| There is a secret zoo that runs encaged along the | | | | animals have a long period in which to mature before |
| roads.They are liquid, semi-visible goliaths that rage | | | | coming against obstacles like influxes of new cars or |
| through the streams and chunks of ordinary traffic, | | | | navigating around towns; and because the highway |
| with the effervescent tendrils of mile-long tales | | | | wends its way directly through most of Canada's |
| whipping behind them like Chinese dragons. Though | | | | major cities, it provides a handy litmus test for the |
| composed of hundreds of pounds of steel, glass and | | | | homeostatic integrity of a given specimen simply by |
| plastic, they are able to pass through solid objects. | | | | observing whether or not it makes it through to the |
| They are bound by the laws of the highway, but not | | | | other side of the urban area intact.While daytime ATA |
| by any conventional notion of time or space.They are | | | | formation is not rare, it is under the cover of darkness |
| Aggregate Traffic Animals: a menagerie of emergent | | | | that development can proceed in a comparatively |
| beasts drawn from the interacting behaviours of many | | | | unfettered fashion. This is due in large part to the more |
| individual human beings driving many individual cars with | | | | abstract, disconnected experience of interacting with |
| many individual goals, their collective activity giving rise | | | | other vehicles merely as points of coloured light. |
| to something with greater presence, power and | | | | Familiar prejudices and stereotypes -- potential |
| purpose than the sum of its constituents. They take on | | | | sources of destructive competition -- are smoothed |
| a host of different forms, each to serve a different | | | | out by the shadows. At least on the basis of visual |
| end.They are real, and they drive among us.PreambleIn | | | | impressions, a Volvo and a Camaro can enter a |
| his introduction to The Extended Phenotype (Oxford | | | | system as peers.Diminished visibility resulting from mild |
| University Press, 1982) enthusiastic evolutionary biology | | | | to moderate weather conditions can have a similar |
| cheerleader and Commodore-hacking pop-science | | | | equalising effect, but when conditions become too |
| guru Richard Dawkins invites us to consider the | | | | severe drivers tend to clump into packs for safety, |
| Necker Cube Illusion: a two-dimensional image | | | | leading to pseudo-ATA fleets that are all too |
| representing two interlocked three-dimensional blocks | | | | conscious social events (as in the Quintana Roo |
| in which the foreground and background can seem to | | | | experience).Show me an autumn stretch of prairie |
| flip back and forth as the brain fruitlessly seeks the | | | | transcontinental highway at twilight, and I will show you |
| "true" interpretation of the depicted space. This is | | | | the secret zoo of the road.Typical MorphologiesThe |
| Dawkins' starting point for a thought experiment in | | | | most basic form of multi-car life is the Asipetal |
| which he blurs the lines between species, their genes | | | | Caterpillar, also known as a worm. Worms begin when |
| and the environment, calling into question the traditional | | | | a stable solo vehicle spawns a linear, single-lane chain |
| boundaries drawn through biological systems to identify | | | | of vehicles composed of loose monomers joining at |
| the relevant level of study. To wit, to wank:We look at | | | | the rear (a closely related, but dysfunctional, construct |
| life and begin by seeing a collection of interacting | | | | known as an Acropetal Caterpillar grows by adding |
| individual organisms. We know that they contain | | | | vehicles to the front of the chain, generally leading to |
| smaller units, and we know that they are, in turn, parts | | | | destructive diffusion or autolysis). Short, lithe worms |
| of larger composite units, but we fix our gaze on the | | | | are the fundamental building blocks of healthy ATA |
| whole organisms. Then suddenly the image flips. The | | | | tissue. Perverse, long-form worms are the seeds of |
| individual bodies are still there; they have not moved, | | | | congestion and death.The second atomic element of |
| but they seem to have gone transparent...In other | | | | ATA tissue stands in stark contrast to the worm, for it |
| words, if you are able to de-emphasise the organism | | | | is a fleeting thing, and when it takes concrete form at |
| itself you are free to appreciate the idea of beaver | | | | all it is often manifested as a single car. The Apparent |
| ponds as artificial lakes generated by beaver genes, or | | | | Coxswain is a vehicle that appears, to the conscious |
| to see a spider's web as an arrangement of silk | | | | or semi-conscious mind of one or more drivers, to be |
| drawn by DNA. By extending the lines with which we | | | | a leader of the worm. When the Apparent Coxswain |
| bound the traditional phenotype, we define new | | | | changes lanes, there is a higher probability that a |
| organisms, merging technology and individuals into | | | | majority of the worm will follow suit than if the change |
