Stop Scaring Your Cats with Cucumbers | Hacker News Reader

Stop Scaring Your Cats with Cucumbers

news.nationalgeographic.com

7 pointsDHJSH10 comments

Cucumbers and cats have always been natural enemies in the wild. (Do no cats eat pickles?)

But seriously, I'm not a fan of any of this ambush-fright video trend. The gags that Jimmy Kimmel, for example, has parents play on kids to video their panicked reactions make me sick. (For example, the recent "we ate all of your Halloween candy" theme.)

I think any animal would be startled if they started eating and a new object was covertly placed behind them... including humans. Cats aren't afraid of cucumbers, they're afraid of strange things in strange places.

Well, they don't get scared by all kinds of strange things in strange places, so this theory falls apart a little there.

Cucumbers (and zuccini etc) seem to work much better, probably because they remind them of snakes and other long animals.

These owners in some of the videos will regret scaring their cats near their litterboxes, if the cat becomes afraid of the area.

(I have no rules for my indoor cats because I don't want them to become neurotic. I don't try to "train" them off of countertops, etc.)

>“If you cause stress to an animal that's probably not a good thing,” says Jill Goldman, a certified animal behaviorist in southern California. “If you do it for laughs it makes me question your humanity.”

And I question his/hers intelligence.

People do pranks and scare other people for laughs all the time and we don't question their humanity. And suddenly pranking a cat with a cucumber makes you subhuman?

I think it's the asymmetry of the relationship. Pranking another human is an interaction of equals. Pranking something that's (totally) dependent on you, and lacks anything resembling the same world view, is a bit more cruel. But hey, people have pets for all sorts of reasons, right?

Pranking a child is no "interaction of equals".

>I think it's the asymmetry of the relationship. Pranking another human is an interaction of equals.

A tennis match is an interaction of equals (if you're at a comparable skill level).

Pranking hardly, since the prankster knows things the other person does not, and even puts elaborate plots and props against his prank target.

And of course some pranksters have whole teams to help them out (e.g. some college prank where 3 persons prank another etc). Or even whole crews, as in TV pranks.

Is Aston Kutcher inhuman for doing Punk'd?

The reason I don't consider it inhuman (inherently I mean, sometimes it can be when overboard) is that while it causes a little stress/surprise etc, it's usually good natured, and don't mean to do actual harm to the target.

"We" don't?

Yeah, most people don't consider pranksters inhuman. Hello, outlier.

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