... by something totally trivial, that made you laugh afterwards?
How about this one?
I was home, alone. I decided to have a shower, leaving the bathroom door open. The shower has a glass stall.
When I'm home alone, I usually turn off all the lights except for the room I'm in.
I'm getting it all steamy, when suddenly ... I see a head pass, slowly and silently, right across the dark bathroom doorway! In the dark, I couldn't see a body- just the head.
I was sure I was just seeing things. No-one could get in without making a noise, right? I go back to showering ... and the head passes, slowly and silently, the other way!
Okay, I was now shitting myself, nearly literally. I definitely saw it this time. WTF?
I turn off the shower and investigate, to find ... my son's "Spongebob" foil helium balloon, negected in his bedroom for months (and head-sized), had lost just enough gas to float at head-height ... :lol:
Jesus dude. I would have made stool for sure. Type 5 or 6.
:lol:
:lol:
Once I was with my gf in the basement of her parents' house doing teenage stuff. Suddenly we heard somebody coming down the stairs...clomp, clomp, clomp. We got our clothes on fast as lightning. My heart was pounding and I'm thinking her dad is gonna kick my ass. Then the door opens and it's her new kitten who wasn't quite big enough to walk down the stairs and had to leap off each stair to get to the next lower one, making a thud each time. Cat's name was Puck. Sneaky bastard.
I shit my pants sometimes, but I never get scared.
Quote from: MadImmortalMan on September 05, 2013, 03:13:57 PM
Once I was with my gf in the basement of her parents' house doing teenage stuff. Suddenly we heard somebody coming down the stairs...clomp, clomp, clomp. We got our clothes on fast as lightning. My heart was pounding and I'm thinking her dad is gonna kick my ass. Then the door opens and it's her new kitten who wasn't quite big enough to walk down the stairs and had to leap off each stair to get to the next lower one, making a thud each time. Cat's name was Puck. Sneaky bastard.
I can see the response to the cat now: "Puck ... off." ;)
This is nowhere near shit-scared, but we had our house painted recently, and the doors are a darker color. When I'm mowing the lawn out back, out of the corner of my eye the basement door always looks like it's wide open. Bugs the crap out of me. Hopefully I'll be used to it by next year.
A tie between being in a small boat in the middle of a herring school being attacked by killer whales and being on a university campus under siege by the Peoples Liberation Army.
Quote from: Viking on September 05, 2013, 04:11:48 PM
A tie between being in a small boat in the middle of a herring school being attacked by killer whales and being on a university campus under siege by the Peoples Liberation Army.
I dunno - do those count as "totally trivial" things you can laugh about afterwards ... ? ;)
Quote from: Malthus on September 05, 2013, 04:13:41 PM
Quote from: Viking on September 05, 2013, 04:11:48 PM
A tie between being in a small boat in the middle of a herring school being attacked by killer whales and being on a university campus under siege by the Peoples Liberation Army.
I dunno - do those count as "totally trivial" things you can laugh about afterwards ... ? ;)
I dunno, they are parts of processes in which many herring and many chinese students were killed. They do, however, put everything else into context. It puts any fear response into it's proper context. The unknown doesn't scare me half as much as the known dangers I have seen.
Quote from: derspiess on September 05, 2013, 03:47:18 PM
This is nowhere near shit-scared, but we had our house painted recently, and the doors are a darker color. When I'm mowing the lawn out back, out of the corner of my eye the basement door always looks like it's wide open. Bugs the crap out of me. Hopefully I'll be used to it by next year.
Paint that fucker white. Problem solved.
My radiator once fell down from the wall and it gave off an incredible loud noise, scary in itself. But after rushing to turn off the water and burning myself in the process I tried to figure out why it fell.
To this day I don't know why as nothing had been torn from the wall on which it had been hanging for at least a decade. :ph34r:
On a morning watch near Drake's Bay in California I was alone at the wheel in the fog. No real danger as it was dead calm too. Still, the two humpback whales that suddenly surfaced and spouted about 10 yards behind me scared the crap out of me.
