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I've recently became curious about the moon wide super organism on Pandora known to the natives as Eywa.

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Eywa is theorized by human scientists to be a superorganism of all living things on Pandora. they are all connected through a system of neuro-conductive antennae; this often explains why Na'vi can mount their direhorse or mountain banshee steeds and ride them immediately without going through the necessary steps required to domesticate such wild animals.

I'm curious if an organism like this could work in reality. Could evolution actually create such a massive super organism like this, and what would be some challenges this creature would have to overcome if it were to exist on an actual alien planet?

Just so there isn't any confusion and questions about this, lets just say the environment and atmosphere is just like how it is on Pandora.

If there's any problems with my questions, let me know in the comments.

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  • $\begingroup$ Hey Wither Fang. Speculative biology is awesome but there are too many questions here. Each of these is worth a question in and of itself and so I am voting to close. Also - you might link of an explanation of what a Eywa is and paste some text for those unsophisticates not familiar with Pandora. $\endgroup$
    – Willk
    Aug 18, 2018 at 19:23
  • $\begingroup$ Thanks for letting me know that. i will edit the questions down a bit so its not such a mass of text $\endgroup$
    – Wither Fang136
    Aug 18, 2018 at 19:27
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    $\begingroup$ Looks good. Link up Ewya / Pandora explanation too please. $\endgroup$
    – Willk
    Aug 18, 2018 at 19:44

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Like most of what James Cameron does, it is actually something that already exists but blown up to immense sizes and capabilities in his movies. But we have a saying in my country, "it's better to steal a good idea than create a bad one".

Meet the Mycorrhizal network: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycorrhizal_network

It isn't an electrical grid, that would be waaay to energy intensive for simple plants that don't have much use for speedy messages. But this system does transfer information and more such as nutrients, water and carbon to different plants. The network helps plants and trees be more immune to certain hostile fungi and even allows communication such as "Oh crap I'm under attack by a parasite that bites my leaves like this" and suddenly all the plants that hear it will be making poisons and chemicals that will attempt to slow the pest down or kill it. This network can in fact be "hacked" by certain plants that use it for their own good. Certain trees (acorn I believe?) use it to pump chemicals in the soil that will kill off most vegetation, giving them a large area of clear ungrown soil. Others still will attempt to trick plants around them to dump increased nutrients in the system that they will try to use.

Anyway, the system exists in a smaller version and less fast than the neural network of the Native Ame... Na'vi.

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