| communities the same way that ancient | | | | were initiated by a less trusted vehicle. In many cases |
| micro-organisms interacting inside bilipid membranes fell | | | | each car in a worm perceives the car immediately |
| into symbiotic lockstep dances to found the first stable | | | | ahead of it to be the Apparent Coxswain, leading to |
| cells.Organelles, cells, bodies, herds: at which level we | | | | domino-effect lane-transitions; such formations have |
| discern the animal is purely a matter of focus.This idea | | | | high homeostatic integrity because of the worm's |
| of the emergent animal or "super-organism" is hardly | | | | ability to "find a new head" should one Apparent |
| particular to Dawkins: William Morton Wheeler | | | | Coxswain be lost to the currents. (Please note: the |
| remarked on the idea in his 1911 paper "The Ant | | | | Apparent Coxswain should not be confused with the |
| Colony as an Organism" in a treatment that is every | | | | Virtual Coxswain or the Napoleonic Coxswain, |
| bit as cogent but with considerably less otaku chic than | | | | discussed below.)Formations that achieve such |
| Kevin Kelly's printed-soundbyte manifesto on hive | | | | integration become Cholingers: Asipetal Caterpillars |
| complexity, Out of Control (Perseus Books, 1994). In | | | | with tightly-integrated internal feedback systems of |
| the words of Kelly:There is nothing to be found in a | | | | Apparent Coxswains, capable of transmitting |
| beehive that is not submerged in a bee. And yet you | | | | information from tip to tail with high fidelity. Cholingers |
| can search a bee forever with cyclotron and | | | | can slither to avoid torn tyres on the road, twitch |
| fluoroscope, and you will never find a hive.So too can | | | | around slow-moving vehicles, and even slip through |
| you examine a driver in a car and know nothing about | | | | packs of alien worms, wild axenes and other traffic |
| the greater animal in which they both participate when | | | | froth to arrive on the other side intact.Of course, not all |
| the circumstances are right. Some of the applicable | | | | Cholingers slip through the strangers: sometimes they |
| forces can be seen most clearly in the rarified | | | | interact.Every Cholinger is either benthic or pelagic. |
| environment of the professional race course, as | | | | Benthic Cholingers travel at a similar rate to the |
| explored by David Ronfeldt, a senior social scientist at | | | | currents of the road, while Pelagic Cholingers travel at |
| RAND, in his 2002 paper Social Science at 190 MPH | | | | a dissimilar rate when compared to other traffic |
| on NASCAR's Biggest Superspeedways, where | | | | (typically a faster rate). It is possible, however, for a |
| fleeting moments of co-operation between rivals are | | | | benthic line to be picked up and carried along by a |
| necessary in order to win. Ronfeldt focuses in | | | | pelagic cousin, leading to a coupled form. This is the |
| particular on the phenomenon of draft line formation, | | | | first real Aggregate Traffic Animal we will meet |
| which is similar to the way flocking birds can share | | | | tonight: a bilaterally asymmetrical diageotrope known |
| aerodynamic advantage. Like iron filings in a magnetic | | | | as the Epiphysian Cyclosalp.Within the body of the |
| field, the large-scale distribution of opportunistically | | | | Cyclosalp the individual Cholingers are transmuted into |
| partnering cars are drawn into predictable macro-scale | | | | a pair of Librigenates -- stretchy, free-flowing tissue |
| patterns across the speedway:Once the racers sort | | | | that is bounded in space by the relationship with its |
| themselves out - after ten to twenty laps - it is | | | | partner, the accelerating pelagic lobe sliding forward |
| common to see a single draft line of four to seven | | | | and the steady benthic lobe catching up in a |
| cars running in front, pursued a hundred or so yards | | | | slow-motion slingshot, compressing and expanding |
| back by a second line of cars, all another hundred or | | | | between the loose, senseless clumps of other cars. |
| so yards ahead of a large pack of cars that may still | | | | This accordion-like effect might initially seem to be a |
| be running in parallel lines but are doing more dicing | | | | force tearing the animal apart, rending pelagic from |
| than drafting...Cars that run alone, often stuck | | | | benthic -- and this is indeed what might happen in too |
| dangerously between two draft lines, will appear to | | | | rarified an atmosphere -- but when presented with |
| drift irrevocably backward.Freed of the bonds of | | | | obstacles of any kind, the Librigenates that comprise |
| racing's formalism, the Aggregate Traffic Animals are | | | | the Cyclosalp fall back on their Cholinger heritage of |
| born, rooted in transient symbioses between individual | | | | local integrity, crystallising en masse to navigate the |
| patches of drivers that will crystalise into the organs of | | | | hazard.Unfettered, the Epiphysian Cyclosalp is like half |
| the beast. But the circumstances have to be just right | | | | a butterfly, its riparian body gilded by a slowly flapping |
| for one to emerge. The unholy Hieronymus | | | | wing of accelerating, gliding Librigenates ebbing and |