A few years back I did a cross channel swim across porpoise bay*. About mid channel a dark shape came up from underneath me. Great, a killer whale has mistaken me for a seal! As the dark shape came closer my heart stopped - this is it. Turned out to be a large black seal, it was curious and swam with me for the next 30 minutes or so.
* just up from the Sunshine Coast North of Vancouver.
Quote from: Liep on September 05, 2013, 04:27:56 PM
My radiator once fell down from the wall and it gave off an incredible loud noise, scary in itself. But after rushing to turn off the water and burning myself in the process I tried to figure out why it fell.
To this day I don't know why as nothing had been torn from the wall on which it had been hanging for at least a decade. :ph34r:
Poltergeists? :hmm:
Quote from: PDH on September 05, 2013, 04:38:44 PM
On a morning watch near Drake's Bay in California I was alone at the wheel in the fog. No real danger as it was dead calm too. Still, the two humpback whales that suddenly surfaced and spouted about 10 yards behind me scared the crap out of me.
:lol:
Yeah, that would do it.
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 05, 2013, 04:54:54 PM
A few years back I did a cross channel swim across porpoise bay*. About mid channel a dark shape came up from underneath me. Great, a killer whale has mistaken me for a seal! As the dark shape came closer my heart stopped - this is it. Turned out to be a large black seal, it was curious and swam with me for the next 30 minutes or so.
* just up from the Sunshine Coast North of Vancouver.
"Hey seal - fuck off, you will attract killer whales". ;)
Quote from: Malthus on September 05, 2013, 04:57:34 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 05, 2013, 04:54:54 PM
A few years back I did a cross channel swim across porpoise bay*. About mid channel a dark shape came up from underneath me. Great, a killer whale has mistaken me for a seal! As the dark shape came closer my heart stopped - this is it. Turned out to be a large black seal, it was curious and swam with me for the next 30 minutes or so.
* just up from the Sunshine Coast North of Vancouver.
"Hey seal - fuck off, you will attract killer whales". ;)
Seal was probably thinking, hey, if a killer whale shows up it'll eat this wet monkey instead of me.
Quote from: Viking on September 05, 2013, 05:17:14 PM
Quote from: Malthus on September 05, 2013, 04:57:34 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 05, 2013, 04:54:54 PM
A few years back I did a cross channel swim across porpoise bay*. About mid channel a dark shape came up from underneath me. Great, a killer whale has mistaken me for a seal! As the dark shape came closer my heart stopped - this is it. Turned out to be a large black seal, it was curious and swam with me for the next 30 minutes or so.
* just up from the Sunshine Coast North of Vancouver.
"Hey seal - fuck off, you will attract killer whales". ;)
Seal was probably thinking, hey, if a killer whale shows up it'll eat this wet monkey instead of me.
:lol:
Quote from: Viking on September 05, 2013, 05:17:14 PM
Seal was probably thinking, hey, if a killer whale shows up it'll eat this wet monkey instead of me.
:lol:
I'd only recently started working underground at the coal mine. As often happened I'd been sent to a cushy job in a remote part of the pit which required only one man but was not a desirable job for superstitious workmates.
It was for me, as only a few small actions operating an endless rope haulage system were required, possibly none at all..............I arranged some dust into a comfortable heap, sat myself down and started reading my copy of Pere Goriot.
Then the whole bloody tunnel started shaking and rumbling.......aargh, I'm 2000 feet underground and 3 miles out to sea..........I'm doomed!!!
So doomed that I started relaxing, no way to get out, may as well carry on reading the (rather good) book. An hour or two later I realise that while I'm remote in walkable distance there may well have been a face in development quite near me. On the train back to the shaft I chat to the guys and find out that some shotfiring had been done developing a face above where I was "working" but very distant as a walking route.
