Anyway, one day I looked out the window and they had all frozen solid, like someone hit them with a "time stop" spell. So the capability is obviously a defensive adaptation.[0] Why it can be triggered by the given techniques is a bit mysterious though.
In humans though you can interrupt motor patterns and get hypnotic trance. The search term is "handshake interrupt", there are videos. I went to a hypnotherapist who used it with me, and I started cracking up because I recognized what was happening and almost wrecked it, but then I made a conscious decision to "go with it". (It's weird how many "levels" there are in the psyche: who was going into trance? who was cracking up? who decided to go with it? who was it that went into trance? "A trance is only as deep as you are." is a powerful spell to break out of trance. Why does it work?)
Be advised that there are roving gangs of hypnotists warring in the streets for your attention.
[0] It works too. A friend of mine and I were climbing the scree below a cliff when we came across a mother brown eagle and her nest. She spread her wings to cover the nest and froze. She was so still that even though I was staring right at her from about thirty feet away, with my binocular color-vision eyes and human brain, I still could barely see her.
We left her in peace.
Drawing the line probably forces the chicken's eyes to follow the object out of its stereo vision. Birds have amazing stereo vision right in front of their faces (so they don't smash their beaks when pecking at things). Trying to track an object moving directly out of this space might be just unusual enough to cause a system crash.
If you were suddenly blinded, you probably wouldn't respond by running either.
When does a deer naturally get suddenly exposed to blinding light? Ignoring the response of "ah it's bright, look away" avoids false positives accidentally getting the deer killed. Actual positives never occurred during night time until humans developed artificial illumination.
over time I have seen the claim being totally watered down to apparently just intimidating a creature with primal fear for fun and profit.
I agree “intimidating a creature with primal fear for fun and profit” is not that cool.
But the claims you once believed were never true in the first place.
I do believe though in the somewhat debilitating conditions that exacerbate for a person who is already tired, like seeing repetitive long period highway lights, or road markings ... and of course innate primordial fears and reflexes...
However, in many ways hypnosis is synonymous with “learning.” Your father hypnotized you into learning math, physics, and chemistry... as do all effective teachers.
Edit: first sentence referring to python eating patterns, to clarify.