I want to spend a few blogs writing about faith, religion, belief, spirituality, disbelief and science. I, like all humans, believe in things that I cannot necessarily prove; most of these things can be explained, just not by me. I know that there are some people out there that think they don't believe anything, if you are one of those people might I ask you to explain how an internal combustion engine works? Odds are you would have a hard time doing so, yet every time you go to drive somewhere you have faith in the fact that turning the key in the ignition is going to start your car and it will be able to drive you around.
This isn't really the belief that I am really concerned with here. Rather, I'm interested in belief in things that are beyond anyones ability to prove. My "faith" is constantly evolving, not only as I work through some of the challenging questions I have yet to resolve, but also because the science which lies at the foundation of my beliefs is also ever improving. I want to explore some of the burning questions I still have, some of the insights I've developed and some of the controversial beliefs that I hold. In today's post I want to write about a paradox that got me thinking about this subject again recently; surprisingly enough it is all about rabbits.
That's right the cute little fluffy bunnies that have so often been anthropomorphized as some of our favorite cartoon characters (what's up doc?). I had some friends over about a year ago and they brought their pet rabbits, since I have a cat we had to be careful to keep them separated. I asked them how their rabbits would respond if I let my cat in the room with their rabbits (obviously hypothetically) and was surprised to hear their answer. They told me that it is entirely likely that their rabbits would actually die from the shock of seeing my cat (a 12 Ib mainecoon). Apparently, rabbits can literally be frightened to death. I suppose this shouldn't be too surprising, its basically a heart attack and humans have those too. The surprising part is that this can happen relatively easily and quite frequently.
On the one hand, this all makes perfect sense: if you are in a situation where you face certain death it seems that it would be much better to die suddenly of a heart attack that having your flesh torn apart by an attacker. On the other hand, however, something about this seems off: why would rabbits have evolved this ability (to be easily frightened to death) when it could never help in the promulgation of the species. My understanding of evolution suggests that adaptations evolve because they increase procreation, either by increasing mating frequency or by living longer. I don't quite see how being scared to death can fall into either of these categories, instead it seems as if it is a purely humane adaptation. As far as I know, evolution is not compassionate, it should only work toward increasing the survival rate and procreation of the species (or gene). Even if most of the rabbits that have been scared to death would have died anyway, a few would have survived given a few seconds, quick reflexes, and maybe some good fortune. With that in mind, there is no way that rabbits could have evolved this reflex.
As you can imagine, this whole thought process came as quite a shock to me. Having understood evolution to be the sole mechanism in the transformation of species I was perturbed by this conundrum and set out to figure it out. I developed a few theories but one of them seemed to stand out in terms of the greatest amount of plausibility. The evolutionary explanation that best explains this phenomenon is that rabbits have always been pray animals and so they have evolved a great deal of cautious behaviors. Over time, rabbits that were the least curious, the least adventurous, the most timid and the most fearful have been the most successful in surviving the elements and the dangers in their life. This forced rabbit evolution towards greater and greater timidity until they became the animals we know today. In this light, the "scared to death" reflex is merely a consequence of a positive fearful adaptation.
Still, have there never been rabbits that were both incredibly timid but also incredibly hardened to shock and not susceptible to the "scared to death" reflex? Wouldn't this variation have occurred enough times that we should see some degree of increased life span? Haven't they been evolving for enough time so that this small attribute would be locked into the genetics of all rabbits by now? In other words, why haven't they evolved out of this reflex yet?
It seems silly to allow this concern to tarnish the incredible explanatory power of biological evolution, but it does make you wonder if it is the only player in the game. Maybe there is something more going on here, maybe something much bigger. I don't know, and likely never will; but that won't stop me from taking my mind on an adventure that seeks to at least ponder some of the greater questions in life. Why are we here? How did we get here? How BIG is everything? I make no promises that you will agree with much (if any) of what I think is going on, I can't even promise that my beliefs are correct or even firmly held; I can only promise that i'll be open to new ideas and honest in my assessment.
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