Needless to say, there was no cause for worry whatsoever and this sort of thing became routine, but the first time when nobody had warned me..............for 30 seconds I thought I was a dead man :D
As a child I lived in absolute terror because I would see things other people wouldn't. Now I just ignore it. Disembodied wolf head screaming at me, yeah that's not real.
The time Channel 7 In Dayton set off the nuke attack message instead of the severe thunderstorm warning message.
I got a shitburger until I realized the sirens weren't going off.
Quote from: Malthus on September 05, 2013, 05:18:09 PM
Quote from: Viking on September 05, 2013, 05:17:14 PM
Quote from: Malthus on September 05, 2013, 04:57:34 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 05, 2013, 04:54:54 PM
A few years back I did a cross channel swim across porpoise bay*. About mid channel a dark shape came up from underneath me. Great, a killer whale has mistaken me for a seal! As the dark shape came closer my heart stopped - this is it. Turned out to be a large black seal, it was curious and swam with me for the next 30 minutes or so.
* just up from the Sunshine Coast North of Vancouver.
"Hey seal - fuck off, you will attract killer whales". ;)
Seal was probably thinking, hey, if a killer whale shows up it'll eat this wet monkey instead of me.
:lol:
Apparently orcas almost never kill people in the wild. I've always wondered why. We'd make fine snacks.
My guess is that when they ping us, we don't "look" at all like a seal, and in fact we're so alien to their experience (and they have very little group experience) that they're wary. It would be like if you got plopped down in the Colombian jungle. You have no supplies, and you see one of those giant centipedes that refute the existence of your God. Sure, it's moving, it's made of proteins and lipids and sugars, but you're not likely to be particularly hungry for
it.
That or people rarely swim in the waters that contain killer whales.
Quote from: Razgovory on September 05, 2013, 09:11:30 PM
That or people rarely swim in the waters that contain killer whales.
:lol:
Quote from: Razgovory on September 05, 2013, 09:11:30 PM
That or people rarely swim in the waters that contain killer whales.
People rarely swim off Vancouver and Seattle? Perhaps they do. The Pac Northwest might as well be Narnia.
What do you care? You're all morally quagmired and shit.
Quote from: Ideologue on September 05, 2013, 09:33:02 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on September 05, 2013, 09:11:30 PM
That or people rarely swim in the waters that contain killer whales.
People rarely swim off Vancouver and Seattle? Perhaps they do. The Pac Northwest might as well be Narnia.
Killer whales tend to colder deeper water then human beings do. Killer whales have been known to swim in shallower waters and warmer waters, and even been known to eat land animals such as deer and moose. I imagine the fat/meat ratio on a deer is probably similar to a human, so there's probably no reason why a whale
wouldn't eat a human. The only reason I can think is that people rarely swim in the areas that those whales frequent. Unless this species of Whale made a pact with human beings in prehistory that they would never prey on a human being. Probably as a result of losing a riddle contest or something. Animals are always getting fucked over by things like that.
Is that so?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbVPRGfNNNE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJVxP7gZ4HQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOtntDW0KnM
There are three different orca subspecies/species/populations, with highly variant behavior patterns. Some are deep sea, others are not. Resident orcas live just offshore and are easily accessible to humans, and are not always highly visible. (It remains common sense to avoid giant fucking animals even if they aren't intent on eating you.)
I concede that most of the places you're likely to swim, surf, or boat in Missouri are not highly populated by cetaceans.
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on September 05, 2013, 05:39:58 PM
I'd only recently started working underground at the coal mine.
Tyr's hero! :o
Quote from: Ideologue on September 05, 2013, 10:29:17 PM
Is that so?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbVPRGfNNNE (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbVPRGfNNNE)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJVxP7gZ4HQ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJVxP7gZ4HQ)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOtntDW0KnM (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOtntDW0KnM)
There are three different orca subspecies/species/populations, with highly variant behavior patterns. Some are deep sea, others are not. Resident orcas live just offshore and are easily accessible to humans, and are not always highly visible. (It remains common sense to avoid giant fucking animals even if they aren't intent on eating you.)
