Naked Science Forum
General Discussion & Feedback => Just Chat! => Topic started by: Make it Lady on 14/01/2009 21:57:01
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Whilst in San Fransisco my husband saw a man taking his dog for a walk. Big deal, I hear you cry. Will it was because on top of the dog was a sleeping cat and on top of the cat was a sleeping rat. Has anyone ever heard of this man and his pets? Is it possible to train predators to live in harmony with their prey?
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Was he a crooked man?
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Stuffed cat and stuffed rat? Is it sure they were alive?
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Did the cat and rat take sleeping pills ?
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Not too long ago there was a Cambridge character called Snowy Farr, an ex-road sweeper, who devoted his later life to collectng for Guide Dogs for the Blind. He had a contraption built around a tricycle with many trays, platforms etc on which were cats, rats and mice, pitures and other stuff. All the animals co-existed perfectly ; I've seen mice climbing all over the cats and rats. Snowy was dressed in a sort of nineteenth-century fashion with a top hat, often with mice in the rim:
http://www.blasdale.com/pictures/1975/cambridge/Various/slides/10.html
People would stop and marvel at this and give their donations - he was awarded an MBE for his work and died in 2007 aged about 90. He stopped appearing before youtube began.
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Stuffed cat and stuffed rat? Is it sure they were alive?
No my husband was positive they were all real and alive.
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Is it possible to train predators to live in harmony with their prey?
Good question. What is a prey though? If a predator is used to eating this particular prey or even relies on the consumption of that particular animal for survival, I would guess that it is rather difficult to teach them to exist in harmony. If the animal is not a "factual" prey (since the predator has been eating canned food all its life), and the now "theoretical" prey is not aware that the other may eat it, it could work.
My dog, a standard poodle, never ate a rat and always wanted to play with our pet rats. They did not want to play his rough dog games though. He got bit in the nose and the relationship could not flourish. After that he would let them sort of climb on him if we did a lot of talking. He is not relaxed enough for this. Maybe an old Golden Retriever would work.
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A don't suppose those multi-bird roasts count as an "animal pile up":
where one bird is stuffed with a smaller bird, which is stuffed with a smaller bird, etc, (like Russian dolls).
One of the top-sellers is the Waitrose four-bird roast: guinea fowl, duck and turkey breast stuffed inside a goose.
www.dailymail.co.uk (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-502605/It-serves-125-takes-hours-cook-stuffed-12-different-birds---really-IS-Christmas-dinner.html)
The Queen could have one of the above stuffed into a swan. [:)]
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My husband is back from America and has found them on google. Here they are.
http://www.boingboing.net/rat-cat-dog.jpg
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Is it possible to train predators to live in harmony with their prey?
the obvious answer is yes. Although I'm not entirely sure that cats are exclusively dogs prey and mice exclusively cats. (sorry Walt Disney)
Although, maybe they are just bidding their time. We used to have a cat and a goldfish.. they lived happily in the same space for years and years... one day we came home and the fish bowl was on the floor, the fish was gone and the cat looked rather proud of himself. I swear that cat spent all that time raising the fish's confidence...