The episode on Mammals ended on a very interesting note that struck a chord in my brain. The last sentence of that episode, as narrated by David Attenborrogh said that Mammals could survive very well and diversified on this beautiful planet because of passing of wisdom from one generation to another in a family structure (i.e. Grouping together) and emotional attachment among individuals. (# Apologies for not quoting the exact words. #)
Taking advantage of 'not being alone' is not a strategy developed by Mammals, not even by insects (ex. Ants, termites etc.) but it goes beyond that. It was discovered by the first multicellular organism which came into existance on this earth millions of years ago. Life as we know originated in the water bodies or pools or 'soup'(as called by many theorists). First coecervates and then prokaryotes came, which were solitary. Then came eukaryotes where for the first time, advantage of 'not being alone' was exploited. Multicellularity came into picture. I would love to say that, cells understood that sticking together made their chances of being alive greater than usual. Factually speaking, those who could do it were given a green signal by nature, in other words 'naturally selected'. They continued doing so and thus we see all the giant structures formed as a result of that ability. Here I would also like to remind the readers about those who are not existing today and the ones of whom we just hear stories of, “The Dinasours”.
Multicellularity is not just about being together in numbers, its also about sharing work. With the process of differenciation the whole unit (organism) was able to utilise the resources well and also the components of the unit became inter dependent. This was a stage of division of labour. And this is indeed a good survival strategy, proved by the expanse of multicellular organisms on this planet.
In animal world, Mammals have used this strategy exceptionally well to become the dominant class of organisms on earth. Our globe was ones ruled by some other class of animals, named Reptiles. They so much represented this planet that there is a whole era (Jurassic) named over them. Mammals co-existed but just to live in small holes and hide from massive strong predators. Suddently Mammals came to power. Offcourse there are other reasons of upwelling of this class like extinction of the Dino's, higher adaptation capabilities (being warm blodded animals), high brain weight to body weight ratio (shows greater use of intellect than insticts), but the one that cannot be forgotten is sticting together. Family structure, sharing, caring, dependence is prominently seen in Mammals. In a different way but the strategy of grouping together is being used by these creatures. May it be the herds grazing in Savannas, Meer cats standing tall & watching over each others backs, a group of elephants in Africa, bunch of Lions hunting together with tactics, a group of dolphins fishing in deep sea and so on.... (not to forget humans being social animals).
This shows the use of same old strategy, 'NOT TO BE ALONE', in a parallel way at different instances of evolution of life.
NOTE# All these things bring forward a point raised by Sir Richard Dawkins, that individuality should not be given to the organism but to the genes, because ultimately its a fierce battle amongst them and everything starts with it.
