The Minds of Squirrels

My last long-form essay for Only a Game this year has been drafted for quite a while, but I haven't had time to paste it up and run it owing to requests at other publications for submissions. The first of these, The Minds of Squirrels, picks up two themes of mine with quite a history at this blog: evolutionary mythology and, of course, squirrels. Here's an extract:

Indeed, if we take a long hard look at the role of genetics in animal behaviour, we may find that we are so closely related to everything from worms, to lobsters, to fish, to birds, and of course to squirrels in terms of the key genetic contributors to behaviour. It then becomes laughable to suggest, as so many do these days, that the behaviour in, say, the corridors of contemporary desk slavery can be explained in terms of what human ancestors were or were not doing on the African savannah. We would be on surer footing explaining anything we observe in terms of what early mammals did in the Cretaceous period, or fish in the Devonian—but in all these cases the genetic explanation provides only one thing: the Lego blocks behind emotions.

You can read the entirety of The Minds of Squirrels over at Analogy magazine.

PS: While I'm cross-posting, I should mention the final part of Origins of Ghost Master, over at ihobo.com, which I ran for Halloween this year.