Life in the Colonies

Life in the Colonies

What’s the plural of man o’ war ?
‘Men’, or ‘wars’, or stays the same ?
(And why are you so Portuguese ?)
All told, a silly name.

But scientists insist
That you’re already plurals, each.
That what we see are vibrant cities
Washed up on the beach.

See, ev’ry egg, once fertilised,
Divides in two, and two again,
Until a little larva, sized
No larger than a grain.

You then begin your budding,
Popping clones that stay attached.
So from a single egg, it seems,
A hundred brothers hatched.

Genetic’ly identical,
But not such dead-on ringers,
Specialising as they do,
As feeders, breeders, or as stingers,

Sharing nutrients and tissue,
And even gender too, we note.
And one (and only one) will swell
Into a gas-filled float.

But are you really colonies ?
So should we view your ev’ry clone
As sep’rate creatures ?  Even though
That can’t survive to swim alone ?

Perhaps it’s the lack of a nervous system
That makes you many, not one –
But do your individual zooids
Each have their own, or also none ?

If the latter, why are these animals,
And not mini-colonies all of their own ?
I guess the stingers at least must feel
A sense of touch (though they act alone).

Infact, the latest research says
That they do all communicate yet –
Though less as a mainframe brain, as such,
And more of an intranet.

So, much the same as your jellyfish-cousins,
Which are single, the sciences agree –
I guess it’s just a matter of degrees,
And the whims of the arbit’ry.

It’s like you’re halfway between your single-celled past,
And their unified future –
If we look close, we can still see the joins,
Though they’re barely more than a suture.

Victorians proposed their status,
As best as they could see –
And we repeat their holy writ,
Afraid to disagree.

Now evolution is wholly unplanned,
But teamwork is what wins the cup –
Yet the scientists would round you down,
Where I would round you up.

You’re just like us – we’re not so special,
We’re all made of cells,
For all we call in pedants
To deny the parallels –

Especially when we realise
That zooids cannot change their role –
From stems, they are assigned a job for life,
To build a greater whole.

That sounds alot like organs, doesn’t it ?
Time we came to terms.
For we began the same as you –
A ball of cells, a swarm of germs.

So as for what we call you,
Just what kind of things you are ?
‘Men’ or ‘wars’, it matters not –
Let’s call you singular.

Perhaps the boffins have got it right, and syphonophores really are collectives and are fundamentally different from single animals like jellyfishes.  But they’re gonna havta do a much better job of explaining it.  So kudos to The Octopus Lady for her illuminating video which is the first attempt I’ve seen to actually ask the question “but why do we think these are colonies…?”  Her answer – because although the zooids cannot survive alone, it is slow starvation that kills them (because they cannot feed themselves in solo), not biologiocal breakdown as would quickly befall any of our shed cells. This feels like a decicion based on no more than a gut feeling, and until it is quantified somehow, I don’t want to hear a peep from all of you factoid vomiters out there who just love a sneery “well, actually…”