Four animals who leap for a living were asked one thing: why?

THE SPRINGBOK: For no reason. That's the honest answer. I'll be walking along and then I go straight up, all four legs stiff, back arched, and come down in the same place. They have theories about it. Maybe it is a signal. Maybe it is joy. I'd say it's what happens when everything in you is wired together and it all fires at once.

THE SIFAKA: I leap from tree to tree all day; that's work. But when I have to cross open ground, I can't walk it. So I dance across it sideways, two feet at a time, arms out. It looks ridiculous. It gets me there.

THE KANGAROO RAT: Mine are the important ones. Something strikes at me, I'm not there anymore. Straight up. You don't think. You don't build a case first, brick by brick, every piece filled in, and then decide to jump. By then you're lunch.

THE JUMPING SPIDER: I think first. I'm known for it. I look, I work out the distance, and then I go. But here is the thing nobody sees: before I jump I fix a line behind me. One thread of silk to where I was.

THE SPRINGBOK: Why?

THE JUMPING SPIDER: Because there are two kinds of leap. One is a leap of knowledge. You see a gap, you guess what's on the other side, you jump, and if you're wrong you climb back up your line and guess again. That's how anything new gets found. The other is a leap of faith. No line. Those can be traps. I've seen spiders take them. I don't see those spiders anymore.

THE SIFAKA: And the big ones? What's right, what's sacred?

THE JUMPING SPIDER: I don't leap on those now. Those I grow slowly, and I prune. I know what I know.

THE KANGAROO RAT: So you don't leap.

THE JUMPING SPIDER: I leap all the time. Small ones. Over a crack. Onto a leaf. For nothing.

THE SPRINGBOK: For nothing is the best kind.

The meeting broke up. On the way out, the paper passed a man in an apartment building taking the four steps to his door in a single bound, for no reason at all.