The Vole's Hox and I: Exploratory Systems (or, "Am I a Psychopath?")

The Vole's Hox and I: Exploratory Systems

Kauffman wrote about phase transitions, Gerhart and Kirschner about exploratory systems. Both concepts frame this true story. There's a more relevant context than that from either Kauffman or Gerhart and Kirschner: a summer visitor-to-be was advised by her boyfriend that I am a psychopath. If I'm a psychopath, I would admit it for only my gain, not hers. If I'm not a psychopath, my denial would have no credibility because I might in fact be one. "Yes" or "No," she learns nothing from my response.
JB
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Spring...a phase between snow and drought. I lit a match to the lee side of a mound of dead branches, collapsed and left slightly moist by unusually heavy snows that melted only a few weeks ago. I nursed one tiny core of flame until it spread to half the mound.

A vibration from a small thatch of yellow grass drew my attention. The commotion moved closer to the fire's rim. I saw a tiny brown rodent, beady small eyes, small ears, and small tail with an infant one quarter her size in her mouth. She disappeared a few inches up hill from the blaze.

"Oh crap. A nest. What had I done?"

I dug quickly with my hands and found a small mass of waving pink legs and squirming gray and pink bodies. The heat drove me off. I was higher up. The pups were temporarily protected by their low elevation and the cold wet earth underneath.

I plunged my shovel between the fire and the pups and moved them all 18 inches towards safety.

Now what was I to do with this wad of kids? Leave them mixed with dirt and grass to die from heat loss? I could not hear their cries nor could I see them. Nor could I rear them. And the evolutionary homily that "kill' em, there's plenty more of these, perhaps within a yard or two" did nothing for my chagrin. (At these moments I feel guilty even about trying to silence my guilt.)

There was another small commotion to my right and 18 inches from the pups...mom was at its center, digging up from below to rescue me as much as her pups.

I waited till she had a hole established. I then combed through the lump of earth, separated pups from cold dirt, then scooped up all of them and dropped one at a time on her threshold. And one at a time they vanished until all eight were gone.

She appeared for a ninth time and looked at me with a steady gaze.

I looked at her and went back to the mound of dirt and soft hay, combed it once more and found a ninth infant which also disappeared when I left it at her new doorway. I rearranged some of my burning sticks while she made two more sweeps through her former nest before she disappeared. She had probably learned about male carelessness from prior lovers.

She left me an unintended present, the loose wad of fine hay that once surrounded her litter. I thought of hox genes that I share with her and about the fundamental similarity that is still present 100 million years after the ancestors of an ungainly scholar (who thinks a small rodent is pretty cute) and a little rodent both said farewell to their last shared mother. I also thought about nests as a type of exploratory system that mediates the conflicts between a developing core and its surroundings. The hay nest, for example, substituted for hair, buffering temperature variation while remaining dry and free of bacteria that would compromise bare warm moist skin.

The nest's insulation also let each of her children act as a living capacitor, slower to discharge energy while she foraged. And for a little while, I became an extension of both the nest and of her, rather than merely the exploratory system for an uncertain fire. In any case, she and I both made a personal world, she from hay and I from a thought.

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As to psychopathy: I finished the first draft of this essay and my phone rang: "Hello, I'm Evita on behalf of the 'Save A Child Foundation.'"

I hung up.

References

Gerhart, John & Kirschner, Marc (1997) Cells, Embryos, and Evolution. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Kirschner, M & Gerhart, J (1998) Perspective: Evolvability. Proceedings National Academy of Science, 95(15), 8420-8427.
Kauffman, S. (1995) At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self Organization and Complexity. NY: Oxford.
Carroll, Sean, Grenier, J., & Weatherbee, S. (2001) From DNA to Diversity: Molecular Genetics and the Evolution of Animal Design. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Gould, S. (2002) The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Belknap.
Raff, Rudolf (1996) The Shape of Life. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Copyright 2003, James Brody, all rights reserved.

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Re:The Vole's Hox and I: Exploratory Systems (or, , by Todd, 04/30/03

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