On Faith and the 'Flying Squirrel'

Faith is a strong emotion. It's not purely human though, in fact I can think of many cases of animals putting their faith into themselves or others. Lemmings for example have to have faith that their migratory path isn't going to not run off of a cliff or into a predator, they do sometimes though. Lemmings are awesome, but faith isn't something that always does them good. Lemmings are misunderstood creatures. Most misconceptions of lemmings are that they commit mass suicide. This is nonsense, actually an Academy award winning Disney documentary once fired Canadian lemmings off a cliff using a turntable and used it as proof. Poor lemmings, all they want to do is reproduce. Their reproduction is actually so rapid that they're population fluctuations are chaotic and unlike any linear population cycles belonging to any other vertebrates. They then plummet to near extinction after about 4 years due to not having enough food to sustain the rapid lemming growth, then it goes back up when they reproduce crazily again. Off topic slightly there, the point is people often think of faith as being a good emotion, I don't particularly like it.

To have faith in something, you have complete trust or confidence in someone or something, or a strong belief in religious doctrines based on nothing other than spiritual conviction. The thing is, faith in a human sense is usually the emotion used to describe a belief that isn't backed up by any evidence. For example, I don't have faith that evolution is happening or has previously happened, I know that evolution is happening because it's a fact, it happens... get over it. 

Animals don't have the same kind of faith as humans do. Animals faith is based on evidence. If a flying squirrel has faith that it can jump from one tree and perfectly land on the next, it's not doing it because it was brought up to think that way or that somebody told him to do it 2000 years ago, he has faith he can do it because he has done it countless times and he knows it is in within the realms of possibilities. In that sense, human faith is in fact the most primitive.

Now you might argue, what about that very first Flying squirrel. That unhinged genius. That f*cking pioneer of squirrel flight. Well, that very first squirrel wasn't a prophet, it wasn't the messiah of squirrels or the son of the squirrel God, it was just a normal squirrel, that by chance happened to jump from one tree to another tree that was slightly further away than a standard squirrel leap could take him. He managed to get to that other tree due to a genetic mutation which gave him a slight anatomical advantage. Due to this anatomical advantage this squirrel managed to get to that next tree and hence was able to get to prey quicker and away from predators faster, this allows the mutant squirrel to pass on his genes through reproduction and all the other squirrels with this mutation could mate more successfully and survive for longer. 

Over a number of generations the flying squirrel we know today was eventually here. A squirrel with a paragium membrane linked to its wrist and ankles with acts like a little fury parachute so it could glide from tree to tree. It can maneuver using movements of a small cartilaginous wrist bone which can control the tautness of this membrane and has a fluffy tail which stabilises in flight and acts as an adjunct airfoil to slow the squirrel when it reaches its destination, usually a tree trunk. What's next in terms of squirrel evolution? I have no idea and will never find out. Evolution takes a while, most people don't really understand that.

"Yippie kay yay motherfucker!"

Off course, humans evolved as well. Maybe not evolved in the conventional sense (though obviously we did at one point in Africa from Homo Erectus...get over it) but in the sense that our society has evolved and with that our knowledge and understanding has evolved. You might now be able to see why it's this subject I've chosen to pursue as a career. I love it.

You guys might not really care about flying squirrels or lemmings on Halloween, you might care more about banishing evil spirits with costumes to scare the back to the underworld. Or you might just want to get hammered. I'd be content if I achieved a bit off both.

Cheers for reading, another day, another song. This one is quite lovely.