Why Walking Whales?

Aside 2.1 - Do we ever really have an original idea?

I still remember watching an episode of The Tick back in the 1990s where a whale named Blowhole comes galloping across the countryside. The image stuck with me — a massive whale pounding the earth like a runaway horse.

What made it especially funny to me was that I had imagined the same thing years earlier. In my mind, whales weren’t confined to oceans; they could just as easily be sprinting across a desert. When I saw it on screen, I felt both delighted and a little robbed — like the cartoon had stolen my daydream.

But of course, the idea isn’t so far-fetched once you learn that whales actually evolved from land mammals with legs. Their ancestors looked a lot like hippos, and over millions of years they traded hooves for flippers. In that sense, the running whale is less absurd than it first appears — it’s a flashback.

Which brings me to the larger point: most ideas aren’t purely original. They rise naturally from the same pool of facts and images we all swim in. What matters isn’t being the first person to think of them, but how you bring them to life in your own way.