That’s not what “wild” means…
And since we’re organisms living in a colony on a planet floating amongst the cosmos you’re an alien. Just not alien to this planet that we know of
We are a hivemind of cells that believe they are one person.
I am alien wildlife. I am alien wildlife
Also, penis fencing.
On that note, humans are nature. When other animals build things like beavers building dams, or bees building hives, ants building hills, termites building thermodynamically efficient concrete (sort of) structures etc., we still call those things “natural.”
Point is: all our modern infrastructure is natural because building shit is just what our species does and we are just as much nature as any other species is.
We aren’t special; we’re just another weird species in a long history. We aren’t the only species to build stuff, aren’t the only species reshape the environment around us, aren’t the only species to literally poison the area around ourselves (and hey we mostly do it on accident whereas pine trees kinda do it on purpose). Hell, the Great Oxidation Event literally filled the whole atmosphere with what was—at the time—basically poison. That event not only caused mass extinction on a global scale, but it also changed geology and mineral formation worldwide.
We aren’t special just because our machines are often made of metal instead of proteins. We’re just another species on this rock, and everything we’ve built is just another mark on that rock made by life.
This is why I laugh every time i see a bottle of vitamins from “natural sources”. How is one supposed to discern the origin of a given molecule of ascorbic acid?
What I find fun to think about is how we are still evolving. How things like Tinder will change evolution and biology.
Yeah but has another species invented machines that exist solely to torment others of the same species (printers)?
The number of ppl who don’t understand this is truly stunning. For some reason ppl think being superior to nature is desirable. It is foolish at best, catastrophic otherwise.
Other animals that build stuff use natural materials. Humans are the only ones that process raw materials into different materials and build with those.
A linen shirt is a natural fiber. Polyester isn’t.
You could argue that a wooden hut with a thatched roof is a natural structure, but not much else in human architecture
Other guy did a good job on the main points, but I’ll add something I saw in a study on a kind of bird in the US:
The birds realised cigarette butts had an antibacterial effect, and made efforts to collect and use cigarette butts in their nest building for eggs and chicks.
Learning and making use of novel materials.
Other animals that build stuff use natural materials. Humans are the only ones that process raw materials into different materials and build with those.
Wrong on both counts. First, animals that build stuff don’t just use “natural materials” they use whatever is available to them. Birds make nests out of everything from sticks to metal hangers and from moss to our “unnatural” polyester products they can get their hands on.
Second, bees and ants and termites and wasps etc. use raw materials like fibers (“natural” or not) or pollen or grains of clay and sand and typically mix them with their saliva or water or other bodily excretion or all of those together to create novel building materials.
Animals don’t create stuff with iron (scorpions and certain sea snails actually do kinda use metallic iron) or plastic (technically many “natural” materials are polymers aka plastics) not because we are the only ones capable of understanding resource machines, but because we are in the sweet spot where many tools are available to us. We are large enough to work with fire and hammers. If termites could make steel they absolutely would, but they can’t. They make concrete though because they can. Diatoms make glass (which most other living things can’t do) because they can. Ants farm and domesticate “resource machines” like fungi or plants or other insects (kinda like we do) because they can. We just happened to be in the sweet spot for making our own resource machines without needing to wait for evolution to evolve them.
You could argue that a wooden hut with a thatched roof is a natural structure, but not much else in human architecture
I think most houses even just a few hundred years ago would be “natural” even by your definition.
Clay and mortar are just rocks we mix with water rather than saliva like insects would. Wood from trees like beavers. Slate shingles from, well, slate. The only real issue would be glass for windows and that is a naturally produced resource, we just produce it in an easier way than diatoms do (we actually kinda use their skeletons funnily enough along with geologically occurring silicate sands ofc) and voila you have a relatively modern house. Nails would require a long process but good news you don’t need them to build a house, they just make things easier.
Most of our old civilizations last so long as ruins because they’re made out of stone, sure we mined that stone but so do ants and termites. The roads the Romans built are just as natural as ant mounds are and so are the pyramids (minus the gold caps at the top perhaps).
Humans are different but in a way similar to flying animals or similar, our intelligence gives us access to cumulative technology more than any one person can do in their lifetime, it makes us a different category but still part of the system.
If we are nature, anything we make is natural.
Unless you are saying that for it to be natural it has to he made using a biological process, perhaps inside the body?
It’s like people who say “you need to be self sufficient” or “I’m self sufficient (and I don’t need welfare”. I always ask “do you boil your own water” obvious they say no then I have to point out that you’re reliant on water company or city to clean water for you.
It makes it clear that even the things in water are out to fuck your shit up
I am actually very domesticated. Stick me in the wild and I’ll die on day 1 from trying to pet something venomous.
I’m sure if you took a lone bee away from its hive, it wouldn’t last very long either. Doesn’t mean we aren’t still a part of nature, even if we do try and forget.
Well said. To add to that, as for domestication specifically, many aphids are litetally domesticated by ants. But we would never say that those aphids are not found in the wilderness.
Agriculture and domestication are practices undertaken by certain ant species and colonies. These ants use agricultural methods and are known as one of the few animal groups, along with Homo sapiens, to have achieved the level of eusociality necessary to practice agriculture. It is estimated that ants began this practice at least 50 million years ago. The domestication of plant, fungus, and animal species by ants is well documented.
That’s up there with, the deer isn’t crossing the road, the road is crossing the forest. Always good to embrace new perspectives.
