Saturday

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Its 8:35 here in the NE cornor of Reality, something white and cold is drifting in slowly and since I try to keep it light on the weekends: If you were exploring an unknown part of the world and discovered an unbefore seen animal which scurried away instantly, how would you tell if the animal was a predator or the prey?

-- mitch hearn (moopups@citlink.net), October 27, 2001

Answers

If it circles around and eats you, you're the prey and it's the predator!

-- Gary in Indiana (gk6854@aol.com), October 27, 2001.

A predator has eyes on the front of its face, like dogs, cats, eagles, humans - while prey has eyes on the sides of its face, like cows, horses, deer, Taliban...

Seriously, the reason being that two forward facing eyes gives a predator stereoscopic vision which enables it to pinpoint prey, while the prey has a wider field of vision to enable them to run like crazy when the prey pounces.

-- Cheryl in KS (cherylmccoy@rocketmail.com), October 27, 2001.


Yes the eye location is the correct answer; and I see that I am going to have to raise the bar a couple notches for these weekend stumpers.

-- mitch hearn (moopups@citlink.net), October 27, 2001.

I was going to say by their teeth!

-- Melissa (me@home.net), October 27, 2001.

And for some additional information on predatory birds . . . I have read that all predatory birds (includes insect eaters), walk. Seed eaters hop. Bird tracks tell a story too.

-- j.r. guerra (jrguerra@boultinghousesimpson.com), October 29, 2001.


J.R., that would have been an excelent stumper question.

-- mitch hearn (moopups@citlink.net), October 29, 2001.

Yeah, but what about robins? They hop all over getting worms.

-- Cathy N. (keeper8@attcanada.ca), October 29, 2001.

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