Behold, the brave little redback!
It has taken down a massive foe, a mouse many times its size, requiring multiple bites and a vast quantity of silk to properly wrap it. The redback’s reward is a filling meal of liquified mouse and the appreciation of thousands of impressed viewers around the world.
I’d really like to see the skeleton. After.
No sympathy for the mouse, PZ? Horrible way to die.
Now you just need to train them to solder circuit boards.
nomdeplume, you ever see a cat play with a mouse?
Art Spiegelman must be shocked.
Mouse mousse? Chill before serving.
@4 Yes John, and rescued it…
nomdeplume, right. So, being envenomed and trussed is horrible; but so is being toyed with until catatonia ensues (rescues aside). Or being poisoned with rodenticides, for that matter.
(or: Pointless sympathy is pointless; but sure: thoughts and prayers are a nice sentiment)
OT: Great Cthulhu (may It eat me first, in Its mercy), PZ, if you’re reading, you’ve got to check this loon out. It’s epigenetics!
https://www.vice.com/amp/en_us/article/jmv7g8/the-founder-of-jims-mowing-will-make-you-smarter-and-save-the-world?__twitter_impression=true
@8 John, I don’t do prayers, but surely a sympathetic thought for a fellow creature is not “pointless”.
nomdeplume, posthumous sympathy doesn’t do much for the victim, and it’s not like the mouse’s family will either see or appreciate the sentiment, either. So, what exactly is this supposed pointedness to which you refer?
(I know the answer, actually. It would make you feel better)
nomdeplume, this is nature in action. It’s not pretty.
I don’t see anything wrong with feeling empathy even if there’s no help for that poor mouse now.
@13 Thanks Paul, exactly.
PaulBC, it’s not that feeling empathy is wrong, it’s that to not obligatorily express that is also not wrong. (cf. #2).
As per Tabby, nature, red in tooth and claw.
PS but off-topic [directly]
Regarding mice, I recently read this article:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2019-09-15/gough-island-albatross-off-track/11499568
The mildly deranged penguin points out the mouse is now nice and safe in a warm silk sleeping bag, furiously hibernating away the coming winter. I point out mice do not hibernate, and the squeaky one is, as another commentator once put it on this blog, “nature’s crunchy snack”. Ah, she observes, like Crunchy Frog…