h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I took my mom to see the movie 'Avatar' today. I wanted her to do something relaxing, to get her out of the house for a while. Well, she did get out of the house and she did indeed relax ... in fact, she slept through most of the movie! It's because of some medication she's currently using for some pain and stress problems she's having. But she did find the bits she did see, very beautiful and want to try again next week.

It's the second time I've seen the movie! Here are some thoughts.
I'll not spoil the story for anyone who hasn't seen it.

The movie is visually spectacular! It is an experience. Some people have, after seeing the movie, felt depressed because our humble old Earth is in their view not such a beautiful and impressive place as the moon Pandora portrayed in the movie. Well ...

... everything in the movie is actually very closely based on what we have here on Earth. The vegetation of Pandora is basically ferns and trees like we would find here, only on a bigger scale. What is different in the movie is the amount of 'glow-in-the-dark' vegetation (and nocturnal light emission by animals also). Some of the night-landscapes are of fairytale-like beauty! Whereas in an Earth forest at night, you're in total darkness ... except if some fireflies pass by, or if you happen on some luminescent fungi!

But in the oceans, bioluminescence here on Earth can be spectacular. You'll have to go a ways to find it, but if you do, you'll be amazed! Surface displays on the seas include the 'milky seas' effect and the 'wheels of Poseidon', caused by bioluminescent bacteria and plankton. Then in the deep seas there are displays from creatures like comb jellies, squid, fish and a large number of other kinds of critter.

Just because the scale is smaller, doesn't mean that it isn't still beautiful and amazing!

At least some of the plants and landscapes on Pandora were also inspired by underseas 'landscapes' (or seascapes) we have here. The ‘helicoradian’ tree, that withdraws its ‘fronds’ when touched, is based on a kind of tube worm that lives in our seas. In the movie, it’s on land, and much bigger. But like I said, size isn’t everything when it comes to aesthetics!

The ‘Tree of Souls’ has what looks very much like the tentacles or tendrils of a jellyfish.

The seeds from the ‘holy tree’ look very much like airborne jellyfish also.

For my money … the coral reef landscapes that we have in abundance on Earth … are more colourful, more diverse, more complex and interesting, than anything in the movie.

The forests, as well … real Earth forests, especially tropical and subtropical ones … and primeval Temperate forests as well … are the inspiration for the forests of Pandora, and for my money (and that comes to 30 Rands per ticket for the movie! A bit more, for a trip to the nearest forest per car) just as beautiful. Only again the scale is bigger, with the Hometree of Pandora being almost half a kilometer tall! But apart from that … I’ve seen forests every bit as verdant, with soft ferns underfoot, and the gnarly tree branches covered in mosses and lichens … magical to experience *for real*. And in the real forests of Earth, there’s the smell also … the musty smell of decay of the leaf litter below, but also the fresh and invigorating smells of a hundred or more different kinds of wild herbs. It’s all right there to touch or even taste as well, if you want to!

The *real* diversity of Earth is astronomically higher than what is seen of the wildlife of Pandora in the movie. Basically, we see ten different creatures … a chameleon-like thingy with a kind of glowing ‘parachute’ by which it glides … two kinds of flying creature, a horse-like thingy, two different kinds of carnivore, a huge rhino-like herbivore, a smaller deer-like herbivore, a ‘lemur’ like creature that supposedly is to the Na’vi as the lemurs (or even monkeys) are to us … and the Na’vi themselves.

On Earth, we have 5 400 known species of mammal; about 10 000 known species of bird; over 8 000 species of reptile; over 6 000 species of amphibian.

And there used to be more. Almost half the large mammal species that used to live just a short while ago (geologically speaking) are extinct now. Humans have also contributed towards the extinction of perhaps more than a thousand species of birds. So even what we have now, is a remnant of a diversity that was once significantly larger – our planet *can* support a greater diversity than what we have now, and did, too, in the past.

When it comes to plants, about 350 000 species of land plant are known … and many still await discovery.

In the oceans, we can assume that what we know just represents the tip of the iceberg. But we know of over 28 000 species of fish.

When it comes to invertebrates … whether living on land or in water … the sheer numbers alone are overwhelming: about a million species of insects are known, but ten times that number may await discovery; 52 000 species of crustacean are known, but this may be as little as a *hundredth* of what is really out there! Then there are the many other invertebrates … things called ‘worms’ but actually belonging to a great many different groups and ‘concealing’ and incredible degree of diversity … and things like starfish, jellyfish, corals, sponges … and many other things … too much to even mention!

As someone who’s spent most of his life learning about the biodiversity of the Earth, I can attest that this diversity goes beyond what the human mind can encompass or imagine. This is what we *have*! And it’s real … it can be accessed by us, in the wild places of our planet.

