It was the filmmaker Jean Luc Godard and his work in the early eighties, who implanted the awareness and importance of speed and rhythm in human relations into my head. During my life I had to realize in many ways how essential it is for the functioning of relationships to develop a common tune. This doesn’t exclude the fast getting along with the slow or the other way around. It includes all transition states species display. But it ain’t necessarily so. What is needed is the work of composing.
Only later in life when I became more and involved with biology I learnt to observe how differently the species and the individuals are in the world. The question occurred to me whether this speed has something to do with the lifespan one has.
I discarded the idea until now because if this were the case I would be dead already, and snails would live forever, my dog Sophie would survive my dog Fannie, the nervous restless one of the both.
Fannie is always ahead of Sophie. She cannot stand it, if Sophie is overtaking her.
A grapevine snail reaches an age of up to three years, if not eaten up by one its many enemies such as humans who may just carelessly step on them.
On the other hand when watching turtles my thesis seems to have a certain truth in it. Anyway I have to give this favorite topic of mine more thoughts still, before coming to a conclusion.
Okay then, enough thought games. Preferably, you just watch the little video about different species, speeds and rhythms.
Turtles are slow and they live long. Here my thesis applies.
Gecko and spider: speeds and rhythm diverge