# Quote — Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See

> I’ve heard an idea proposed, I’ve no idea how seriously, to account for the sensation of vertigo. It’s an idea that I instinctively like and it goes like this.
>
> The dizzy sensation we experience when standing in high places is not simply a fear of falling. It’s often the case that the only thing likely to make us fall is the actual dizziness itself, so it is, at best, an extremely irrational, even self-fulfilling fear. However, in the distant past of our evolutionary journey toward our current state, we lived in trees. We leapt from tree to tree. There are even those who speculate that we may have something birdlike in our ancestral line. In which case, there may be some part of our mind that, when confronted with a void, expects to be able to leap out into it and even urges us to do so. So what you end up with is a conflict between a primitive, atavistic part of your mind which is saying “Jump!” and the more modern, rational part of your mind which is saying, “For Christ’s sake, don’t!”

- Author: [Douglas Adams](https://www.leafyquotes.com/douglas-adams.md)
- Book: [Last Chance to See](https://www.leafyquotes.com/douglas-adams/last-chance-to-see.md)
- Page: 74
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Last_Chance_to_See#Chapter_3:_Leopardskin_Pillbox_Hat) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/douglas-adams/last-chance-to-see/ive-heard-an-idea

## More from this book

> Until 1987 Fiordland was the home of one of the strangest, most unearthly sounds in the world. For thousands of years, in the right season, the sound could be heard after nightfall throughout these wild peaks and valleys.
>
> It was like a heartbeat: a deep, powerful throb that echoed through the dark ravines. It was so deep that some people will tell you that they felt it stirring in their gut before they could discern the actual sound, a sort of wump, a heavy wobble of air. Most people have never heard it at all, or ever will again. It was the sound of the kakapo, the old night parrot of New Zealand, sitting high on a rocky promontory and calling for a mate.

p. 111 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/douglas-adams/last-chance-to-see/until-1987-fiordland.md)

> [On the kakapo’s tendency to freeze in confusion when faced with a predator:] It’s frustrating to think of the difference that language would make. The millennia crawl by pretty bloody slowly while natural selection sifts its way through generation after generation, favouring the odd aberrant kakapo, which is a little twitchier than its contemporaries, till the species as a whole finally gets the idea. It would all be cut short in a moment if one of them could say, “When you see one of those things with whiskers and little bitey teeth, run like hell.” On the other hand, human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.

p. 116 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/douglas-adams/last-chance-to-see/on-the-kakapos.md)

> I have a well-deserved reputation for being something of a gadget freak, and am rarely happier than when spending an entire day programming my computer to perform automatically a task that it would otherwise take me a good ten seconds to do by hand.

p. 38 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/douglas-adams/last-chance-to-see/i-have-a-well-deserved.md)