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Cetacean Dreams
A
Column by Charles Miller
I just woke up from a pretty weird dream. Don't get me wrong, I'm not
about to relate some mystical experience; rather, it was a dream that
started me thinking about another topic. In my dream, I was at the
beach (my favorite place), enjoying the sun, surf and sand. I reclined
in the sand for hours at a time until I became too hot, then plodded to
the water and submerged myself for a few hours--this is not at all
unusual from my real life--and when I became waterlogged, I'd return to
the beach to sun myself. Granted, my dreams are not as fantastic as
those of some people (but mine are
in color).
In the course of traipsing back and forth at the water's edge (in this
dream), a crowd of spectators happened by--tourist types--led by what
appeared to be a naturalist tour guide. They all stopped and observed
me entering and exiting the water for a long time, as this naturalist
explained that I was "obeying ancient migratory instinct," dating back
to when I was in "evolutionary transition" from sea creature to land
creature.
At this point, I awoke with the strange sensation of having a mouthful
of seawater; however, as I became fully conscious, I realized that this
sensation was just an artifact of the dream, and that I actually had no
seawater in my mouth at all. So I didn't bother to spit it out.
But, all dreaming aside, this started me considering a new angle on
another, not wholly-unrelated topic: The reason why whales and other
cetaceans "mysteriously" beach themselves. Perhaps I've merely had an
uneducated glimmering of long-accepted cetacean biology, so this is
quite new to me. The notion makes sense, even by the precept of Occam's
Razor: That cetaceans, which are accepted by science as former
land-dwellers, sometimes attempt to follow old migratory paths, from a
far-flung time when they still moved en masse between the dry land and
the sea and back
again.
Granted, this does
entail that you accept "genetic memory," and that's not too much of a
leap of faith for anyone who has read this far. I think it's safe to
say that genetic memory is a "given" in some areas of science,
particularly in the study of embryonic development. The embryo of a
mammal, as you probably know, passes through several very non-mammal
phases, from single-celled to fish-like to amphibian-like to
reptile-like and finally to the much more comfortable and politically
correct mammal phase.
Sometimes--explicable only through a theory of physical "genetic
memory"--babies are born with tails and/or gills. Fortunately, these
superfluous accessories are non-functioning the majority of the time
and can be surgically removed. But the fact remains that our physiology
retains a "memory" of the evolutionary progression.
What is less accepted is that we and other creatures might retain a
deep neuro-genetic memory--a superfluous memory of patterns of behavior
dating back to the dim recesses of evolutionary history. In its most
shallow and diluted form, behavioralists accept this as "instinct," but
instinct sometimes becomes uncomfortable and politically incorrect when
pursued to its logical depths.
In the case of cetaceans, it seems rather clear that these big mammals
once tread upon the dry ground, but gradually found a more plentiful
food source in the ocean. Their metamorphosis from land dweller to
ocean denizen did not take place in a day or a year or a thousand
years, but over long ages of seasonal ebb and flow, during which time
they no doubt migrated from the land to the sea and back many times.
Given that the cetaceans still
retain a physical genetic memory of their long-ago visit upon dry land
(metacarpal and metatarsal digits within their fins), might not these
big creatures retain a neuro-genetic memory of their migratory paths
between land and sea? Might not a few of them still attempt to beach
themselves, obeying a genetic memory of migration, despite the fact
that they can no longer negotiate the high ground? Sure they might.
Copyright
1999 by The Anomalist.