Article 4: Ted Talks: Puppies!

Now that I have your attention, complexity theory

Speaker: Nicolas Perony
Seen 5/11/15

This Ted Talks discuss the behavior of animals and tries to answer the question of why
animals act as they do. To do this the speaker, Nicolas Perony, uses a tool called Complexity
theory, which he uses to rationalize the way animals socialize and communicate in a hierarchy.
Perony starts by using the example of Betchstien bats. As an extremely social animal,
they nest with their friends in two distinct colonies. Each year the bats return from their mating
grounds and Perony constructed a plot that showed how the bats knew who their friends were in
the colony every year with only a few individual bats nesting with those in the other colony. He
then brought up the Complexity theory, which, in its simplest form, states: simplicity leads to
complexity which leads to resilience. This relates to the bats in that their actions as individuals
were simple; find the bats you know and nest with them. This lead to the complex part of the
theory; with each bat following its simple rule, they form two separate colonies. And that in turn
leads to the resilient portion; if something were to happen to one of the colonies, only half of the
bats would die and the rest would remain unaffected, and as a benefit the animals are social
enough to recombine there colonies after such a disaster happened to the bats in question in
2010.
The other part of Peronys lecture, was about an African Meekrat community. This
meekrat community had a strict Hierarchy and whenever these particular meekrats had to cross a
road to get to their feeding grounds, the subordinate meekrats would dart across the road first so
that if a car came it would hit the subordinate meekrats before the dominat females (as the
dominate meekrats were female in this colony). Here we again see Complexity theory at work.

The subordinates follow the simple rule of crossing the road before the female, the complexity
gathers when the female is at the least risk of being run over, and they become resilient by
keeping their breeding options alive.
The biggest question I had from this Ted Talks was whether or not smaller organisms
without brains could replicate this Complexity theory. As far as I can tell the colonies bacteria
form have no inclination of what theyre doing but is that in itself Complexity theory?
This Article fits into my portfolio like Tom Cruise fits in an airplane. This Ted Talks
could be the spirit animal of life survivability. The Complexity theory explains how animals use
simple instincts to fund the greater instinct of staying alive and well.