Polar bear = motherfucker comes from Trudy's follow-up:
Look, our more enlightened world is fresh out of bad guys with which to menace our children into obedience. We can't threaten to sell them to Gypsies or Indians. Nobody is going to make matzoh from them. The Commies are just about gone. Even the Big Bad Wolf is a symbol of the majesty and wildness of the West and the unleashed power of half a million Wicca. Oh, and FORGET scaring them with witches, half their friends are witches. Even the Boogie-man Americans have cultural outreach now.
We're left with a world where children are forced to silently mouth "Polar Bear" at their parents until they're old enough to call them motherfuckers.
I am so puzzled by this video. It's a Michael Jackson tribute. Of sorts. [link]
sarameg, that eyelid-twitch thing happens to me when I'm under stress. Or when I think of my boss. Same thing.
DavidS "F2F5: I forget that everyone isn't us" Jun 18, 2009 8:22:40 pm PDT
Interesting, I'd missed that, and the follow-up:
Is that news? They are the only land predator that actively hunts humans.
::waits for billytea or Theo to correct him::
This isn't true. There are of course many species that don't normally hunt humans but will in some circumstances. That applies to tigers, lions, and IIRC most especially leopards. Black bears too - interestingly, if a brown bear is threatening you, it's probably because it felt threatened by you first; but if a black bear is doing so, it's probably peckish. Nonetheless, I'd agree that they don't count (possible exception of the leopard, which doesn't seem to take much to become a man-eater), because it's not their common behaviour. The polar bear most certainly differs in this regard.
However, the point at which we're being too narrow is in limiting ourselves to
mammalian
predators. The shark and the crocodile, of course, are not land-based; but there are other reptiles that fit the bill. I give you the anaconda, reticulated python, African rock python, Burmese python and possibly (if the human is small enough) even the Australian scrub python or the boa constrictor. Interestingly, there's a now extinct eagle from New Zealand that may at one time also hunted humans - Haast's eagle would have been big enough to do so, and in the relatively short overlap between Maoris arriving and it going extinct, it probably wouldn't have learnt much fear of humans.
There is, however, at least one other land predator that, while not overly
successful
at hunting humans, will do so with impunity, should the opportunity arise. Take a guess what it might be.
Africa's driver ant. They will eat anything that is too slow to escape, and if that includes an old, infantile, sick or inebriated human, they will most certainly take advantage. I believe this makes them the only invertebrate in the world - I discount giant squid, who probably would eat a human, but have never been documented doing so - to view humans as prey.
(oooo - animal facts! much like my Tolkien trivia, but non-trivial and *useful*)
I remember reading about Haast's - but I hadn't realized there were so many large snakes.
There was an eagle big enough to prey on humans?
F*cking f*ck. California is starting to give IOUs to welfare recipients. Seriously? Yeah, 'cause they can really hold out and wait for the cash. This is ridiculous.
There was an eagle big enough to prey on humans?
Yup. Died out about 1400 AD. It's speculation whether it did prey on humans, and it may have been wary of a full-grown man, but its staple prey were moas, which weighed up to 230 kg. It was big enough to take out a human.
My living room smells of kitty farts.