I concede that most of the places you're likely to swim, surf, or boat in Missouri are not highly populated by cetaceans.
Yes, it is. Your examples are news reports of some whales swimming off the coast of Canada. Indicating that A: since it's a new report they aren't commonly seen in the area, and B: it's off the coast of fucking Canada. That's cold water where few people swim. Only one of your videos showed people swimming with the whales, and in that video the swimmers fled.
Meh. There are news reports about the fucking rain.
Quote from: Ideologue on September 05, 2013, 09:33:02 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on September 05, 2013, 09:11:30 PM
That or people rarely swim in the waters that contain killer whales.
People rarely swim off Vancouver and Seattle? Perhaps they do. The Pac Northwest might as well be Narnia.
Ocean is too cold to swim in for long in the Pacific NorthWest. CC's swim in Porpoise Bay was in an inlet so would be warmer than right off the more open coastline, or he had a wetsuit on.
Shark attacks get reported all the time because so many people survive them (apparently we don't taste very good to sharks, and they often take one bite and spit us out); also, sharks are basically stupid, so they often attack people when there are other people around to see it and rescue the victim.
Killer Whales are clever, and much larger, on average, than sharks. Maybe they eat people all the time, but only in ways that don't get found out. :menace:
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on September 05, 2013, 05:39:58 PM
I'd only recently started working underground at the coal mine. As often happened I'd been sent to a cushy job in a remote part of the pit which required only one man but was not a desirable job for superstitious workmates.
It was for me, as only a few small actions operating an endless rope haulage system were required, possibly none at all..............I arranged some dust into a comfortable heap, sat myself down and started reading my copy of Pere Goriot.
Then the whole bloody tunnel started shaking and rumbling.......aargh, I'm 2000 feet underground and 3 miles out to sea..........I'm doomed!!!
So doomed that I started relaxing, no way to get out, may as well carry on reading the (rather good) book. An hour or two later I realise that while I'm remote in walkable distance there may well have been a face in development quite near me. On the train back to the shaft I chat to the guys and find out that some shotfiring had been done developing a face above where I was "working" but very distant as a walking route.
Needless to say, there was no cause for worry whatsoever and this sort of thing became routine, but the first time when nobody had warned me..............for 30 seconds I thought I was a dead man :D
I think I understood about 10 words of this. :unsure:
Quote from: Malthus on September 06, 2013, 07:52:56 AM
Shark attacks get reported all the time because so many people survive them (apparently we don't taste very good to sharks, and they often take one bite and spit us out); also, sharks are basically stupid, so they often attack people when there are other people around to see it and rescue the victim.
Killer Whales are clever, and much larger, on average, than sharks. Maybe they eat people all the time, but only in ways that don't get found out. :menace:
Sharks only have the sense of touch to examine an object. They use sight and the electrical sense to find out where things are rather than what they are. A killer whale doesn't use the bite to find out what you are, it uses sight and sonar to find out what you are. The Killer Whale knows you aren't a seal but will look and listen to find out what you are. The Shark also knows you aren't a seal but will bite you to find out what you are. To the best of my knowledge most shark attacks are actually inquisitorial bites.
Killer whales aren't fish.
Quote from: PRC on September 06, 2013, 12:10:40 AM
Quote from: Ideologue on September 05, 2013, 09:33:02 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on September 05, 2013, 09:11:30 PM
That or people rarely swim in the waters that contain killer whales.
People rarely swim off Vancouver and Seattle? Perhaps they do. The Pac Northwest might as well be Narnia.
Ocean is too cold to swim in for long in the Pacific NorthWest. CC's swim in Porpoise Bay was in an inlet so would be warmer than right off the more open coastline, or he had a wetsuit on.
