Amazing photography, but....

Ok, the jumping and the eyesight is impressive, but mapping the world in 3 dimensions... I would have said almost any animal is capable of that, otherwise, they would spend their time bumping into things.

As for learning and problem solving, the video doesn't really give any indication as to how we know that. Sneaking up on your prey and avoiding the potentially dangerous parts of it is something almost all predators do. It hardly qualifies as "genius".

I'm not saying the spider isn't clever (well, clever for something with a brain the size of a pinhead), but this doesn't really give a good example of that.

Also, if I understand Braxton's business model right, it seems to be at risk of falling prey to regulation: http://www.ag.ny.gov/pdfs/Ticket_Sales_Report.pdf

I read an interesting article on the BBC's web site on exactly this question - http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160404-why-some-animals-have-venoms-so-lethal-they-cannot-use-them

It makes some of the same points as this video, but also has an additional one in regards to why some animals are so toxic to humans: Bad luck! We aren't their targetted prey, so it's pretty much irrelevent to them whether their sting can kill one or 1,000 humans.

Bad luck comes into it as well. A bite from a Sydney funnel-web spider is extremely dangerous for humans, whereas rodents are relatively unaffected by their venom. Since these spiders evolved to eat neither rodents nor humans, this can be seen as nothing more than an unfortunate alignment of the spider's neurotoxin with a receptor on some of our cells.

Let's be realistic, most of the work our war planes do has collateral damage. We don't simply use them on 'the bad guys', but again that is a simplification to allow you moral latitude.

Non-smokers are no better than smokers, I know since I used to be a smoker. Just because I decided that I no longer wanted to smoke doesn't mean I feel the need to go up to someone smoking and start telling them how much better I am that I quit. Again, I'm not any better of a person than they are, I just chose to do something different. That is one of the things you can't seem to grasp, because you continue to say that morally you are more good than someone who does not practice a vegan lifestyle. You aren't.

As far as the functional capacity for feelings, of course animals feel pain, it is a stimuli that helps in their survival instinct. That instinct is what drives them to avoid pain because it means they might not survive. It doesn't mean that they have the logical thought capacity to relate pain to more than an instinctual response. I am pretty sure that no pig ever felt pain and said to itself, I feel pain therefore I exist as a being, they felt the pain and instinct told them to get away from it. Plants even have stimuli that they will respond to in order to grow or try to avoid damaging forces, but they aren't self-aware. Neither are animals until you get to a certain level of intelligence, like dolphins or great apes.

I grew up in the country, I have seen first hand and used my hands in regards to the butchery you speak of. Never once have I had a pig who had seen another be slaughtered do anything that would give me the belief that they were responding in any other fashion than a "shit, flight time since I might be next" natural instinct that is in all prey animals. Factory farms may not be totally humane, and that should be reformed, but all they are doing in the end is killing prey animals on a much larger scale than I did growing up.

I was so FUCKING bored AND tired (like barely keeping my eyes open; falling asleep, then writing more, then eventually hitting: POST!--lol) when I wrote that, can you tell?

The best part about this is that I didn't need pot or anything to make such a crazy post/comment. This was fully driven by my sleep disorder. Basically, I start to go into an "REM" like state when I get really tired (or in my case, when the right time of day hit). Sometimes I'm unable to catch myself before I do something...goofy and or funny.

THUS, you now have this wonderful post created from my sub-conscious and conscious self-working hard together to create a masterpiece!

Personally, I always find it amazing that I'm able to put sentences together and that at some points they are actually understandable, so long as you take them into consideration in a mystical and crazy freaking world/Universe where certain rules are true... The best you can do to re-create this experience is to get a mild form of Narcolepsy that MOSTLY preys on your dream and "sub-conscious" aspects belonging to the REM stage or staging... Then you have to deal with LOTS of "night terrors", hypnagogic hallucinations, and other issues (like Cataplexy). Then, you too can write mystical, strange, and WTF(?!) writings like I have above!!!


Enjoy!

Huh... That pen looks perfect for feeding the local birds of prey.

Otherwise: adorable!

Not even a large bird of prey can separate the passion of two eye-locked lovers in a passionate gaze.

Well... collect money based off of feeding and preying on the insecurities and need for acceptance of children, by pretending that a coldly and carefully manufactured commercial image is actually a carefree and natural existence. I can understand if she thinks that (unwittingly) preying on children isn't something she can shrug off and say "that's done; now I'll do whatever I want."

I'm sure birds of prey fart too...

Makes sense to me. Natural predator populations are limited by the availability of prey. The feral cat population is not, because so many people feed them.

