James Cameron's Avatar - a biological review
February 3rd 2010 14:31
Avatar is a big budget movie produced with state-of-the-art technology (in fact, Cameron had to wait for several years for the technology to catch up to his vision). Well, the result is stunning. Avatar takes place on Pandora, a moon of a gas giant in the Alpha Centauri system (the moon is fictitious, but the star system is real. At about 4.4 light years away, it is the closest system to our own). Pandora is home to many strange animals and plants. What's great about the film, though, is that these organisms are mechanically feasible, in the sense that such creatures could actually exist and could move the way that they are depicted. Apparently, Cameron hired real biologists to act as consultants for the creature designs, and the effect is wonderful. The plants, too, with their bioluminescence and reaction to physical stimuli. Pandora is utterly believable. Thing is, these organisms might well have evolved on Earth if initial starting conditions had been slightly different. It's not only that the Pandoran organisms are filling niches we would recognise of terrestrial organisms, but are rather similar to the organisms we have on our planet. The Thanator, the giant predator in the film, is quite like a lion, say, except much larger of course (it also has six legs, as do the other animals. I suspect that there's nothing particularly special about the quadruped configuration on Earth; it could well represent a "frozen accident" that was subsequently inherited by thousands of species. And insects, you'll note, do have six legs. Why not four? Or eight - which arachnids have. Or more, which is the case with centipedes and millipedes. We need not suppose that every quadraped was selected to have four legs, only that certain features of embryology constrain them to having four legs. My money is on the number of appendages being relatively variable wherever complex multiceullar life has evolved).
Now, I should say that, in my view, the Na'vi (the intelligent bipeds on Pandora) were far too humanoid to be plausible. It's entirely possible that humanoids exist, and that bipedality convergently evolves throughout the universe as a prerequisite for intelligent life (though we have no way of knowing that, and the alternative - that intelligent life is represented by a myriad of forms - is also entirely plausible. I am agnostic with regard to what ET should look like, and I regard both possibilities as fascinating in themselves). For them to look almost identical to us is stretching credulity to breaking point. The reason that they look as human as they do is, I suspect, not for any sound scientific reason, but simply to allow us to more easily relate to and empathise with them, which is clearly what the director intended. Of course, the Na'vi do have some alien features. Their tails allow them to connect to other animals and transfer their thoughts to them. And their bones are "reinforced with naturally occurring carbon-fibre". That gave me goose-bumps.
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One of the other themes in the movie is a connectedness to nature, and on Pandora, this connectedness is embodied in a conscious network, if you will, called Eywa, which the Na'vi perceive as a deity. Whether this is plausible is open to speculation, but I don't see any particular reason why even such an apparently fanciful entity or system couldn't in principle exist. It might not bear any relevance, but plants on Earth are known to have remarkably sophisticated communication through the use of chemicals. Our brains are electro-chemical networks, and it's not at all hard to imagine that on another planet, the distinction between plant and animal is blurred (actually, there are some organisms on our own planet that have exquisite symbiotic relationships with plants). A conscious tree or association of trees is not so out of the realm of plausibility as one might think. Of course, such an organism would had to have evolved through a process something like Darwinian evolution. It's not true that anything can evolve. But personally I think that the idea of Eywa is interesting enough to warrant at least a moment of consideration.
All in all, Avatar is a very entertaining, moving experience. And thankfully, it has some good science to make it all the more believable and intriguing.
The fearsome Thanator, prime predator on Pandora. Image from www.pandorapedia.com
Now, I should say that, in my view, the Na'vi (the intelligent bipeds on Pandora) were far too humanoid to be plausible. It's entirely possible that humanoids exist, and that bipedality convergently evolves throughout the universe as a prerequisite for intelligent life (though we have no way of knowing that, and the alternative - that intelligent life is represented by a myriad of forms - is also entirely plausible. I am agnostic with regard to what ET should look like, and I regard both possibilities as fascinating in themselves). For them to look almost identical to us is stretching credulity to breaking point. The reason that they look as human as they do is, I suspect, not for any sound scientific reason, but simply to allow us to more easily relate to and empathise with them, which is clearly what the director intended. Of course, the Na'vi do have some alien features. Their tails allow them to connect to other animals and transfer their thoughts to them. And their bones are "reinforced with naturally occurring carbon-fibre". That gave me goose-bumps.
Neytiri, the female Na'vi who fights to defend her people from the human onslaught. Image from www.hdwallpapers.in
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One of the other themes in the movie is a connectedness to nature, and on Pandora, this connectedness is embodied in a conscious network, if you will, called Eywa, which the Na'vi perceive as a deity. Whether this is plausible is open to speculation, but I don't see any particular reason why even such an apparently fanciful entity or system couldn't in principle exist. It might not bear any relevance, but plants on Earth are known to have remarkably sophisticated communication through the use of chemicals. Our brains are electro-chemical networks, and it's not at all hard to imagine that on another planet, the distinction between plant and animal is blurred (actually, there are some organisms on our own planet that have exquisite symbiotic relationships with plants). A conscious tree or association of trees is not so out of the realm of plausibility as one might think. Of course, such an organism would had to have evolved through a process something like Darwinian evolution. It's not true that anything can evolve. But personally I think that the idea of Eywa is interesting enough to warrant at least a moment of consideration.
All in all, Avatar is a very entertaining, moving experience. And thankfully, it has some good science to make it all the more believable and intriguing.
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