I'm not a speciesist, but...

Is it a paradox to hate your own species? Is such a feeling the product of a broken and conflicted mind? Or could it perhaps be the signature of psychopathy? Every day these questions run through my mind and I feel guilty. Why? Well, because I do hate my own species. Homo sapiens is terrible, and I’m surprised more people don’t recognise this.

However, before you get the wrong impression, let me set the record straight. Humanity, as a collection of cultures and societies, has done some wonderful things. Art, music, architecture, writing, science, technology, civil systems of government: all good. I can appreciate those. But at the end of the day, as a biologist interested in the fascinating biological aspects of living organisms, it seems obvious to me that humans are just - how do I put this - dull. Loathsome. Mind-numbingly boring.

Yeah, I’m petty enough to judge a hyper-intelligent race of primates - with a global civilisation, mind - on its biologically reductionist merits. But that’s just who I am, and rather than try to change my perspective, I'd much prefer to revel in the huge realm of majesty that opens up when one rejects the primacy of our own species. The world is so much grander than most people realise - and their focus on themselves denies them the knowledge of that fact.

Let’s start close to home. We are mammals: we lactate (from aptly named mammary glands), we have fur and we’re endothermic (able to produce our own body heat). But we’re very average mammals. Most of our closest relatives, such as the chimpanzee and the gorilla, are much stronger than us - we wouldn’t last two seconds in a fight. Moving further away, bats have evolved the incredible ability to reconstruct their environment using sound waves, and are able to hone in on and catch their erratic prey - insects - in a stunningly accurate fashion. Most of us can’t even catch a fly with chopsticks, and those of us who can aren't born with this ability.

Whales taunt us from the sea in bodies forced into streamlined forms, and some of them even do so from up to 3 kilometres below the surface of the ocean. And teetering on the edge of mammalian classification, platypuses have ten sex chromosomes (our two pale in comparison), and males have spurs that deliver a shot of venom to anyone or anything that gets too close. The best we humans can muster is a mildly irritating scratch from our fingernails or a moderately annoying bite from our flimsy jaws. Yes, that hyena over there, with its ability to crush bones, is laughing at you, and rightly so. You look ridiculous trying to eat that steak.

From their own branch of the evolutionary tree, insects also laugh - or at least they would if they could. Termites and wood roaches, for example, are more fascinating than most people will ever be, with ridiculous Russian doll situations going on inside their digestive systems. Single-celled protists known as flagellates live in their hindguts, helping them break down the cellulose and woody polymers that make up a large part of their diets. However, these flagellates have other single-celled organisms - numerous species of bacteria - living inside them, which assist their hosts in various ways too¹.

This relationship - endosymbiosis - is prevalent throughout insect and protist species, and while humans and other vertebrates are partial to a bit of endosymbiosis as well, it’s exclusively the extracellular variety, much like the flagellates in the termite/wood roach gut, not the intracellular variety, like the bacteria inside the cells of the flagellates. Most insects have a leg up on us in that respect, with specialised cells called bacteriocytes existing solely for the purpose of housing their bacterial friends. Pea aphids are no exception: their diet is exclusively plant phloem, but it’s remarkably low in amino acids, so they get their intracellular endosymbionts - Buchnera aphidicola - to make them some. I’d like to see a human subsist on sugary water for the rest of his or her life. A human being wouldn’t last a more than a month before keeling over from malnutrition.

Speaking of aphids, they have another fascinating - albeit slightly freaky - characteristic, known as telescoping generations. Like some other insects, and indeed some reptiles, their females are able to reproduce without the presence of males through a process known as parthenogenesis. Essentially, they’re able to become pregnant with their own clones. However, aphids take it one step further (and here’s where it gets really creepy), in that parthenogenetic offspring can be born already pregnant with their own clones². Forget endosymbiosis, that’s a real Russian doll situation. Matryoshka artists beware.

Okay, so we’ve looked at mammals and insects: are there any other organisms that make an obvious mockery of our own self-importance? Of course there are, and most of them do. But I don’t have enough time to cover them all, so let’s focus on one giant subsection: insects’ little buddies, bacteria. Your body has about 10 times as many bacterial cells in and on it right now as it does your own cells, and the biosphere as we know it would probably crumble away if bacteria suddenly disappeared from the planet. And while they may be tiny, they shouldn’t be underestimated. They will defeat you in a fight, and we all succumb to them in the end.

Animals, plants, fungi and protists all have complex bodies and cellular architectures, but bacteria are far more streamlined, eschewing tricky developmental processes for an impressive array of biochemical capabilities. Humans can’t live on plant sap alone? There are probably thousands of species of bacteria that would thrive on it, given the opportunity. Humans can’t live at the interface of freezing ocean and scalding hydrothermal vents? Bacteria can. Humans can’t live under rocks in Antarctica? Bacteria definitely can. They will live nearly absolutely anywhere.

One of the best examples of bacterial biochemical bad-assery are strains of Pseudomonas and Cupriavidus that can use 3-nitropropionic acid - a potent toxin produced by some legumes and fungi - as its sole source of carbon, nitrogen and energy³. That’s right. You read correctly. They can live nearly entirely off something that has the potential to kill every single person you love. It’s this insane metabolic flexibility that allows bacteria to easily evolve the ability to degrade - and often utilise - man-made insecticides, pesticides and industrial chemicals that don’t exist in the environment naturally. Efforts are even being made to isolate bacteria that can help clean up radioactive waste… so it looks to me like these relatively simple single-celled creatures could potentially hold the future of the human race in their biochemical hands. Pray that they don’t turn on us in our sleep, because you know they could.

So there you have it, numerous reasons to be biologically humble. I feel a little better with that all out of my system, to be honest. Remember, we’re certainly not at the top of the pile when it comes to fascinating lifeforms, so don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. We’ve just been saddled with big brains - our one redeeming feature - that allow us to ponder the nature of reality… and why indeed we suck so much.

1. Carpenter et al. Morphology, Phylogeny, and Diversity of Trichonympha (Parabasalia: Hypermastigida) of the Wood‐Feeding Cockroach Cryptocercus punctulatus. Journal of Eukaryotic Microbiology (2009) vol. 56 (4) pp. 305-313

2. Kindlmann and Dixon. Developmental constraints in the evolution of reproductive strategies: telescoping of generations in parthenogenetic aphids. Functional Ecology (1989) pp. 531-537

3. Nishino et al. Growth of Bacteria on 3-Nitropropionic Acid as a Sole Source of Carbon, Nitrogen, and Energy. Applied and Environmental Microbiology (2010) vol. 76 (11) pp. 3590-3598