That is true but Orca pods are very common around here. People often swim in areas where the pods are active in the summer (for example the Gulf Islands). Porpoise Bay is an inlet and so is warmer (and more importantly more calm) but it isnt that much warmer than the surface of the water to the West of the Sunshine coast.
Its just that Orcas prefer to eat Grey Whales, salmon and seals and dont bother with humans.
Here is an interesting piece I found that gives an explanation as to why Orcas dont attack humans - if you dont buy the culture bit other explanations are provided. I do accept that part of the explanation is that Orca are highly intelligent and social animals who know what they want to eat and its not us.
QuoteSAN JUAN ISLAND, WASHINGTON – It's an image you often see on paintings and wood carvings – a giant totemic killer whale, with the images of sea creatures and faces artistically contained within the whale's body.
The image tells the story of the Tlingit legend of the creation of the killer whale, which goes as follows: Natsilane was a charismatic and skilled wood carver who married the Chief's daughter. Jealous of Natsilane's popularity and talent, his brothers-in-law devised a plan to abandon Natsilane at sea during a traditional sea lion hunt. Left to die on a small rock in the middle of nowhere, Natsilane was summoned under the waves by a sea lion. The sea lion asked him to heal his son who was injured by a spear during the hunt. After pulling the spear point out, the Sea Lion Chief granted Natsilane great powers and helped him back to shore. Still angry about being abandoned, he began carving a great whale out of different types of wood. The first two carvings, when set in the water, simply floated away. But the third, made of yellow cedar, came to life. Natsilane sent it to exact revenge on his brothers-in-law. When the killer whale found them, he smashed their canoe and killed the brothers. But Natsilane felt badly about what he had done, and when the whale returned to him, he instructed it to never harm humans again.
The legend tries to explain something curious about orcas. They don't attack people. The question is — why not? On a simple, biological scale they are bigger and stronger than we are, have sharper teeth, and they're carnivores. Any similar creature might see humans as a tasty little snack, but not orcas.
Observation has shown that one answer may not be far from the ancient legend. Killer whales seem to follow rules that go beyond basic instinct and border on culture. Individual pods forage, communicate and navigate differently, much the way different cultures of people do. Researchers have witnessed "greeting ceremonies" between pods. They've even seen the equivalent of a funeral. It may very well be that within "orca culture" there is a social norm not to go after people.
A more scientific explanation might be that we're simply not tasty enough to be included on the killer whales' menu. Orcas, it turns out, have picky palates. The Southern Resident Killer Whales of Puget Sound dine on only the fattest Chinook salmon, even if it means allowing an entire school of skinnier salmon to swim by. Transient orcas, which have a broader diet, have shown similar selective behavior, in one case killing a gray whale but eating only its tongue.
A third possible reason is that we don't resemble any food source killer whales typically depend on. There have reportedly been incidents where an orca attempted to hunt a human, but broke off the hunt immediately upon realizing it wasn't a sea lion.
Okay, so we've established that killer whales are pretty darned smart — they have a culture with specific behaviors, a picky diet, and they know that we don't taste very good. Still, humans pump toxins into their water, we bombard them with noise, and sometimes we kidnap their babies and put them in aquariums. Orcas have a pretty good reason to hate us, perhaps even enough to want to extract revenge, yet they don't. The answer here might be friendship. There are many cases where nomadic killer whales have gravitated to humans, bonding with them and playing games. Trainers at places like Sea World say very little goes into orca training. The whales seem to understand people, and are eager to cooperate and create bonds.
In fact, the only apparent instances of orcas attacking people have happened at aquatic parks, where the whales have killed trainers. Many experts think these attacks are not malicious, rather a case of play getting out of hand. Howard Garrett of the Orca Network disagrees. He argues the attacks are deliberate, though not in cold blood. Cut off from their pods, confined in small concrete tanks, and hand fed instead of being allowed to hunt, Garrett thinks the pressures build causing the orcas to occasionally lash out.