| Bosch-style concert of homicidal applied-shadenfreude | | | | flowing in a stately round. Its insides whorl as partners |
| that may characterise your urban, intra-urban or | | | | switch places, benthic turning briefly pelagic, pacer cars |
| sub-urban driving experience is not ripe ground for | | | | joining a rippling pulse of local inertia forward, headlights |
| ATA growth: too frothy.The sociological and | | | | cross-sweeping.It is beyond the scope of this article to |
| scatological dances of the megalopolis rushhour, too, | | | | detail the myriad circumstances that provide seed for |
| are beyond the scope of this article, and are at any | | | | the profitable entanglement of multiple Cyclosalpic |
| rate most likely best explored with deep computer | | | | streams. So diverse are the possibilities that we could |
| simulations using high-tech cellular automata tools with | | | | fill a Biblical tome without scratching the surface, |
| average driver profiles linked to real-world statistics of | | | | without revealing the common thread of simplicity upon |
| roadway usage coupled with an army of ten thousand | | | | which the complexity hinges. Suffice to say the larger |
| angry ax-wielding orcs battling an equal number of | | | | clade includes such varied forms as the whiplashing |
| obedient clonetroopers.Rather, this field is perfect | | | | Epinastic Tricyclosalp, the many-fingered Dicyclosalp |
| fodder for the amateur ethologist, observing | | | | Fimbriatum, and the diaphanous, fleeting wonder of the |
| phenomena with a keen eye, an open mind and a | | | | mile-long Merosporangic Super-Cyclosalp...Of course, |
| sharp pencil. And while much has been written about | | | | not all Asipetal Caterpillars grow up to become stately |
| manipulating traffic waves, the dynamics of traffic | | | | Cholingers; instead, they lock into Lego-like bricks of |
| jams and phase-transitions in traffic density, very little | | | | uniform properties called Pycnoblastoids. While |
| time has been devoted to the observation and | | | | short-lived Apiculate Pycnoblastoids (in which the |
| cataloguing of persistent multi-car zoomorphia.Early | | | | Apparent Coxswain is always the most forward car) |
| ObservationsThe author first became aware of the | | | | are more common, it is the more flexible Laxiflorous |
| existence of ATAs while making his way through the | | | | Pycnoblastoid (in which the Apparent Coxswain is any |
| hinterland of Canada on a long, mid-winter solo drive in | | | | car except that most forward) that lives a more fruitful |
| a decrepit Dodge Charger with no functioning radio. | | | | life.For instance, consider the case of a typical |
| Due to his dangerous penchant for immersive | | | | composite entity like a Tripycnoblastic Oomycotum, in |
| daydreaming in the absence of external stimuli, he | | | | which independent pycnoblasts jockey for position |
| began to parasite his driving decisions by locking in | | | | internally directly or by proxy through one or more |
| behind another car with comparable speed ambitions. | | | | Napoleonic Coxswains (that is, drivers who suffer |
| By reserving a sliver of awareness for tracking the | | | | from the delusion that they are single-handedly |
| red brake lights of the "lead" car for changes in speed | | | | responsible for steering/leading their local |
| or direction, the author was able to comfortably enjoy | | | | sub-structure). The domino-line behaviour of an |
| his trance while a hefty burden of road awareness | | | | Apiculate Pycnoblastoid makes it too brittle to survive |
| was outsourced to the other driver, causing the front | | | | the stresses of being permeated by a competing |
| car to function as a sort of early warning mechanism | | | | pycnoblast, whereas the comparatively elastic |
| for changing conditions (including the Mounties' | | | | structure of the Laxifloroid -- imparted due to the |
| speed-traps).The notion resurfaced while the author | | | | inherent time delay involved in co-ordinating with a |
| was wrestling a dented Volkswagen Rabbit rental | | | | mid-fleet Apparent Coxswain -- retains a perfect |
| down a twisting, pot-holed two-lane jungle highway | | | | balance of rigidity and looseness, riding a line between |
| through the Mexican state of Quintana Roo. As the | | | | orchestration and dissolution that makes composite |
| journey began he found himself hedged inside a short | | | | forms like Oomycota possible.Pycnoblastic tissue is |
| parade of other tourists, all driving their rental cars out | | | | unusual in that it makes use of some level of |
| of the airport at around the same time at a hesitant | | | | awareness on the part of the driver that they are |
| pace, breaking frequently to process the unfamiliar | | | | participating in a formation (though drivers are only |
| leafy darkness ahead. Fearing injury, the author | | | | likely to be aware of the local level of structure). When |
| laterally-leapfrogged the indecisive parade and drove | | | | this awareness reaches a certain level the composite |
| on into the murk alone. Remembering his success in | | | | entity is usually destroyed by internal stresses, but |
| the far north, he latched onto the back of a local | | | | occasionally a dissolving multi-pycnoblast will emit a |
