April 25, 2007

• Youch- that's taking wearing crocs to extremes.
• "Snipers used pork to lure them out of their pool"... It is always hard to find an excuse to use that phrase.
• Saw this on the news the other day and immediately thought this would make an excellent Darwin Awards nominee. *throws rotten apples at fish tick*
• Oy. There's a reason to teach respect for nature.
• Is it wrong that I was happy for the croc? It is, isn't it?
• Nooo. Perfectly normal. There there.
• Croc lover.
• not to mention instant karma. chomp!
• Wait, is this real? This kid actually got eaten by a pack of crocs? Poor kid! (Although I do agree that messing with toothy wild animals is a bad idea, and the croc only did what nature intended him to do.)
• Not a single mention of parents anywhere in the article.
• messing with toothy wild animals Yeah, I dunno but when I was but a wee pup, me Ma said "Now young petebest, don't ye go beating crocodiles with sticks, lest they attack you with their great powerful jaws and lighting-quick reflexes!" But even if I hadnt'a been warned, I doubt it would have occurred to me to climb over a barrier in order to beat a huge fanged lizard with a stick. That just seems like a really bad idea for some reason.
• Hey, maybe they can sue the creators of Hungry Hungry Hippos.
• Ah, crep. Too bad boys will be boy and crocs will be crocs.
• ..leading to boys being croc's dinners.
• Eggzakly!
• What becomes of all the little boys who never comb their hair? They're sleeping with the crocodiles on the Nickel over there.
• Not a single mention of parents anywhere in the article. From a slightly more in-depth article that I would like if I knew how: "When the incident occurred, the parents of the crocodile were sunbathing at a nearby pond. They showed no reaction to the news."
• bernockle, I read that five times before I realized it said the parents of the croc. Phew!
• I feel sorry for the boy, although that was an incredibly stupid thing to have done. He had gone to the park with three of his friends without any adults along at all. I feel a bit more sorry for the crocodile. Look, it's an animal, if you poke it and taunt it, it will bite you and eat you. And for doing what nature had designed it to do, the crocodile was killed too. I don't know who to blame for this. The boy? Children do stupid things all the time, it's part of learning how not to be stupid as adults (mostly). The parents? Do we want parents to have control over their children's movements 24/7? The crocodile?!? Or the park owner?
• blame no one. shit happens.
• They actually called him Catapult Boy.
• You can lead a Catapult boy to water but you can't make a crocodile not eat him.
• Cripes. There I was, all excited to learn about the adventures of a catapult boy, but it turns out to be just another idiot so frikken stupid it beggars belief. This is precisely how evolution is supposed to work.
• And referring to sugarmilktea's earlier comment, a person, made infertile or deceased, must be at least 18 years of age to be eligible for a Darwin Award.
• This is precisely how evolution is supposed to work. I think your use of the term "precisely" is imprecise. This seems more like a heuristic mistake. Your mocking a nine-year-old's intelligence is hillarious, however.
• Children are stupid and deserve all they get.
• My older sister told me, when I was about three, that if I mashed the huge wasp's nest in our front yard with a stick, grape jelly (my favorite) would come out. Of course I had to try. She was wrong. She did find the resultant sibling-enveloped-by-wasp-cloud highly amusing, however (and still does). Perhaps these kids thought that amphibian abuse would result in a similar payoff. At nine, I kinda doubt it. Many kids are just naturally mean. At any rate, nature has a habit of avenging mindless destruction. Catapult boy definitely got what he deserved--that'll teach him to be unkind to other living things. I have to wonder if Zombie Jesus was involved.
• If you didn't know anything about a croc, and had simply watched them through the fence, wouldn't you think they were torpid and lazy animals without much ambition? They don't much move around unless they have a reason. I'm always surprised at their speed, even after seeing them fed both live and on television. Kids, especially boys, think they're immortal at that age. Most boys here, and many of us tomboys, can tell some hair-raising tales of stupitt behavior, I'll bet. This kid just didn't get away with it, is all.