Funny, just yesterday I was thinking "Fricken flies. Where are all the spiders when you need them?"

And if I had a bunch of spiders I'd be thinking "Fricken spiders. Where are all the lizards when you need them?"

And if I had a bunch of lizards I'd be thinking "Fricken lizards. Where are all the birds of prey when you need them?"

And if I had a bunch of birds of prey I'd be thinking "What the fuck are all these birds of prey doing inside my house?!"

This is awesome

Magicians will go to amazing lengths to get a trick to work. However, the key part to just about all tricks is distraction. Not just to make you look away when a clever switch is made, but a well designed trick is a distraction in itself. It'll make you think that the amazing thing happening is one thing when in fact the amazing thing already happened when you didn't know amazing things were happening and now it's making the faux amazing thing look even more amazing!

Your idea with the ink disappearing on the card is a great example. You're trying to work out how the card ends up blank when he put the signed card on the table when the signed card was never put on the table. The card on the table is blank simply because he put a blank card on the table. The switch had already been made and you're looking for a solution to something that was never a problem

Magicians prey on you assumptions, and they're brazen, and a lot more skilled than you'd think. You won't work a lot of the stuff out because you'll think the way it's done is impossible, that no one could actually do what the magician is doing. Fan some cards out in front of someone and ask them to pick one at random. A good card magician can force you to pick a certain card and you'd never suspect it. I'm given to believe that Paul Daniels can do this behind his back. It's not easy to do and most people don't believe it's possible, so if you can do it you're performing the miracle at the very start. Everything after that seems incredible. You're looking for a trick that's already happened.

I love magic. I love being fooled. I enjoy the challenge of working out how things are done and wish I had the time to learn to do it properly.

I don't recall saying that, Genji, so if you could show me, I'd appreciate it. But I'm quite sure I never said racism is over...I do recall saying that until you get over your massive butthurt from what racism that does exist, that you will never succeed in life.

Is there sound on this video, because I think that is important.

In my experience, most perps won't just say 'yeah, i'm the one you're looking for', so you have to use some aggressive policing because people don't respond to the British method, not being British and all...

these cops are very brave to go into these projects and take out the criminals, who prey on old ladies, women, and other non-warrior types because they are a bunch of cowards....
example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mE1LDR6QWjk
here's another:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoBw4TmaMz0
another (believe these are all from NYC)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rp1q4kwgK_U

also, these cops are there to protect people from these cowards, so I think they deserve everyone's respect and support.

But if you support the criminal element, go ahead and try and brand cops as racist, bullies, liars, etc. It's good that people know where you stand.

I didn't realize until not too long ago that there was such confusion about how to respond to a bear attack. It struck me when I heard someone aghast at the very notion that you should curl into a ball and play dead as if he'd never heard that before. (He must've been living under a rock.)

I think the distinction, which doesn't seem to ever be made explicitly clear, is that if a bear charges you as in this video, then you are supposed to do your best to scare it off (by making yourself appear threatening, bigger, louder, etc.), BUT if a bear has already started attacking you, you obviously can't do that (while laying bloody on the ground), so it's at that time that you should play dead to make the bear think it successfully killed you so it will stop attacking you because there's likely no reason to fight a corpse.

The worst confusing part is that many people think your initial reaction when a bear charges or threatens you should be to lay down and play dead. That's very, very bad advice and I've heard of several cases of people doing that where the bear then just meanders up to the person and starts eating them.

If you just lay down the bear regards you as prey and their eating instincts kick in.

If you first try to fight the bear, it regards you as a threat that it needs to fight and kill, hence once you play dead and it thinks it won the battle, it's more likely to walk away. I think the natural instinct of creatures after a battle is to walk away victorious, not eat the opponent.

UPDATE below also see new video description and original video

The caption is in Thai and describes the creature as a Nemertea, or a ribbon worm, which shoots a proboscis (elongated nose) out of a hole above its mouth to capture prey.

Presumably, that is what is going on here.

When not stretched out like an alien life form, the proboscis normally sits in “a fluid-filled chamber above the gut,” according to Encyclopedia Britannica.

And here’s a description of how it works from NCSU:

"When the animal senses a prey organism nearby, a circular muscle layer around the proboscis sheath rapidly and vigorously contracts. This contraction forces the fluid from the proboscis sheath into the proboscis and, in the process, literally turns it inside out, blowing it out of the proboscis sheath. The proboscis will rapidly (within a second or so) wrap itself around the prey, which is then drawn to the mouth and eaten."

from http://thedailywh.at/2015/05/nope-day-internet-disgusted-mystified-ribbon-worm/