Are Anthills Artificial?

After challenging notions of what is natural, let's turn around and look at it another way and ask - what is artificial? Most people would be comfortable saying that cars, airplanes, factories, cities and the like are artificial. When questioned as to why, they would probably mutter something like - they are man made. They don't occur in nature. We already have a problem with that, though, because it is very unclear what nature is, let alone what occurs in it. But, for the sake of argument, let's assume that we all know what nature is and what occurs in it.

Is this a fair assumption? If we got rid of cars, airplanes, factories, cities and so forth, would the world be free free from artifacts? Don't animals create artifacts as well? What about anthills, beaver dams, bird nests, bee hives, hornet nests, termite mounds and so on? Aren't they artifacts as well? And don't they occur in nature?

As one scrambles for a defense on this point, they might try to make a distinction between human and animal artifacts by saying that these examples are all of animals creating homes and their creation of homes is not dangerous to the environments in which they live. But, this does not hold up under inspection. Beaver dams, for example, can cause flooding. And insects are inclined to defend their homes with may cause damage to intruders. To be fair, one must recognize that there is a difference of scale in the impacts of human and animal artifacts. But, a difference in scale is not a difference in kind. 

Pushing this point a little further, it isn't just animals creating homes that we need to worry about. Animals, indeed all life forms, create new copies of themselves. And those new copies may introduce new problems. Mutating viruses, for example, provide a constant threat of a pandemic. And, further up the complexity chain, all animals are in a constant state of evolution. As they make new copies of themselves with new evolutionary advantages, these new creations present increasingly greater threats to the environments in which they live.

So, this notion that artifacts do not occur in nature is misguided and simple minded. We need to look further than the natural vs. artificial distinction to get to the root of the problem.