Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors

How does she know to design, construct, stabilize, repair, and utilize this elegant web? How does she know to build it near the lamp, to which the insects are attracted? Did she scamper all over the house tallying the abundance of insects in various potential campsites? How could her behavior be pre-programmed, since artificial lights have been invented much too recently to be taken account of in the evolution of spiders?

When spiders are given LSD or other consciousness-altering drugs, their webs become less symmetrical, more erratic, or, we might say, less obsessive, more freeform—but also less effective in catching insects. What has a tripping spider forgotten?

Maybe its behavior is entirely pre-programmed in its ACGT code. But then, couldn’t much more complex information be locked away in a much longer, much more elaborate code? Or maybe some of this information is learned from past adventures in spinning and repairing webs, immobilizing and eating prey. But then look how small that spider’s brain is. How much more sophisticated behavior might emerge out of the experience of a much larger brain?

The web is anchored opportunistically to a local geometry of lamp cowling, metal railing, and wood siding. That could not per se have been pre-programmed. There must have been some element of choice, of decision making, of connecting a hereditary predisposition to an environmental circumstance never before encountered.

Is she “only” an automaton, unquestioningly performing actions that seem to her the most natural thing in the world—and being rewarded, her behavior reinforced by an ample supply of food? Or might there be a component of learning, decision making, and self-consciousness?

Adopting high standards of engineering precision, she spins her web now. She reaps the reward later, maybe much later. She patiently waits. Does she know what she’s waiting for? Does she dream of succulent moths and foolish mayflies? Or does she wait with her mind a blank, idling, thinking of nothing at all—until the telltale tug sends her scurrying down one of the radial struts to sting the struggling insect before it frees itself and escapes? Are we really sure she doesn’t have even a faint and intermittent spark of consciousness?

We would guess that some rudimentary awareness flickers in the most humble creatures, and that with increasing neuronal architecture and brain complexity, consciousness grows. “When a dog runs,” said the naturalist Jakob von Uexküll, “the dog moves his legs; when a sea urchin runs, the legs move the sea urchin.”¹⁰ But even in humans, thinking is often a subsidiary state of consciousness.

If it were possible to peer into the psyche of a spider or a goose, we might detect a kaleidoscopic progression of inclinations—and maybe some premonitions of conscious choice, actions selected from a menu of possible alternatives. What individual nonhuman organisms may perceive as their motivations, what they feel is happening inside their bodies, is for us one of the nearly inaudible counterpoints to the music of life.

When an animal goes out to seek food, it often does so according to a definite pattern. A random search is inefficient, because the path would turn back on itself many times; the same places would then be examined again and again. Instead, while the animal may dart off to left and right, the general search pattern is almost always progressive forward motion. The animal finds itself on new ground. The search for food becomes an exercise in exploration. A passion for discovery is hardwired. It’s something we like to do for its own sake, but it brings rewards, aids survival, and increases the number of offspring.

Perhaps animals are almost pure automatons—with urges, instincts, hormonal rushes, driving them toward behavior which in turn is carefully honed and selected to aid the propagation of a particular genetic sequence. Perhaps states of consciousness, no matter how vivid, are as Huxley suggested, “immediately caused by molecular changes in the brain substance.” But from the point of view of the animal, it must seem—as it does with us—natural, passionate, and occasionally even thought out. Perhaps a flurry of impulses and intersecting subroutines at times feels something like the exercise of free will. Certainly the animal cannot much have an impression of being impelled against

its will. It voluntarily chooses to behave in the manner dictated by its contending programs. Mainly, it’s just following orders.

So when the days become long enough, it feels an unfocused restlessness, something like spring fever. It hasn’t thought through conception, gestation, the optimum season for the birth of the young and the continuance of its genetic sequences; all that is far beyond its abilities. But from the inside it may well feel as though the weather is intoxicating, life is tempestuous, and moonlight becomes you.

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