Book extract: Revelling in the marvels and secrets of Ireland’s creatures

Anja Murray has been writing 'Nature File' for RTÉ Lyric FM since 2017 and wants readers to indulge their own biophilia with this selection

• Frog Routes, Polka-Dot Newts and Other Treasures of Irish Nature 
• Anja Murray 
• Gill Books, €22.99

The antics that go on, honestly! Caterpillars that sing, squeezing body parts together to make a squeaky, chirping noise, calling in ants for assistance and protection. 

Wood mice using sticks, stones and shells to make signposts for themselves, marking the route to a grove of fresh bluebell shoots for a fresh spring feast. 

Profoundly intelligent pilot whales using unique signature whistles for each other, with language and regional dialects, living in communities in which kinship is traced through the female line.

Hundreds of oak trees synchronising the production of acorns every few years in order to outwit the squirrels who might otherwise eat them all. 

Clovers hosting nitrogen-fixing bacteria in their root nodules, a symbiosis that allows them to harvest nitrogen directly from the air. 

Male oysters spawning at the beginning of the breeding season, then changing gender, becoming female and spawning again later in the season as egg-producing females. 

Sharks’ electroreceptors that allow them to detect the electro-magnetic pulses that every creature emits, so they can sense a heartbeat from miles away.

Life is unfathomably elaborate. Each and every species is ridiculously well adapted to a very particular niche in the world, each organism with their own unique way of being.

Up to 12 million distinct species in existence

It is estimated that there are between six and 12 million distinct species currently in existence, each endowed with mind-boggling physiological traits and abilities, complex life strategies and an array of inter-species relationships, all honed through millions of years of evolution.

*

 

Collectively, all these living organisms join forces to maintain the conditions suitable for life on this planet.

Picturing the Earth as it appears from space, it is life itself that produces the turquoise hues of the oceans and the chlorophyll greens that cover the continents. 

Even the clouds that show up on satellite images of Earth from afar are there because of the existence of oceanic algae and the particles they emit into the atmosphere. 

Living organisms are the reason why oxygen levels are so well suited to life as it currently exists. 

And rather than each life form having evolved in response to the existing material environment, communities of living organisms and the ecosystems of which they are part have been actively shaping the material environment on this planet since life first appeared. 

It is life that plays a key role in actively maintaining habitable conditions on planet Earth, an iterative, self-regulating system.

Natural world is a constant source of wonder

Understanding some of the aspects of how the natural world works is a constant source of wonder, but even without these insights, we humans have an innate propensity to recognise, explore and marvel at the variety of living things with whom we share our world. 

My earliest memory is of being under a hedge, surrounded by a reassuring tangle of overhead branches, in a playpen of primroses. 

I was submerged in awe. I felt I had discovered a magical miniature realm, one that only I, being the youngest and smallest of the family, could enter.

Perhaps at the same time I was ensconced among that bank of primroses, the distinguished evolutionary biologist EO Wilson was about to publish his book Biophilia. 

He begins this seminal work by describing humans’ inherent love of nature, how we are genetically programmed to subconsciously seek connections with the life around us, to understand, explore and interpret the living world. 

The extent to which we thrive, both as a society and as a species, depends on this propensity.

Now, decades after leaving that idyllic home in the Wicklow Mountains, I still remember the enchantment I experienced as a child: Clambering up into the reaching boughs of an old oak tree; nesting in under hedges full of life; and peering into a swallows’ nest in the barn to gape at the open yellow beaks of featherless chicks, eager for their parents to return with balls of insect protein. 

I am still just as inclined to clamber into and over the nooks and crannies where I can lie among the fractal shapes of ferns, examine the repeating textures of mosses, wonder at the geometry of flowers, and feel the promise of hazel branches when they begin to bud in spring. 

These tendencies are a normal human behaviour.

These innate affinities with the natural world, now coined in the term biophilia, have been essential for the development of our species, as we learned to adapt to new environments and fulfil our needs by our knowledge of the plants and animals that make up all the habitats where we too live. 

It is no wonder that we are hardwired to be intrigued by the life that surrounds us.

Yet, our current culture is one in which our predisposition to observe and connect with nature is seen as childish or dismissed as hippy dippy. 

The tendency, even among conservation scientists, is to stick to hard science: Facts and figures pertaining to the behaviour or population dynamics of certain species; quantifiable thresholds of pollutants; and the ever-rising parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. 

By distancing ourselves such, we devalue these connections and restrict our understanding of the natural world to cold mechanics. This viewpoint is seen as objective.

Dissociated, we even consider ourselves superior to all the other creatures on the planet. This gives us rights and entitlements, which in turn leads to a lethal misunderstanding about our place in the world.

In writing Nature File for RTÉ Lyric FM since 2017, I have been indulging in biophilia. 

Each week, I explore intriguing stories about Ireland’s natural world, weaving scientific insights together with folklore, ethnobotany and history. 

In the collection that follows here, I have assembled glimpses into the lives and relationships of a selection of wild creatures, all of which are, or were once, part of Irish ecosystems. 

Some of these stories are about familiar plants and animals; those we see on a daily basis, such as earthworms, lichens, dandelions, and pigeons; their life strategies and the cultural associations.

Some are about butterflies, birds and mammals that are readily encountered when we foray into the hedgerows, fields, woodlands, rivers, lakes and shorelines. 

There are pieces about sea snails, cold water corals and pilot whales: Oceanic creatures we know are out there but rarely get to observe in person. 

In each case, I seek to understand and describe their place in the world, and celebrate their elaborate adaptations and interdependent relationships with other organisms. 

In compiling a selection of Nature Files for this book, I am encouraging you to let loose your innate biophilia.

Whatever hope we might nurture for the future, much depends on our cultural perspectives about our own place in the webs of life that power the world.

* There are approximately 2.2 million formally recognised living species in the world; however, most experts suggest that the real number of species is between six and 12 million.

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