Thursday, October 22, 2015

Henry Ford's Impact on the Squirrel Gene Pool



More than 60 years of driving back country roads has led me to the conclusion that Henry Ford has had a significant impact on the squirrel gene pool.  I came to this conclusion about a year or two ago and have been casually making observations to confirm my suspicions.

While my study has been anything but scientific, I feel confident enough to voice it now, in the hope that others may chime in and either confirm or refute my conclusions.  My line of thinking goes something like this.

Henry Ford’s Model T and more specifically, the development the assembly line for automobiles, made cars available to the masses.  This led to a chain reaction of events including an explosion in the number of cars on the road, improvement of roads and highways, increases in speed and horsepower, and an undeclared and somewhat unnoticed war on squirrels and other critters, including the chicken crossing the road.

The term road kill entered our vocabulary, as did the term, nutty as a squirrel.  It seems obvious that term came into being because of their love for acorns and the way they behaved while trying to get across the road and avoid the on-coming traffic.  Their indecisive back and forth method of getting to the other side became the butt of many a joke. If squirrels had a lobby, they would probably be seeking a more politically correct term.

Think about it for a minute and pay close attention the next time you see one on the side of the road.  I’ve noticed that a good number of squirrels making it across the road without the expected back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.  In fact, a significant number of them make it in a single dash.

 Once upon a time the squirrel population was dominated by squirrels that had a gene that caused indecisive road crossing.  However, a small number of squirrels lacked this gene and when crossing the road, they did it in a decisive manner.  As indecisive squirrels became road kill, the decisive squirrel population grew.  Today, there are enough decisive squirrels in the population for us to take notice. It’s a case of survival of the fittest and natural selection, though automobile is hardly a force of nature.  It's actually more akin to the evolution of the peppered moth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppered_moth_evolution

Now before you start ridiculing my theory, I know that this is a gross over simplification of natural selection, and much of this is written with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek.  However, I ask you think about this the next time you see a squirrel trying to cross the road. Is my observation about their behavior accurate, or am I as nutty as our furry friends?

On second thought, just answer the former question.  If you know me, you already know the answer to the latter.

5 comments:

  1. You're onto something, Art! If you hadn't given away the punchline, you might have generated some serious grant money behind this idea ;->

    ReplyDelete
  2. Since I'm not into doing genetic research, I'll be satisfied to let my block stand as testimony that it is my original idea, and insist that they name the phenomena after me. On second thought, I'm not sure that is such a good idea?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Can we somehow expand your research to Florida. It would appear that the local possum population is still dominated by those with the "indecisive road crossers" gene. At least that's what the number of dead possums along my route to work seems to indicate. We can add the variable "raccoons with a death wish" to the study.
    Keep up the good work :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Let's deal with possums first. I remember as a boy on the farm, I saw a "dead" possum in our driveway. I ran inside and said to my father, "There's a dead possum in our driveway."

    He looked at me and said, "No there's not." I made him come outside to prove my point and that's when I learned what playing possum meant. So as far as the possums are concerned, all possums play possum, but when you do it in the road, it doesn't change the gene pool, because possums that don't play possum are also eliminated.

    Concerning the raccoons, you may be on to something about the death wish. If that's the case, they are just fulfilling their Darwinian destiny. ;-)

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for your comment!