Crocodiles DO cry when they are feeding. One early observer, Edward Topsell, speculated that they did so in order to appear distressed, which would cause men to lower their guard and venture closer, only to be eaten. This observation resulted in the term "crocodile tears" becoming a metaphor for an insincere display of feeling, as used by Shakespeare -- "...Gloucester's show beguiles him as the mournful crocodile with sorrow, snares relenting passengers" (Henry VI, Part II, Act III, Scene I). So crocodiles produce tears, but they don't cry because they're full of remorse for taking the life of whatever constitutes its dinner. Rather, the tears run down into their smouth and help soften the morsels they're chewing in order to faciliate swallowing them.
The cockroach can live up to two months after being decapitated -- making that creepy critter creepier still. (I admit I am prejudiced against cockroaches, as in my college days I briefly lived in a house that was, officially, roach-infested.) Normally, if you remove the head of a living thing, it ceases to qualify as living -- and then God, or Mother Nature, whichever you prefer, throws you a curve like this. The cockroach, you see, does not have a brain, bur rather a nervous system that runs through the ventral (underside) part of its body. It doesn't need its head to breathe, either. It breathes through tubes called trachea, which are attached to spiracles, which are openings in the body (except the head!) attached to the respiratory system. This the cockroach shares with other insects, by the way. It's true that the cockroach coexisted with the dinosaur and survived the mass extinction event that occurred at the end of the Creataceous period, about 66 million years ago. So it's likely the cockroach will survive the human race, too. But that doesn't mean we should stop our wholesale slaughter of the nasty things. The chimpanzee may strike you as a cute, fun-loving creature that would be neat to hang around. But if the recent film Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) didn't make you rethink that, then maybe this excerpt from entry in the popular newspaper column The Straight Dope by Cecil Adams will: "Blessed with a muscle structure considerably superior to homo sapiens .. chimpanzees can handle almost anything that comes along .... In tests at the Bronx Zoo in 1924, a dynanometer -- a scale that measures the mechanical force of a pull on a spring -- was erected in the monkey house. A 165-pound male chimpanzee named "Boma" registered a pull of 847 pounds, using only his right hand (although he did have his feet braced against the wall, being somewhat hip, in his simian way, to the principles of leverage.) A 165-pound man, by comparison, could manage a one-handed pull of about 210 pounds. Even more frightening, a female chimp, weighing a mere 135 pounds and going by the name of Suzette, checked in with a one-handed pull of 1,260 pounds .... In dead lifts, chimps have been known to manage weights of 600 pounds without even breaking into a sweat. A male gorilla could probably heft am 1,800 pound weight and not think twice about it." The problem is that chimpanzees cannot be domesticated and are aggressive by nature. If nothing else, this requires us to rethink the Tarzan-Cheetah relationship. They call the lion "the king of beasts" -- but don't tell the tiger that. Last year there was an online debate regarding whether a lion or a tiger would come out on top in an interspecies fight. The Romans used to pit African lions and Asian tigers against each other in the Coliseum, and records seem to indicate that the tiger usually prevailed. Biologist Craig Saffoe speculated that while the adult male of either species weigh more or less the same, and the lion's mane could serve to protect its throat, the tiger seems to be more ruthless and aggressive. The theory is that while lions are accustomed to hunting and fighting in a group, the tiger lives and hunts and has to fight alone. What animal causes the most human deaths in the U.S. every year? You might think dogs, specifically the pit bull. Or sharks, picking up some swim-through lunch in swarms of swimmers along any one of our three coasts. Wrong. It could be said that mosquitos kill three million people worldwide in a year, but it's not the mosquito doing the killing, bur rather the microagents it carries, such as the malaria parasite, that does the dirty work. The deer kills about 130 drivers a year, but some studies consider this to be an "auto-related" death. There are over 200 deaths annually resulting from horse-related injuries, the vast majority accidental in nature. There is nothing accidental in the 53 human deaths they cause, on average, every year by bees and wasps. Between 1979 and 1998 dogs caused over 300 deaths, but annual fatalities have risen sharply these past few years, and pit bulls are involved in the majority of them. Sharks cause only one fatality every two years in the U.S.; worldwide, 118 attacks resulted in 17 fatalities in 2011. I feel obliged to point out here that wolves cause 0.1 human deaths per year, the fantasy film The Grey notwithstanding, and these deaths were caused by wolves that people attempted to domesticate or keep caged. Bad idea. There are no known human deaths directly caused by wild wolves. I should also point out that in almost all cases animals that cause human deaths are either defending themselves or feeding themselves. An animal is not going to murder you just for grins. That's a human thing. |
When Crocs Cry
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