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that doesn’t always work. i once hit a squirrel with a football that i was sure it was going to dodge. but after scampering back and forth, it dodged right into
by clairity 5y ago
that doesn’t always work. i once hit a squirrel with a football that i was sure it was going to dodge. but after scampering back and forth, it dodged right into the path of the football at the last moment. it didn’t appear to be hurt, and scurried away afterwards, but i still felt really bad about it.
- a1369209993 5y ago> but after scampering back and forth, it dodged right into the path of the football at the last moment. Note that (like many evolved things) squirrel behaviour is designed around a actively adversarial environment. (It may or may not have had a explicit mental model of the process, but from a behavioural perspective) it was likely expecting the football^Wnovel bird of prey to course-correct towards it, in which case lunging in the opposite direction that the attacker just expended effort accellerating toward gives it the best chances of getting away. (Or something along those lines, I don't know enough details to be particularly sure.)
- clairity 5y agoyah, that's kind of what i assumed as well. the squirrel was stunned for a good few seconds, not realizing what had gone wrong with its evolutionarily-inherited strategy, which was a cartoony kind of funny after-the-fact.