Animal Face-Off
Today my preface is courtesy of Ismail Kadare's The Three-Arched Bridge, which you may buy from amazon if you are the kind of person that believes in self-improvement (well, as soon as it is back in stock).
...for a long time the two beasts, the tiger and the crocodile, had circled each other, without being able to bite or strike a blow at all...Three times the tiger threw himself on the crocodile's back, and three times his claws slipped on the monster's hard scales. Yet the crocodile could not bite the tiger or lash him with his tail. It seemed that the contest would never end...But in one of the crocodile's furious thrashes, the tiger, it seems, discerned his soft, exposed belly. He attacked his enemy again with a terrifying roar. The crocodile lunged to bite him, exposing his belly again. The tiger needed only an instant to tear it open with its claws. Burying his head in his enemy's body and crazed by his blood, he tore through the bowels with amazing speed, until he reached the heart.
Last night we watched the premiere of Animal Face-Off on Discovery Channel. The show tries to determine the winner of an animal confrontation. In order to do that biologists and other scientists build bio-mechanical animals to test theories.
The first episode in the series pitted a saltwater crocodile against a great white shark. To make it more dramatic (I guess) there was a lot of bragging, for instance, they would put a coconut in the mouth of the shark replica, and, after the jaws slammed shut, some guy would boast, "What's your little crocodile going to do about that?" as if he were the animal's manager. Most of the hour was spent constructing the animal and making sure it acted like its real-life counterpart. They went over the strengths and weaknesses of each competitor, and then a computer program, with the gathered data from the previous fifty minutes, was used to stage the battle.
The crocodile scored the first hit, tearing off the shark's pectoral fin. Next it bit into its nose, and both animals floated towards the bottom. The crocodile had to eventually let go or it would drown. As it swam to the surface, the shark regained its composure and bit into its foe to gain a victory.
In the second hour an african elephant faced a white rhinoceros. In this match the rhino began by charging its opponent, but the elephant quickly parried, and dodged two thrusts from the horn as well before countering, goring the rhino twice with its tusks, then knocking it over and standing on its body, which I thought was a bit excessive.
The fights were shown twice, the second time with commentary on why that animal had won. The show would be more interesting if it were two-out-of-three falls, like if a bunch of crocodiles got to watch the first fight and learn from their friend's mistakes I don't think they would have been so easily blindsided in the future. While I'm digressing, the show would be so much better if they would make a model of me for the animals to practice on. I'd love to see me break some bones.
Next Sunday, after a full hour of The Simpsons, a lion will battle a bengal tiger. Of course you'll have to miss Malcolm in the Middle and Arrested Development to see a show that's not very good, but, as they say over at the dentist college, it's better to sit in the waiting room, bored, reading pamphlets about gingivitis, than it is to receive four simultaneous root canals.
...for a long time the two beasts, the tiger and the crocodile, had circled each other, without being able to bite or strike a blow at all...Three times the tiger threw himself on the crocodile's back, and three times his claws slipped on the monster's hard scales. Yet the crocodile could not bite the tiger or lash him with his tail. It seemed that the contest would never end...But in one of the crocodile's furious thrashes, the tiger, it seems, discerned his soft, exposed belly. He attacked his enemy again with a terrifying roar. The crocodile lunged to bite him, exposing his belly again. The tiger needed only an instant to tear it open with its claws. Burying his head in his enemy's body and crazed by his blood, he tore through the bowels with amazing speed, until he reached the heart.
Last night we watched the premiere of Animal Face-Off on Discovery Channel. The show tries to determine the winner of an animal confrontation. In order to do that biologists and other scientists build bio-mechanical animals to test theories.
The first episode in the series pitted a saltwater crocodile against a great white shark. To make it more dramatic (I guess) there was a lot of bragging, for instance, they would put a coconut in the mouth of the shark replica, and, after the jaws slammed shut, some guy would boast, "What's your little crocodile going to do about that?" as if he were the animal's manager. Most of the hour was spent constructing the animal and making sure it acted like its real-life counterpart. They went over the strengths and weaknesses of each competitor, and then a computer program, with the gathered data from the previous fifty minutes, was used to stage the battle.
The crocodile scored the first hit, tearing off the shark's pectoral fin. Next it bit into its nose, and both animals floated towards the bottom. The crocodile had to eventually let go or it would drown. As it swam to the surface, the shark regained its composure and bit into its foe to gain a victory.
In the second hour an african elephant faced a white rhinoceros. In this match the rhino began by charging its opponent, but the elephant quickly parried, and dodged two thrusts from the horn as well before countering, goring the rhino twice with its tusks, then knocking it over and standing on its body, which I thought was a bit excessive.
The fights were shown twice, the second time with commentary on why that animal had won. The show would be more interesting if it were two-out-of-three falls, like if a bunch of crocodiles got to watch the first fight and learn from their friend's mistakes I don't think they would have been so easily blindsided in the future. While I'm digressing, the show would be so much better if they would make a model of me for the animals to practice on. I'd love to see me break some bones.
Next Sunday, after a full hour of The Simpsons, a lion will battle a bengal tiger. Of course you'll have to miss Malcolm in the Middle and Arrested Development to see a show that's not very good, but, as they say over at the dentist college, it's better to sit in the waiting room, bored, reading pamphlets about gingivitis, than it is to receive four simultaneous root canals.