Squirrels and Parkour — Wait, What?

Whether is is called parkour, freestyle running, a sport, achieving personal and mental goals, or something else — it is impressive. People may have seen it and not known the name, or cared about the debate between parkour and freerunning. It is something that MacGyver would have embraced. Squirrels live it.

Cropped from Freeimages / John Hartley

This is a place where I have to practice what I preach. I often urge people to get over their distastes for various critters and appreciate God's handiwork on display. But I detest squirrels.(How many of y'all will agree that squirrels are relentless?)  Sure, cute and everything, but they are also serious pests. For me, it gets personal.

We live in an apartment complex with three-story buildings. The bird feeders are not safe up on the second floor's porch, suspended from the one above. They jump onto the lower floor railing, soar up to our deck, run around, fight each other, and climb the screen over the sliding glass door and pee through it onto the plate glass window. (Then their sense of entitlement kicks in and they expect free food, leading me to believe squirrels are socialists.) I'm concerned about fleas, ticks, and other problems being brought along. Also, I keep an eye out for those that may be rabid.

What we have seen and researchers noted, squirrels do a critter version of parkour. The purpose is to overcome obstacles and even use what is available to the participant's advantage. Humans do parkour as a choice (Jackie Chan was doing it before it was cool), but nutty rodents are designed to find ways to reach what they desire. One video mentioned natural selection (possibly so the video maker could sound s-m-r-t), but there is much more involved than evolutionary fantasies. A recent report mentioned evolution, possibly as a "Hail Darwin! Blessed be!" thing to get approval from secularists. It is clear that theses acrobatic bushy-tailed rodents are marvels of our Creator's design skills.

Parkour may be a new word to some. It’s an inner city sport that takes no equipment. It does require strength, agility, and eye-body coordination for making rapid decisions. Players leap from building to building, land on rails or parapets, sometimes twisting or somersaulting as they complete a route as fast as possible. They can bounce off of vertical walls to gain traction. They use whatever is available—stairs, rails, benches, ropes or cars—as props for their rapid-fire action. . . . 

It turns out that squirrels have been doing stunts like this ever since creation. We all know from watching squirrels in the trees that they have no fear of heights; they can tightrope-walk on telephone lines and leap from branch to branch with the greatest of aplomb. They can even leap from one flimsy twig to another, calculating whether it is safe to jump. . . .

A team of four scientists at UC Berkeley investigated the daredevil stunts of squirrels. There were willing participants right in the eucalyptus trees on campus. This must have been a fun science project! The team was clearly stoked.

To read the full article, leap on over to "Squirrels: Urban Sports Champions". Since that article has a link to a video on squirrels (look for "press release from UCB"), here is a short documentary on freerunning used in the movie Casino Royale. When we are trained and do a passel of practice, humans can also do some startling things.