• To those whining that Boys will Boys, please spare us your rationalizations. Kinnakeet has it exactly right. He was torturing an animal he thought he was superior to, and was trying to inflict pain on it with a "catapult". He was a nasty little bugger, it's part of the human condition, and one of our least admirable traits. Wanton sadistic behaviour is dangerous, and carries no survival advantage. In fact, attracting predators, or any unwanted attention, is distinctly disadvantageous for most primates. Thus, this unproductive and potentially dangerous gene-set was removed from the gene pool; and this is, in fact, precisely how evolution works.
• Good point well made. I'm glad we have decided that the little cnut got what he deserves. More of us should be eaten by wild animals, just to make the rest of us think on. And now back to our usual programme...
• Most boys here, and many of us tomboys, can tell some hair-raising tales of stupitt behavior, I'll bet. Why, what have you heard? First of all, the lighter wasn't even mine. Secondly, I was the one who said it wasn't a good idea. And the whole thing's not true anyway. Lies! Vicious rumors! That's all! No more questions! This comment is over!
• it's not a bad thing for us all to be reminded that we live in nature with animals and we are part of the food chain too, and not always the top....chomp!
• lol. I'm sorry...I think I knew not to fuk around with crocs pretty much since I was born. he needed to be taken out.
• Wanton sadistic behaviour is dangerous, and carries no survival advantage. *wishes ducks and cats could eat little boys sometimes*
• Thus, this unproductive and potentially dangerous gene-set was removed from the gene pool; and this is, in fact, precisely how evolution works. You still seem to be confusing developmental behavior with genetic behavior. Childhood animal cruelty is a learned behavior. Therefore, there are no genetic predispositions in that child besides a predisposition to learn. That is not how evolution works; ingenuity doesn't play a positive role. In this process, "unproductive [did you mean sterile?] and potentially dangerous" "bad" genes don't get weeded out from the "good" genes. Only the ones which are tragically disadvantageous in the current environment are possibly eliminated, depending on the degree of unsuitability. Evolution has no morals, safeguards, designs for efficiency or agendas. Perhaps the dangerous nature of this sort of bear-baiting may be the reason for the low numbers of children in the U.S. (I have no other stats) for whom animal cruelty is a pastime, however. In fact, if you want to make a stretch for a dialectical alternative to the fabled "altruism-gene", you should note that the concept of the "altruism-gene" has an evolutionary disadvantage in that self-sacrificing people tend to take themselves out of the gene pool from wasting energy and resources in kindness to the rest of us assholes - sometimes in conjunction with well-intentioned "take one for the team" suicide. A "cruelty-gene" would have an evolutionary advantage from not caring whether the rest of us assholes lived long enough to breed and thus wasting less energy and resources on others than an altruist might while simultaneously exploiting the group, leaving more of a chance to sustain life until procreation. Abusing a crocodile and being subsequently devoured is probably not an evolutionary step towards creating a different human species. It is possible that the boy may have been a kick start to our currently stagnant evolution had he procreated. With his removal from the species due to a heuristic accident, human evolution will remain at a snail's pace. And maybe I'm wrong. If you could point me in the direction of the evolutionary theorists who work with "animal cruelty genes" in humans I'd appreciate it; I can't find them at my library. I have found a lot of armchair speculators talking about "cruelty genes" as pre-existing notions throughout the internet tho', so their theoretical existence may be based on something. It is possible that Pet-1 ETS genes (those which may control normal anxiety and aggression levels) may have a place in this, but I think these concepts are probably not applicable here. Regardless of that, one thing is repeated throughout the literature: children who regularly abuse animals have been often found to eventually become violent towards people. So whether or not this was a one time thing or a repeat offense might dictate whether he "deserved it" or not to some people. Of course, the studies done in this way are typically conducted through qualitative methods with violent inmates, and not on researchers who may also regularly abuse animals for human gain. For more fun with childhood animal abuse and interpersonal violence read Yukio Mishima's "The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea".
• Yeah!
• children who regularly abuse animals have been often found to be have been abused themselves. As you say it's learned. If we can define the line between innate and learned or animal and human.
• > With his removal from the species due to a heuristic accident What's a "heuristic accident"? I'm not sure if the original point was "possessed a cruelty to animals gene" so much as "had fallen from the stupid tree and bumped off every branch on the way down".
• If we can define the line between innate and learned or animal and human. It becomes tricky when it gets down to behavior, I wholeheartedly agree. What's a "heuristic accident"? You can read this abstract to get the gist of it, roryk