Mouse v elephant
Video sent by krupis
Mythbusters is one of my favorite silly cable shows. I have always been a bit surprised that Mythbusters is on The Discovery Channel, as it is more a comedy-albeit one with a lot of stuff that blows up. There is a lot tech talk and gadgets and way cool stuff. But some of the myths they explore are not myths at all. For example, they explored whether or not you’d die if you dropped an electric iron in a bathtub while taking a bath. This is kind of like testing to see if standing in front of a speeding bus will lead to a bad day.
Anyway, the other day I caught a bit of an episode where they were testing the myth of Elephants being afraid of Mice. Dumbo and various other cartoons have been found of this idea, with the elephants running in terror at the sight of the small furry critters.
One of the fun things about Mythbusters is that just about every Myth they either Bust or Confirm as Plausible, has something in their test that invalidates their results. I don’t know if this is part of the program designed to make people watching the show feel smarter than the Mythbusters, or if these guys really do dumb things and think they are smart. In this Myth about Elephants being afraid of Mice, they use a while laboratory mouse to scare a couple of captive elephants. It is totally and completely shocking that the elephants show the reaction that they do, baffling and funny, but it is a white lab mouse. Would they have backed away from a normal grey barn mouse? Or are there mice that live in Africa that elephnats might be afraid of for some unknown reason? I loved this bit of silliness about Elephants being afraid of Mice, but I think it would have been better to use a different kind of mouse.
