The catmeister has sent his minions to wreck a poll, and wreck it wrongly. Look at this malformed question:
Adorable Pictures of Babies? 4%
Adorable Pictures of Puppies? 27%
Adorable Pictures of Kittens? 47%
All of the Above 13%
None of the Above 6%
I ask you…WHERE ARE THE SQUID? Given the absence of a correct answer, clearly the only acceptable reply is “none of the above”. Teach them a lesson, please. For great justice!
The polling seems to be aimed at humans alone, too. I’m sure that lampreys would differ at least somewhat in their responses, especially since none of those appalling beings listed would live long enough in the water to provide even a good snack.
At least they’d provision cephalopods rather better.
Glen Davidson
Kittens for me, I’m afraid. I’ve never been able to see anything at all attractive about human babies. I might feel different if I’d ever had any but since our only babies are of the type that’s currently trying to walk on my keyboard, kitties it is.
How phylumist of them! PZ, you will need to post an overpoweringly cute cephalopod tomorrow to counter this heresy! And then a damning Anti-Caturday post after that!
A cute squid
Babies? Ugh!
Pinkish squirming things with noise and puke out of one end and noise and …I don’t even want to think about it..from the other. I shudder at the thought of being on the same planet, let alone in the same room. Come to think of it I’d rather handle a live squid than hold one of my nieces. Luckily for the survival of the human race others think differently…
I opted for ‘none of the above’, if only to keep it ahead of babies.
Is All Your Base retro yet?
I’m afraid I *accidentally* voted for kittens, I’m so so sorry and won’t let it happen again…
I’ve got to say, H. sapiens was severely underrepresented in those “exhibits”.
Gawd, they’re all warm-blooded mammals. Humans are so biased. The correct answer is “None of the above”, right?
I voted for infant felids.
Sorry, PZ. Teh cyoot* overrode your tentacled overlordliness this time.
* Or possibly the Toxoplasma gondii. Brain parasites or cuteness, I’m sure it was one of those two.
As long as babies come in last, I’m happy.
This guy thinks you’re losing your poll crashing powers. And it’s not as if he’s got an axe to grind or anything.
Justicar is one of the original MRA assholes from the elevatorgate thread. He got his ass handed by every regular here and apparently is still butt hurt about it. I’ve seen him hang out at Coyne’s not-a-blog where somehow it’s safer for assholes cause Jerry doesn’t allow the conversations to get too heated.
“For great justice!”
Take off every squid!
(Yay, finally managed to log in. I was trying to use my regular WordPress account all the time, and wondering why it didn’t work.)
Squid are really interesting animals (heck, I even don’t eat them*) but… mmm, kitties.
*Or any seafood, but don’t tell the squid that they’re not special.
To hear* is to obey, oh squidly master. I have struck another blow for “none of the above”.
*Or read, as the case may be.
None of the above, indeed. It’s time for a revolution! The Feline Empire must end! Hail the tentacled overlord!
I love the guy, but he’s only giving away a paperback copy of WEIT, the cheap bastard. And he’s ruined it by writing in it! I’ve already got the hardback and the Kindle edition, so why would I want a soiled paperback?
Er, no I don’t. Hardback, yes, but I was thinking of the Kindle edition of Your Inner Fish.
This post arrived upside down, but I think I’ve got the gist of it now, and will vote accordingly, O Son of Cthulhu.
He bribed us with the chance to win his book signed. What do you got?
I also noticed an unexplicable lack of ducklings on this poll. Seriously, as far as cuteness goes, a day-old duckling or gosling beats any kitten, puppy, baby, or combination thereof. And, like squid, they eventually have fine culinary uses.
@2 & 5
I used to think like you, but since I became a father I partially changed my mind. My son is the cutest creature ever. Everybody else’s baby, of course, isn’t, and I’d still rather keep my distance from them. However, one has to keep in mind that babies eventually turn into kids, and most of the latter are great.
Sure I voted None of the above – especially because I don’t like adorable pictures of squids either! I don’t like adorable pictures at all.
My daughter was as ugly, if not uglier, than any human baby I’ve had the misfortune to encounter. Fortunately she did become very pretty. I voted kittens.
Off topic, we have ten cats and four of them love ear wax. If anyone just puts a finger anywhere near an ear they’re up on that person’s lap looking for a fix. Anyone else have cats with such disgusting taste?
If it’s any consolation, I voted cat, but, had cuttlefish been allowed in the poll it would have been a hard decision.
Thread hijack alert! Well, kind of. It’s about baby birds so let’s pretend it’s relevant.
I need an avian-biology expert. Do any of you know if or for how long a female canary can store sperm? I had a hen and a cock raising a clutch and decided I didn’t want any more babies this year. When then hen was showing all the signs of getting ready to nest again I removed the male, but left a nest in with her for the fledglings from the last batch to sleep in.