| vehicle (a home-modded convertible Beetle carrying | | | | stream of highly energised vehicles -- the Apheresoid |
| ten people, standing room only), using its varying speed | | | | Lirellate, a concentrated apiculatoid pycnoblast flung |
| as an indicator of road conditions. Unexpectedly, this | | | | free from the miasma of death to rocket away, using |
| move was noticed by several of the other tourists, | | | | for a coxswain the abandoned carcass itself....These |
| who began to fight to separate themselves from the | | | | are but the fringes of the zoo, the tip of the |
| melee and join the newer, more surefooted pack that | | | | iceberg.We have not even touched on the sensitive |
| was rapidly pulling ahead...By the time the author had | | | | antennae of the Stipitate Phototaxites fringed with |
| reached his exit the impromptu fleet of vehicles had | | | | Virtual Coxswains, pseudo-lead cars ready to be |
| become a persistent, homeostatic phenomenon. The | | | | sacrificed to trip any trap, the chaotic wrath of the |
| fleet had quickly learned to manipulate the spacing | | | | Biflagellate Ableptic Figmo and the fate of the cystidial |
| between its components in order to remain permeable | | | | flotsam locked within them; the weird rhythms of the |
| to faster moving local traffic while defending its | | | | Cacospysic Super-Barbicanoids and their elaborate |
| integrity against more disruptive external vehicles. | | | | dance of shifting coxswains, the majesty of the |
| Pulses of communication signifying when the passing | | | | motorcycle-based Raging Fallaxoid; the menagerie of |
| lane was clear rippled down the chain through a | | | | endless cancers that can grow from unexpectorated |
| conscientious leaning into the gravel shoulder, assisting | | | | papillic granulomae, from cataracts of geriatric nektons, |
| in the process of expectorating invaders. Several of | | | | or from service-stations with badly planned |
| the original tourist vehicles ended up being swapped | | | | driveways.Further StudyThe study of a new order of |
| out for other vehicles without rocking the boat. Later | | | | life is not without its risks, both professional (in terms of |
| on, even the leader was swapped out for another | | | | reputation) and practical (in terms of being maimed by |
| experienced local car.It was a fetching game, | | | | mis-navigated vehicles). The amateur automotive |
| contributing to the welfare of all of its players in an | | | | ethologist must not only have keen skills of |
| interesting way, but it was not a true ATA. It was too | | | | observation, but also the fortitude to persevere despite |
| conscious a contrivance to be anything more than a | | | | the slings and arrows of dubious dissenters. Like |
| delightful spontaneous social event.You see, a | | | | Leeuwenhoek's controversial animalcules and |
| distributed animal with human components can be very | | | | Pasteur's superstition-defying microbes, there will |
| sensitive to perturbations from within. It is only when | | | | always exist a certain testudinal resistance to new |
| the conflicting threads of goals, reasoning and | | | | ideas among older quarters. There will be those who |
| competition between individual human minds are | | | | doubt the very existence of aggregate vehicular life, or |
| quietened into the background noise that the soil can | | | | who insist that the zoo of the road dwells in metaphor |
| truly be ripe to raise a complex beast. When drivers | | | | alone.The opinions of such sceptics could be changed |
| can fall into a semi-hypnotic state and their herd | | | | by a single night spent on a grassy hill overlooking a |
| instincts take over, the seeds are laid for something | | | | well-travelled country highway, watching the streams |
| greater.HabitatWhile there are thousands of traffic | | | | of red and silver lights merge and split, compress and |
| animal breeding grounds along the paved networks of | | | | attenuate, roil and interact, fatten and |
| the world, only one driving region has been extensively | | | | reproduce...Watch the roads, and see the zoo for |
| explored at this time, largely due to budgetary | | | | yourself. There is no denying its patterns of insectile |
| considerations.The TransCanada Highway is a nearly | | | | purpose, its myriad variations in anatomy and |
| ideal environment for the production of large-scale | | | | configuration, or the orchestrated madness of the |
| ATA phenomena, due in great part to the simplicity of | | | | low-cost petroleum feeding frenzy. Your own mind, |
| its shape: all cars are moving either westbound or | | | | honed by thousands of generations of natural selection |
| eastbound, streamlining the goals of the drivers in much | | | | to recognise life from non-life, will tell you it is true; the |
| the same way as the shape of the Daytona | | | | disciplines of careful observation and meticulous |
| superspeedway encourages drafting partnerships (see | | | | classification will tell you how, and why.Open your |
| above). Also, because there are long stretches through | | | | eyes, and witness an untapped world. |
| lonely wilderness and semi-tundra, nascent traffic | | | | |