Is there anything in all of biology that IS attuned to subtle and long-term issues? I think I would argue that we are the closest to that.
Fossil fuel powered technology has changed that, but we are psychologically and socially ill-equipped to deal with its transformative power.
One class (meta-)examples are all mechanism actually promoting mutation, or other methods of genetic variation: Horizontal gene transfer is interesting in this regard. It's the ability to incorporate snippets of DNA the organism comes across.
These mechanisms are an adaptation to the "known unknowns": what if a new pathogen appears, or the environment (temperature, radiation, salinity etc) suddenly changes? To achieve some flexibility, these mechanisms make trade-offs, usually sacrificing short-term reproductive success.