Whether that's the case or not, it's clear that in the wild, orcas seem to have a pretty universal rule: don't attack humans. The reason would appear to be both biological and cultural. Killer whales have been around about 11 million years. Compared to them, we are a relatively new species on the planet. Physically we're no match for this apex predator, but they've apparently deemed us worthy of coexistence. We owe them the same.
At the very least, we can admire and respect these creatures, and be grateful to Natsilane for commanding the killer whale to follow the universal rule.
Quote from: merithyn on September 06, 2013, 07:57:49 AM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on September 05, 2013, 05:39:58 PM
I'd only recently started working underground at the coal mine. As often happened I'd been sent to a cushy job in a remote part of the pit which required only one man but was not a desirable job for superstitious workmates.
It was for me, as only a few small actions operating an endless rope haulage system were required, possibly none at all..............I arranged some dust into a comfortable heap, sat myself down and started reading my copy of Pere Goriot.
Then the whole bloody tunnel started shaking and rumbling.......aargh, I'm 2000 feet underground and 3 miles out to sea..........I'm doomed!!!
So doomed that I started relaxing, no way to get out, may as well carry on reading the (rather good) book. An hour or two later I realise that while I'm remote in walkable distance there may well have been a face in development quite near me. On the train back to the shaft I chat to the guys and find out that some shotfiring had been done developing a face above where I was "working" but very distant as a walking route.
Needless to say, there was no cause for worry whatsoever and this sort of thing became routine, but the first time when nobody had warned me..............for 30 seconds I thought I was a dead man :D
I think I understood about 10 words of this. :unsure:
:huh:
Apparently we know this instinctivly as well. That pod of killer whales attacking the herring under the boat I was in freaked the living shit out of me.. but, I wasn't afraid of being eaten if I fell over board, I was afraid of being knocked off the boat by a collision and accidentally stunned by a bait ball bash or a collision with a whale and drowning/freezing.
Quote from: Viking on September 06, 2013, 12:29:15 PM
Apparently we know this instinctivly as well. That pod of killer whales attacking the herring under the boat I was in freaked the living shit out of me.. but, I wasn't afraid of being eaten if I fell over board, I was afraid of being knocked off the boat by a collision and accidentally stunned by a bait ball bash or a collision with a whale and drowning/freezing.
I think you have a point there. My parents had pictures of me playing in the ocean as a small child with the dorsal fins of a pod of Orca in the background. I was looking at them but had no fear. Neither apparantly did my parents as they took the time to snap the photos.
These associations must be hardwired in us somehow over mellenia of living near eachother.
Quote
A more scientific explanation might be that we're simply not tasty enough to be included on the killer whales' menu. Orcas, it turns out, have picky palates. The Southern Resident Killer Whales of Puget Sound dine on only the fattest Chinook salmon, even if it means allowing an entire school of skinnier salmon to swim by.
So, they don't eat us because we are not fat enough to be tasty?
Presumably, Katami doesn't swim. :P Or Americans in general. :D
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 06, 2013, 12:35:53 PM
Quote from: Viking on September 06, 2013, 12:29:15 PM
Apparently we know this instinctivly as well. That pod of killer whales attacking the herring under the boat I was in freaked the living shit out of me.. but, I wasn't afraid of being eaten if I fell over board, I was afraid of being knocked off the boat by a collision and accidentally stunned by a bait ball bash or a collision with a whale and drowning/freezing.
I think you have a point there. My parents had pictures of me playing in the ocean as a small child with the dorsal fins of a pod of Orca in the background. I was looking at them but had no fear. Neither apparantly did my parents as they took the time to snap the photos.
These associations must be hardwired in us somehow over mellenia of living near eachother.
Fear of snakes is not learned. We know this by instinct. The same presumably applies to sharks. Remember, dolphins are as big, as dangerous and much smarter than sharks but we do not fear them. Sea world doesn't have many people swimming with sharks.
Every time I look into the pot afterwards.
