Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!convex!killer!ames!husc6!husc8!gallaghe
From: gallaghe@husc8.HARVARD.EDU (Paul Gallagher)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: Squirrel Questions (really cats)
Message-ID: <414@husc6.harvard.edu>
Date: 30 Sep 88 18:07:50 GMT
References: <22811@mordor.s1.gov> <14804@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <3519@phri.UUCP> <3768@boulder.Colorado.EDU> <14847@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <8150@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu>
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Reply-To: gallaghe@husc8.UUCP (Paul Gallagher)
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I saw a television show about squirrels, which showed a squirrel being killed
by a fall from a tree (~50 ft.?).  Most squirrel nests I've seen are in
shorter trees.

What's been said about gravity affecting different size organisms differently
is fascinating; a bacterium, for example, wouldn't notice gravity at all,
but would have to worry about Brownian motion.  Richard Lewontin, in his
"Dialectical Biologist," arguing against adaptationism in evolutionary
biology, argued that there are no general laws to which an organism has to
adapt (he phrased it better than me); so, it's a mistake to think of
niches somehow preexisting into which organisms must fit.  Of course,
nothing in the morphology of an organism will violate any laws of
mathematics, physics, or chemistry, and it's been a major contribution 
of people like d'Arcy Thomson and Seilacher to show how these laws
are reflected in the form of organisms and the differences among them,
but, when considering the entire variety of living things, no particular
law can be invoked as an explanation or determining factor for the
particular form that this variety takes.  This is confusing stuff, and
I'm not sure I correctly understand Lewontin, but it seems to me, if
true and not just philosophical nit-picking, to be a real challenge to 
the way many biologists think.

Friend of squirrels & glad no longer to be a biology major,
Paul Gallagher