Everything in Avatar is clearly based on what we have here: the animals they ride, look and move like horses do … even though they have six legs. The predators are very reminiscent of cats and dogs. The large tree-smashing thing looks very much like a rhino or, even more, a titanothere (an extinct relative of horses and rhinos); the flying creatures are reminiscent of pterosaurs, bats, and (in the sense of having four wings) some of the feathered dinosaurs that were related to birds. They tried to give them some novel features, though …

They just mainly made the things larger, and more colourful.

The Na’vi themselves look *totally* too much like humans! That is what I found the farthest-fetched of all. Their hands look like ours, despite having only three fingers … so too their feet, so too their eyes, so too their torsos … I mean, even the arrangement of muscles. They have pectorals, biceps, lats … they have *teeth* like ours, apart from a couple of short fangs! Their tails hardly matter. And they have hair on their heads like us but not on the rest of their bodies … even though they have that weird ‘mind-mesh’ organ in their hair … which seems a rather strange place to have such a delicate organ.

Even more far-fetched … they cry like we do … they kiss like we do! It is presumed they have sex like we do also … otherwise, the ‘love story’ angle would be very awkward.

But if we really found an alien planet out there … the life on it would *not* by any means be like ours. There might be ecological equivalents for the things we have here … but they will have to have found solutions based on an entirely different and separate process of evolution. It can be presumed that land creatures will have to evolve some kind of internal skeleton so as to be able to become large … but this skeleton would probably have components that are very different from ours. The number and proportions of bones … the way they articulate with each other … and the way muscles connect to them … will all be on an *alien* plan. We can’t even take the presence of something equivalent to a skull for granted. Even if we feel that things like eyes would most conveniently be towards the front of their bodies or in ‘skulls’ … they can have two, or six, or four (some creatures in the film do have four eyes … why not the Na’vi?) ... and those eyes might look very different from eyes, not merely ‘yellow’! And their senses of smell can be housed in structures *very* different from noses or even the snouts of animals we know! The Na’vi’s mouths and teeth were for me weirdest of all. Organs that pull things into the digestive tract and mash them up take a startling variety of forms even here on Earth. Mouths with lips, and teeth, that look like ours, on a total alien … and even using them to *kiss* with as we do! I think even here on Earth, kissing isn’t even universal among humans … if you really think about it, it’s quite a strange thing to do.

Another ultra-far-fetched thing was the floating mountains (supposedly from high concentrations of ‘unobtainium’ floating in a strong magnetic field between the giant planet and the moon Pandora). That’s just plain impossible … no natural matter will float in a natural magnetic field, not on a small scale, let alone on the scale of the giant mountains in the movie.

If we want actual floating mountains or islands, we either have to go for ultra-high-tech-mega-engineering … or a total fantasy universe with physical laws other than what we have here.

OK I can make a hundred more critical remarks … but in the end, it was a movie! And a fun and spectacular one to watch. For what it’s worth I hope the movie can make people who think about it, treasure the life that we have here on Earth, a lot more. The movie does make a point of the value of living things, living networks, the energy and connectedness of Life … and this can be experienced here on our planet … and for the moment, nowhere else that we know of!

That sounds really interesting - though I'll wait and borrow the DVD on Netflix.

I second the motion about Earth's being more diverse. Your review makes me want to go and watch 'Winged Migration' again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q40h8dPmgwQ

Let's hear it for bioluminescence. (And no more glow-in-the-dark bunny rabbits, you gene-splicing performance artists...)

I'll bet that film's got your imagination circuits in overdrive, though...bet we see some more interesting worlds in ...I think you'd make a good planetary engineer.

I really wish they'd called the banshees dragons in the movie, since that's what they looked like

Thanks for the 'winged migration' video Dmitri! Amazing what those barnacle geese do. Another species, the Barheaded Goose, actually crosses the highest parts of the Himalaya Mountains on their migration!

You will soon be seeing some more stuff from me for 'Around the Day in Eighty Worlds'! I've just emailed The Post my latest pic ...


As for designing planets ... I'd suck because I'll insist on designing tens of thousands of different kinds of critters ... the world will never be done!

Hiya Amy ... yes, it's pretty much the thing that any large naked flying critter with leathery-ish wings is going to be reminiscent of a dragon! But even a dragon is simply an over-imagined lizard or crocodile hybridised with a bat.

Heh heh but I still think dragons are kewl! I've a dragon in the fantasy story I'm writing at the moment ...

Yeah, everybody likes s.

And 'Winged Migration' is one of my all-time favourite films. No virtual reality necessary, just ultra-light planes and some good cameras.

Looking forward to more imagined worlds, Willem.