Brexit is a rewilding project. In other words: a mammoth task!

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 86

Brexit is a rewilding project: an attempt to return a habitat to its past natural state in the terms of conservation biology. Over several decades, the EU has evolved as a strong domesticating force on the EU member states. This helped maintain peaceful co-existence and economic cooperation on the continent: you can have domestic animals (dogs, cats and guinea pigs) as pets under a single roof but you cannot have wild animals living closely together (think tigers, lions and rhinos).

However, a key question is how far back in time Brexiteers aim to take Britain in the rewilding project. 

Would they wish to bring back beavers (extinct since the 1500s AD) and wild boar (extinct since 1400 AD), or elk (extinct since the Bronze Age), for example? Or do they plan to bring back the wolverine (extinct since 6000 BC) or even the woolly mammoth (which disappeared around 10,000 BC).

In economic terms, the rewilding project may range from re-introducing state aid (banned under EU competition law in order to create a level-playing field) to scrapping the EU Working Time Directive. It could go further in relaxing health and safety rules to emulate the regulatory regime of the US. Or some could even contemplate extreme scenarios like bringing back child labour (mind you, for the purpose of re-educating recalcitrant youth, some hardliners might argue). 

The latter does look extreme but didn't we all think that mammoths were done and dusted and all that remained of them were their mammoth tusks (just as we thought the "honourable members for the 18th century" belonged to the 18th century). Now, however, de-extinction is starting to become a fashionable and realistic prospect for bringing back animals that have previously gone extinct. Mammoth tasks are not so mammoth any more.

The mammoth is dead. Long live the mammoth!

Woolly mammoths (Source: Wikipedia)

(Note: this article is based on Brexit Metaphor No 112, with some amendments: 

https://brexitmetaphors.blogspot.com/search/label/rewilding)

In times of corporate crisis: domesticate corn!

On bleeding and seeding in companies, animals and plants
By George ILIEV

When someone is seriously injured, bleeding is often the primary cause of death. When a company is in crisis, employees leave en masse. What makes the situation worse is that the best employees are the first to leave.

An analogous phenomenon called shattering can be observed in the wild cereal plants, though a bit earlier in their life cycle: the seeds break off from the corn cob (or the wheat ear) as soon as they have ripened. This evolutionary adaptation of the plants works well for them in the wild, as the seeds are scattered in all directions, but this makes their harvesting by humans almost impossible.

Domestication of corn

This is why when prehistoric farmers at the dawn of agriculture set about domesticating cereal crops, the first trait they bred out of maize (corn) and wheat was exactly shattering. Only after they had managed to hold the seeds together for harvesting could they focus their attention on other traits for selective growing such as drought resistance and improved nutrition.

Image contribution: Wikipedia


Lessons for the CEO:

The first thing medics do  when someone is wounded is try to stop the bleeding. When a company is in crisis, stopping shattering is the prerequisite for corporate recovery.

Dog domestication resulted from "free market style" diet adaptations, not from "central planning style" capture and taming

Dogs volunteered for domestication by adapting themselves to eat starchy food
George ILIEV

The dominant theory about the domestication of dogs has so far postulated that humans caught wolf pups to use for hunting and gradually tamed them into dogs through selective breeding. However, new DNA research at the University of Uppsala published in Nature shows that it was probably the wolves who volunteered for domestication by developing mutations that allowed them to digest starchy foods - found in the rubbish tips of early agricultural human settlements.

The wolf ancestors of modern dogs must have stumbled upon this unoccupied ecological niche - just like companies find lucrative underexploited niches in a free market and adapt to exploit them accordingly. This possibly disproves the earlier hypothesis that the domestication of dogs came about as a result of the "central planning" of humans, intervening by capturing and taming wolf pups.

A somewhat similar starch-focused digestive mechanism may have been at play in the domestication of the cat. Cats have not developed special mutations to break down starch but instead have longer digestive tracts compared with their wild ancestors. This allows them to better absorb nutrients from starchy leftovers.

(Photo: Patches & Lamb, domestic dogs, Atlanta, 2010)