Mmmkay, class.
Starting off class with a nature documentary today.
Was it wrong of this guy to interfere with nature?
Some have compared this to slapping a cheeseburger out of someone’s hands. I feel like that’s a stupid analogy because the cheeseburger isn’t mooing for its life anymore. We’ve neatly cleaned our hands of that task by allowing the slaughterhouse to do the work. If this mantis were about to hang the bird on the feeder and strip off its skin and cut its ribs away for other mantises whose sensitive tummies might get nauseated about how what’s going into it really just died… then yeah. That comparison’d be stun-bolt on the head dead on and awesome. But that’s not how nature works. Without fast-food, the only supersizing you do is of the killin’ skills. And mantis clearly been working dem kill skills if he captured a creature with crazy fast wing speed. (Or a slutty “she” who got practice nomming on noggins of sex partners).
Either way – it’s survival of the fittest.
But wait a minute, Zorak.
’cause you’re forgetting someone king-i-er than you. If we’re going to accept survival of the fittest, we have to accept the fact that there are apex predators. And you know who’s more apex than a mantis on a feeder? The guy who owns the yard the feeder lives in. People predators just are different in that they have that tendency toward empathy for other-species when they hafta watch them being murderfied in mid-air. The bird’s little cries that sound like they could be coming from your pet being slowly tortured certainly don’t help because you realize there’s a slow, agonal death ensuing. I mean, even no-pity Nietsche ran and hugged a horse being beaten in the streets once upon a time before getting dead of syphilis.
So, I think the dude in the vid started out trying to go with the flow and watch like it’s nada more than a NatGeo spesh. But we’re only human. And sometimes the strings pull too hard at the feel puppet trapped in our rib prisons till we just can’t help it. Whether it’s a drowning eating machine or a grateful dolphin, we’ve gotta extend a helping hand.
Or flicking finger.
Even though that digital death blow def ended with them both decapitated on the ground.