Quote from: Viking on September 06, 2013, 12:52:22 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 06, 2013, 12:35:53 PM
Quote from: Viking on September 06, 2013, 12:29:15 PM
Apparently we know this instinctivly as well. That pod of killer whales attacking the herring under the boat I was in freaked the living shit out of me.. but, I wasn't afraid of being eaten if I fell over board, I was afraid of being knocked off the boat by a collision and accidentally stunned by a bait ball bash or a collision with a whale and drowning/freezing.
I think you have a point there. My parents had pictures of me playing in the ocean as a small child with the dorsal fins of a pod of Orca in the background. I was looking at them but had no fear. Neither apparantly did my parents as they took the time to snap the photos.
These associations must be hardwired in us somehow over mellenia of living near eachother.
Fear of snakes is not learned. We know this by instinct. The same presumably applies to sharks. Remember, dolphins are as big, as dangerous and much smarter than sharks but we do not fear them. Sea world doesn't have many people swimming with sharks.
It is? :hmm:
Quote from: mongers on September 06, 2013, 03:35:58 PM
Quote from: Viking on September 06, 2013, 12:52:22 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 06, 2013, 12:35:53 PM
Quote from: Viking on September 06, 2013, 12:29:15 PM
Apparently we know this instinctivly as well. That pod of killer whales attacking the herring under the boat I was in freaked the living shit out of me.. but, I wasn't afraid of being eaten if I fell over board, I was afraid of being knocked off the boat by a collision and accidentally stunned by a bait ball bash or a collision with a whale and drowning/freezing.
I think you have a point there. My parents had pictures of me playing in the ocean as a small child with the dorsal fins of a pod of Orca in the background. I was looking at them but had no fear. Neither apparantly did my parents as they took the time to snap the photos.
These associations must be hardwired in us somehow over mellenia of living near eachother.
Fear of snakes is not learned. We know this by instinct. The same presumably applies to sharks. Remember, dolphins are as big, as dangerous and much smarter than sharks but we do not fear them. Sea world doesn't have many people swimming with sharks.
It is? :hmm:
So what is the deal then with people who aren't afraid of snakes?
I'm not particularly afraid of snakes, though I've learned, the hard way, not to pick up garter snakes.
[They may not have an effective bite, but they shit a terrible smelling poop on you as a defence mechanism]
Quote from: garbon on September 06, 2013, 03:45:04 PM
Quote from: mongers on September 06, 2013, 03:35:58 PM
Quote from: Viking on September 06, 2013, 12:52:22 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 06, 2013, 12:35:53 PM
Quote from: Viking on September 06, 2013, 12:29:15 PM
Apparently we know this instinctivly as well. That pod of killer whales attacking the herring under the boat I was in freaked the living shit out of me.. but, I wasn't afraid of being eaten if I fell over board, I was afraid of being knocked off the boat by a collision and accidentally stunned by a bait ball bash or a collision with a whale and drowning/freezing.
I think you have a point there. My parents had pictures of me playing in the ocean as a small child with the dorsal fins of a pod of Orca in the background. I was looking at them but had no fear. Neither apparantly did my parents as they took the time to snap the photos.
These associations must be hardwired in us somehow over mellenia of living near eachother.
Fear of snakes is not learned. We know this by instinct. The same presumably applies to sharks. Remember, dolphins are as big, as dangerous and much smarter than sharks but we do not fear them. Sea world doesn't have many people swimming with sharks.
It is? :hmm:
So what is the deal then with people who aren't afraid of snakes?
That was my point.
Wait, so Raz was wrong about something that happens outside of the four walls of his house?
The first time I saw a possum i thought it was a 25 pound rat.
Nothing has ever really scared me; on a few occasions, some time later I thought "Oh that was a bit close/hairy", but no.
Quote from: Ideologue on September 06, 2013, 04:12:44 PM
Wait, so Raz was wrong about something that happens outside of the four walls of his house?
Nope.