Chris Pascoe’s Fun Tales
This week Chris ponders how Ted the rabbit’s brain might work
Iread an astounding fact about the human brain the other day. I’m always wary when complimenting my brain because, let’s face it, which of my organs is telling me to do that? But I have to say this is extraordinary: to protect us and enable us to react quickly in emergencies, our brains constantly anticipate what is about to happen. And to do this, they behave as if we’re a split second in the future. This means that we, as humans, don’t live in the present, but in the future. Wow, that really is mind-boggling! Though of course, my mind’s already over it and moved on – to a split second in the future.
Despite exhaustive research (idly browsing Google for three minutes) I’ve been unable to find out if this brain-quirk also applies to rabbits. If so, it might explain a few things about my rabbit Ted, officially the World’s DaftestRabbit (both books available from My Weekly, but I never mention it).
Let’s assume, for argument’s sake, that Ted’s wired slightly differently to other life-forms, all evidence thus far pointing to this likelihood. If this is the case, I’m going to put forward the theory that Ted’s brain isn’t working. OK, I could have just stopped the sentence right there, but I’ll carry on… a split second in the future, but five minutes in the past. This would account for a number of abnormalities in his behaviour:
When Ted occasionally wakes up, and let’s stress that his waking up is very occasional indeed, he will generally stare at his rabbitwife Billie in what looks like astonishment for around five minutes. While I’ve always been of the opinion that this is because he’s trying to remember who she is, I now wonder if his total inactivity is caused by him waiting for his brain to catch up with him. Then, when it does, there’s a brief flurry of activity as Ted
His total inactivity is him waiting for his brain to catch up
repositions himself to stare at a carrot, while his brain shrugs, sighs and starts its five minute trek to reach him again.
It would also explain his ability to suddenly run head-first into walls, presumably before his brain arrives. When it does rejoin him, it no doubt assesses the damage, shakes its owner’s lop-ears in exasperation and asks, “What the hell happened here, wabbit? Why didn’t you just eat the cawwot? Why wun into the wall?” I have no idea why I’m assuming Ted’s brain can’t pronounce the letter r.
While I’ve been writing, I’ve been listening to the football on the radio and so in the spirit of this column, my brain’s doing a split-second flip and completely changing the subject within one paragraph of the bottom of the page. In my defence, these wonderful little nuggets of commentary are worth repeating: “You feel that Jones just wanted that ball a bit more than his opponent did there… we’ve now got a brief pause in play while his opponent receives treatment…” And then: “I think when the manager told him to go on and affect the game, he didn’t mean get sent off within 30 seconds”. Not sure where his brain was…