I decided it would be fun to create one more mutant. I have often wondered about the methods that nature uses to help animals that get eaten by other animals not get eaten quite so often. The adaptations fall into only a few categories:
1. Size. Big animals tend not to get eaten so often as little ones.
2. Speed. If you can outrun the predators, that sure helps.
3. Spines, horns and big teeth. These all come in pretty handy.
4. Poisons or chemical defenses. Poison teeth are even better than big teeth. And skunks, they hardly ever get eaten.
5. Camouflage. If they can’t find you, they can’t eat you.
But I have noticed something strange about these adaptations. Nature never uses more than one or two on each prey animal. Go ahead, try to think of an animal that has more than two of these defensive tactics. I will wait…
You couldn’t do it, could you? My theory is that if nature made animals too hard to eat, it would mess the whole system up. The predators would die off. Then all the plants would get eaten and the prey animals would starve. Isn’t nature clever? It is a checks-and-balances system. Predators are needed to make the whole thing work.
Have you ever thought about the fact that predators are basically the muggers and thieves of the animal kingdom? A herbivore spends its whole life saving up calories from the plants it eats. Then along comes some predator and steals all those calories. How rude.
When you get right down to it, all animals are just tubes. At one end of the tube, they take in calories, and at the other end they eliminate the parts of the food they can’t get any calories from. All the other things that animals have managed to evolve are just things that help get calories into the tube. Eyes to find the food, teeth to chew the food, feet to walk to the food. I am just throwing that out there. It has nothing to do with my new invention.
Yes, I have used my mutant making machine to invent an entirely new animal.
Here it is, the most awesome herbivore of all times…
No, I haven’t come up with a name for it yet. It is as big as a whale, fast as a cheetah, has a smelly skunk tail, is covered with horns and spines, and has huge teeth and poison fangs. It also can change its color like a chameleon, but if I let it do that in this picture, you wouldn’t be able to see it, would you?
Good luck, you calorie stealing predators!
Pouring My Art Out 
Where are you? I have been struck by lightening!
What???
I got pressed! I have been dying to tell you.
Somebody was on there this morning reading the comments you leave and my responses and said we were funny. I replied “He is very funny; I am reasonable.” Then I sent them over here to visit you and see what it is the creative mind is capable of.
You rock. I better do some clever stuff then.
I will come and check it out as soon as I do this post.
Yay! I am so EXCITED!
You should be. You are living the dream.
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh… I am panicking… panicing…paniking… getting worried… I don’t see a new post from you on my reader… where did YOU go?
No, nothing new. The final post from the Cora series. Some people I wouldn’t have expected have shown up and there has been a fair amount of spam in the middle of the night.
The things that get pressed have a delightful randomness to them. Good job.
Yes, like lightening, nobody knows when or if it’s going to strike.
I carry a lightning rod around, but it doesn’t help.
I posted every one of the installments in the series with the same tags in the same order, not intentionally, so I wonder if that had something to do with it.
You might be on to something.
Or just on something.
hey, hey, hey!
What… just being clever…
I’m working on becoming a sellout, protecting my tarnished reputation, and learning to deny everything but most especially the things I can’t remember.
Good luck with that.
Are you saying I’ll be rejected? What’s wrong with me? I can be as polished and plastic as the next person- all I need is a chance!
Better you than me is all I am saying.
I couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t be able to keep my mouth shut long enough. You know, I have a raging insincerity phobia. They’ve tried everything; there is no cure.
Insincerity is fine for people who have no idea who they are.
Is that what causes it? People don’t know or don’t like who they are so they pretend to be what other people expect? Status drives me crazier than I am already. I don’t understand it. The only person I need to make a good impression on looks out at me from the mirror.
How sincere do you think that Republican who changed his views on gay rights because he found out his son is gay really was?
It drives me nuts. In for a penny/in for a pound. My views do not change to suit my constituency (provided I had a constituency) or to garner more votes.
For instance, there are a couple of oxy addicts in my family, I am opposed to public funding for methadone clinics because I don’t believe they’re successful. I was opposed to funding methadone before my addicts came out and now that they’re out I’m still opposed.
I won’t be running for office any time soon.
I have held the same set of beliefs and rules that will not break since I was a teenager. Granted, they might not all be the same rules that some people follow…
Me too. I have relaxed some of the standards I have for others but the standards I have set for myself remain the same. I treat people the way I have my entire life. I think we probably believe a lot of the same things- be kind, help people who can’t help themselves, share what you have with people who have less, live and let live. You’re a good egg PMAO.
Just call me Humpty.
You’ve met my wife then! Love it.
HA!
This was a pretty intelligently written post that had me thinking (never knew I could). Have you thought about experimenting with centipede’ing creatures?
I have a feeling that I am not done with the MMM.
I’m glad that this… this… thing.., which I’ll refer to as “the fangback cheetah”, doesn’t exists in the real world. If it would, it would pretty soon discover that eating grass is not much fun at all, and would begin eating any animal it can catch and swallow. And with it’s speed and size, that would be any animal.
I thought about making a carnivore, but that would just be irresponsible… and scary.
With these teeth? I believe you had honorable intentions, but that thing will eat carnivores for snacks.
I can only hope scientists won’t try to clone it from your picture.
Did they learn nothing from Dr. Frankenstien???
Of course they did. Where do you think genetically modified food comes from?
touche…
Oh my goodness! If I ever came across this “prey” I do believe I would leave it alone no matter how hungry I was. Then again, I wouldn’t be able to see it in the first place, so problem solved. Question, though, does the camouflage feature working while it is sprinting at top speed?
Oh yeah it does. And that is why you pay for the top of the line mutant making machine, and not one of those ones at the 99 cent store.
*jotting down notes* don’t cheap out and get the mutant making machine from the dollar store…
Okay, good to know. Thanks!
That is how Dick Cheney came to be… a cheap mutant machine.
I have never thought much about animal defense mechanisms, and now thanks to your post, I have. And you’re right–one defense per creature.
I’m also happy to see you’ve managed to work poo into your post, as well, and the fact that we’re all just one long tube. My boys would be impressed.
Unfortunately, where once I could impress teenage girls, I am now reduced to impressing teenage boys… ha!
We have to take what we can get, I guess…
true enough.