Did Dinosaurs Dance?

Will AI dream of electric sheep?

Cover art from the book “Emu Dancing” written by Leesa Smith, illustrations by Debbie Taylor. Published by Goanna Tales. Currently unavailable via Amazon, sorry about that.

I was a bit late with the rather chilly morning feeding today, consequent to Jill and I having a good AM chat with our visitor Justine Isernhinke, who is about to head out on another international adventure - this time in Viet Nam of all places. Regular readers are familiar with Justine’s many guest essays on this substack, in which she shares her thoughts on a wide range of topics from Travel logs to unexplained aerial phenomena (UAP).

When I get to the main barn in the morning, the first task is to let goose (Gizmo) and emu (Gonzo) out of the stall where they sleep at night. And then I stand back for a moment and marvel at what happens next. The two run out the stall door, with Gizmo flapping and squawking incessantly while Gonzo begins dancing. Yes, Emus dance. A pure expression of joy in being alive. Head bobbing, beak snapping, impulsively running, then squatting down. Completely random, not at all stereotyped like many bird dances, which are often tied to mating rituals. Well, I guess the same could be said for human beings, when you think about it.

Which, while putting out grain buckets and tossing hay, led my mind to wander down the path of wonderment at the deeper meaning of this.

Emus dance. Cassowaries dance. Ostriches dance. I strongly suspect that Rheas dance. Despite their being from different continents, Emus, Cassowaries, Ostriches and Rheas are all closely related flightless birds, belonging to the phylogenetic superorder of Ratites. Fossil records and cladistic studies have consistently shown that ratites are most closely related to the theropod dinosaurs, particularly the ornithomimids. While all birds are generally considered living dinosaurs, Ratites are the closest living relatives of dinosaurs. Jill and I, and many of our visitors, often observe that having an Emu in your life is like living with a dinosaur.

Hence the warning sign on our front gate.

And Ratites dance. I strongly suspect that dinosaurs danced. Which is not something you will pick up from watching Jurassic Park. Fossilized footprints found in Colorado seem to confirm that Dinosaurs, or at least some Dinos did, in fact, dance. The dancing Dino in question apparently being Acrocanthosaurus atokensis, an apex predator that weighed up to almost 7 tons. Acrocanthosaurus is a member of the Carcharodontosaurid family, which is a family of theropod dinosaurs. I think I will not be censored for spreading conspiracy theories by speculating that the dance of the 7 ton Acrocanthosaurus atokensis looked something like the dancing of Emus, Cassowaries and Ostriches.

What I find amazing here is that Dinosaurs (and Ratites) have radically different brains from humans. And yet we all share a love of dancing, of spontaneously moving our bodies in ways that express joy (and lust). That suggests that dancing is coming from a very deep place, a very primitive emotional need. I suspect that dancing is a window into a standard, phylogenetically preserved component of our soul.

Which lead my mind to wander over to the famous 1968 Philip K. Dick (PKD) book title “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep”, from which the screenplay for “Blade Runner” was derived.

PKD had a visionary Gnostic experience after the removal of two impacted wisdom teeth in which he believed that our current reality is a Black Iron Prison that is actually still Ancient Rome, which was communicated to him by a Vast Active Living Intelligence System (VALIS) encoded into a shade of pink light. Dick spent the rest of his life trying to unpack this experience, writing a massive tome of speculations about what it meant (called the Exegesis). Often considered by some to have been mentally ill, he had some visions that led him to believe we are living in a simulation. Most of his books dealt with issues of perceiving reality. As a young writer he took a lot of amphetamines so he could crank out the novels and maybe that caused some issues.

The term Artificial Intelligence, and current imagining regarding the fusion of AI and robotics (giving rise to transhumanism) was not widespread at the time PKD was writing, hence the use of the term “androids.” In many ways, PKD was way ahead of his time with his writing. As is typical of free-thinking visionaries, his early contributions to the dystopian science fiction genre that anticipated today’s cyberpunk were initially underappreciated but have since become a modern staple of dystopian future imagining. Other key PKD works that now seem prescient in retrospect include:

• We Can Remember It for You Wholesale (Total Recall)

• Adjustment Team (Adjustment Bureau)

• The Golden Man (Next)

• Second Variety (Screamers)

• A Scanner Darkly

• The Minority Report

• Paycheck

• The Man in the High Castle

Here’s the destination where this train of thought led me as I threw hay in the AM cold, feeding our personal collection of beasts while watching our Emu dance.

Assuming that they arise, will general artificial intelligence(s) dream? Will AI-powered robots dance? Who will notice, and how? Should we watch for these things as an indicator of emerging autonomous electronic consciousness? Will general AIs develop souls? What is it about consciousness that seems to require these mysterious behaviors? And what would be the implications if general AIs and AI-powered robots do start to dream and dance?

Turning back to my own species, what does this teach us about the nature of the human soul? And what does this teach us about the fundamentals of cognition and consciousness if we share with Dinosaurs a fundamental need to dance?

It is a beautiful mystery, which may never be answerable within the constraints of “Science,” but perhaps can be approached via subconscious intuition. And by carefully monitoring the behaviors and seeming background noise of emerging general AIs.

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