FIERCE, YET NUMEROUS

There is, of course, one animal that is not at all rare, yet fairly big, and fiercer than any other¾killing for food, killing for fun, and killing even his own species, homo sapiens. But it does not invalidate the reason why (other) big fierce animals are rare. Like other living things, homo extracts negentropy from his environment for himself and his structures (houses, cities, roads, bridges, industries), pushing off the increased entropy (and disorder) onto the more distant inanimate environment, as explained last month. But unlike any other living organism, homo has the ability to adapt to his environment immediately and radically, and what is more, adapt the environment to himself ("change his niche," the ecologists say).(*)

It was this unique ability of "changing his niche" that enabled man to multiply far beyond the limits allowed by the calories he had been "allotted" as a berry-picker and hunter. He increased not just the number of his species more successfully than other predators, but¾ and this is important¾he was able to increase his concentration in members per unit area of feeding ground. Not, of course, by breaking the unbreakable laws of physics; but by hauling in more energy instead of letting his numbers be limited by the original supply.

Typically, only man tamed fire, a revolution (an energy revolution!) whose significance is sometimes misunderstood. It gave man warmth, yes; but if it had done nothing else, he would not have needed it in low latitudes. Its real importance was ecological: It vastly increased man's food supply by disinfecting, detoxifying, and just plain softening foods that had been germ-infested, toxic, and physically inedible. It made more energy available per unit feeding ground than "allotted" to the origin human animal. [The Fate of Nations leaves out fire and jumps straight to the second ecological¾and energy¾ revolution, herding animals and growing plants. What a thing for an ecologist to miss!]

The word niche is used by ecologists to denote a suitable position or activity allowing a plant or animal to survive in its environment, and for an explanation they refer to its meaning in the sense of the French la niche, a recessed space in a wall for holding the statue of a saint if you call that an explanation. It seems to us that the language to go to is German, the "scientific" language of the 19^th century (Latin before that, English now); in German, die Nische means a crack, a nook or a cranny¾in which a living thing seeks security as it struggles to survive in a hostile world.