I know they had been breeding before I moved him, and I took the resulting first egg away and replaced it with a dummy plastic egg. She subsequently laid four more eggs without the male present. I assumed they would all be infertile, but today I see that two have hatched, and after candling the remaining two it looks as if they are also viable and close to hatching.
I know some fish can store sperm and delay giving birth – guppies come to mind – but was not aware that birds could. Is this common in small birds?
OMFG, I howled at this comment:
Also, kittehz, fuck yeah. Sorry, PZ!
I will vote straight squid in the next poll if I can have a chance to win an autographed 8 X 10 picture of PZ properly holding a live cat and appearing to like it. Of course, such a picture would excite the interwebs so much that the world would lose a day of productivity.
earlycuyler, he’d then eat it, and would you want that on your conscience?
Pah, kittehs FTW!
(Besides, Russell, Zeno and Ampersand will rip my throat out while I sleep if I don’t)
Why would PZ eat a photograph?
Sorry PZ,
As a mother, Grandmother, cat lover and dog lover, it was a no-brainer for me to vote “all of the above”.
Besides, that picture of the smiling baby and smiling puppy lying side-by-side melted my heart.
Sorry,d00d; all my base are belong to kittehs.
–
First, to answer straightforwardly P-zed’s heartfelt rhetorical question, “WHERE ARE THE SQUID?”
They’ve all been caught, cooked, canned, and labeled as cat food.
So there.
The distinction between cephalopods and household felids is that the cephs come across as sinister acolytes of Cthulhu who will soon be eating your brain as one step toward total overlordship. Kittens, otoh, come across as fluffy adorable little critters, even though in their adult form they have been amazingly successful in attaining overlordship. The cephs seem not to have learned that kindergarten lesson about catching more flies with honey than with vinegar. Or, to phrase it more plainly, the lesson about reducing humankind to servitude more effectively via warm, adorable fluffiness than by wet, slithery tentacularity.
Warning to P-zed-in-Oz: do not pet the blue ringed octopodes, no matter how cute they look.
No cannot.
The cyoot of the kittycats made my brain short-circuit as usual.
I may speak only 4 languages, but one of them is Meow.
@RFW: But I know the kittycats are psychotic, selfish, dangerous little predators who like to picture themselves as uncle Tiger and auntie Lion. I know the worst nightmare for a Little Stewart, a Jerry or a Twwety is to have an encounter with one of our beloved purring little buddies, as they would happily perform genocide on all of them.
And yet… “Meow?” “Oooh kittycat”
I want to know where the parakeets are…
The catmeister even tried to skew the results by holding a draw for one single copy of WEIT. So here is the alternative: everybody who votes for “None of the above” can download “Cephalopods of the world” for free at the FAO: http://www.fao.org/docrep/009/a0150e/a0150e00.htm (vol. 1), http://www.fao.org/docrep/014/i1920e/i1920e00.htm (vol. 2). I’m still looking for vol. 3, the link I found earlier today contained an old version of vol.1.
@30 Moggie http://www.flickr.com/photos/rclock/7074257253/in/photostream
I see we have traitors in our midst. Damn freethinkers thinking freely.
Sorry, it’s kittens for me.
@ Boskerbonzer
Not sure about canaries, my very limited expertise concerns poultry, waterfowl, and game birds only, but to take the case of chickens, it is quite normal for a hen to produce fertilized eggs even two to three weeks after last meeting a rooster. Came in handy last year when Mr.Fox did a rare daytime visit and went berserk, taking out most of my gaggle, my rasp, my rafter, and my flock, including all my roosters. I was still able to incubate the eggs laid by the surviving chickens during the following two weeks.
@41: But of course — cats are nothing if not freethinkers who damn well do as they like (as opposed to dogs, who are social-hierarchical animals who do as the alpha male directs). A natural companion for atheist skeptics.
If they had a ‘baby slow loris’ or ‘baby titanosaur option I would have voted for either one. Instead, I followed the hivemind leader and put in a write-in vote for squid.
I voted honestly (puppies) because internet polls are very serious business.
But I don’t really care about results as long as babies keep losing.
And you expert ruse has lured them out, o podly one!
To the ban-machine!
I voted “none of the above,” my love of cephalopods is one of the reasons I’m here on Pharyngula. Cuttlefish are the cutest! I do also like babies, kitties, and puppies though.
The link on #8 andyo is a huge time suck. That is one cute baby human. I say this 5 hours later, after watching all the videos on that channel.
Sorry, PZ. I saw the kitties and just… well, squid are cute too, but…
I’m sorry! I just cracked!
@alektorophile
Thanks! I absolutely did not know birds could do this. Very, very interesting.
My cat just ate the squid I had set aside as bait for fishing. Kittens it is PZ