Real-Life Weirdness

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Irish Wolf

Or, as Chris Rock said about the Siberian tiger that mauled Roy (of Sigfried and Roy fame) a few years back, "That tiger didn't go crazy - that tiger went tiger!"

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Except the tiger was not acting aggressively. It was acting protectively when Roy had a violent stroke on stage. Protective tigers though are too strong to do much other than injure fragile people.

Yes, that's not "going crazy" that's precisely "going tiger". Having your "pet" adult male lion crack several of your ribs by smudging you is "lion", and not even defensive behavior, it's friendly.

Walking away from the lion, noticing your shoelace is untied, squatting down to tie it, and getting JUMPED by the lion is also "lion". That's a fragment of predatory behavior, but all play in cats is fragments of predatory behavior. It doesn't matter if the lion is being silly and doesn't bite you, getting playfully "tagged" by a lion will break your leg and you'll have real claw wounds, not kitty scratches.

Stupidity of "pet" wildcats aside.

I think even people who work with horses sometimes forget that horses have been specially bred to have a good sense of how to not hurt people (should they be so inclined). Cattle haven't and deal a dreadful lot of injuries to humans annually, mostly along the lines of stepping on feet, knocking with horns accidentally, or squashing you against a wall or fence.

I suppose I'm boggled because I live in an urban area that, for various town-planning reasons, is regularly invaded by big animals like moose, deer, and black bears, sometimes quite deep into the supposedly urban core. But even absent those, don't people get a chance to learn that even small wild animals are bitey? Squirrels are bitey and they're cute! Well, cute as long as you don't hate them.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Yes, that's not "going crazy" that's precisely "going tiger". Having your "pet" adult male lion crack several of your ribs by smudging you is "lion", and not even defensive behavior, it's friendly.
...

While I agree with you in general, I doubt that's how Chris meant "going tiger". I think he probably meant it to mean a wild animal acting like a wild and violent predatory animal.
Most of us with cats knows how quickly they'd accidentally kill us if they were anywhere near tiger sized. So most assumed that the tiger injured Roy by way of classic feline predatory behavior without reading further into the story. I know I did.

Too many urbanites that should know better just see raccoons as cute rather than as the often aggressive cat and small dog killers many are. Ignorance is dangerous, but so is familiarity breeding contempt of dangers to paraphrase the expression.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

I'm not well versed in biochemistry, though I know that fats and most proteins can be turned into glucose, but that it's a bit energy intensive. I don't know exactly how much energy is lost if a person were to require most final energy come from glucose. Though I suppose in that cold of an environment, waste energy is still very useful as heat.

It's not so much that energy is wasted as heat, it's more that the fuel is partly consumed even before you begin burning it.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Anders

It's not so much that energy is wasted as heat, it's more that the fuel is partly consumed even before you begin burning it.

And that consumption becomes heat. But as it takes place only in the liver and kidneys, that pre-consumption can be a very localized stress compared to the entire body burning glucose directly. But like I said, I'm not that well versed in the insanely complex field of biochem. I hope I'm not talking about of my rear.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

And that consumption becomes heat. But as it takes place only in the liver and kidneys, that pre-consumption can be a very localized stress compared to the entire body burning glucose directly. But like I said, I'm not that well versed in the insanely complex field of biochem. I hope I'm not talking about of my rear.

There was nothing in the article about combustion of fat being done elsewhere, and that's not how carbohydrates are formed. My guess is that they burn fat for their normal metabolism, and save carbohydrates for exertion, when oxygen demands are at their peak. And I do know a fair bit about biochemistry.

[Flyndaran]

I meant the turning fats into glucose, which Wikipedia says is done in the liver and kidneys. I'm not one to call that source infallible, so won't argue with an actual person educated on the subject.

[Anders]

Ok, so fat consists of two components - glycerol and fatty acids. Glycerol can be turned into glucose, but fatty acids cannot. And most of the energy, by quite a large margin, is contained in the fatty acids. Fatty acids are not oxidized, glycerol is. I forgot about the glycerol part because in the grand scheme of things they produce relatively little ATP. From normal fat you get about twenty times as much energy from fatty acids as from glycerol (or ten times as much per molecule of glucose).

Anyhoo, that's probably enough biochemistry for now.

[Anders]

Shake a leg shake your head, Shake a leg wake the dead, Shake a leg get stuck in, Shake a leg shake a leg

Trigger warning: Spiders

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Anders

...
Anyhoo, that's probably enough biochemistry for now.

Okay, but maybe you should correct Wikipedia then, because that's very different from their pages. I hate finding out what I just learned is wrong. :(

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Anders

Shake a leg shake your head, Shake a leg wake the dead, Shake a leg get stuck in, Shake a leg shake a leg

Trigger warning: Spiders

That would be a very weird scene to get stuck in on an alien world. The horrific monsters start skittering around in strange herky jerky motions, suddenly displaying bright flaps and imagery. OH NOES! You stumbled into a xenomorph mating lek.

(It took quite a while to re-find that term. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lek_mating )