#autonomous agent

But here's the strange part: Darwin talked about pre-adaptations, by which he meant a causal consequence of a part of an organism that might turn out to be useful in some funny environment and therefore be selected. The story of Gertrude the flying squirrel illustrates this: About 63 million years ago there was an incredibly ugly squirrel that had flaps of skin connecting her wrists to her ankles. She was so ugly that none of her squirrel colleagues would play or mate with her, so one day she was eating lunch all alone in a magnolia tree. There was an owl named Bertha in the neighboring pine tree, and Bertha took a look at Gertrude and thought, "Lunch!" and came flashing down out of the sunlight with her claws extended. Gertrude was very scared and she jumped out of the magnolia tree and, surprised, she flew! She escaped from the befuddled Bertha, landed, and became a heroine to her clan. She was married in a civil ceremony a month later to a very handsome squirrel, and because the gene for the flaps of skin was Mendelian dominant, all of their kids had the same flaps. That's roughly why we now have flying squirrels.