02 May 2009

Treetop twitter?


We self-satisfied humans like to take credit for inventing ever-new means of communication. "Twitter," the online microblogging sensation that's fast and friendly, allows us to indulge in semi-meaningful conversation with friends and strangers alike via short bursts of 140 characters or less.

Somewhere, I know, the squirrels are laughing at us all. They've been communicating in even shorter datastreams for thousands of years.

Humans twitter.
Squirrels chitter.

And they don't even need screen names (in their case, tree names). They don't need Internet service providers, laptops, netbooks, PDAs or even desktop computers with flat-panel screens. When they want to spread the news of the day, or get up close and personal, squirrels stamp their feet, chatter their teeth and flick their tails.

And that, to a squirrel, says it all.

Meanwhile, we humans are busy posting "tweets" and updating our status on Facebook. Not a bad preoccupation for any of us, by the way.

But ask a squirrel to tweet and you're likely to get beaned on the head with an acorn.

Who's the more evolved life form here? If you can tell me in 140 characters or less, or by stamping your feet and chittering, you may already know.

1 comment:

Lone Grey Squirrel said...

I fully agree. I think Facebook and Twitter is over-hyped but I do blog. That's okay for longer thoughts.