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Wednesday, April 29, 2009

the best actors survive

So I read this article where they talk about how some critters better their odds at survival by playing dead. This playing dead thing really only seems to be effective if everyone else around you is scattering like mad to get away.
The part of the article that caught my attention is their decision to label this behavior selfish. By playing dead, the individual increases the odds of their survival while the others around are sacrificed:

"selfish prey" playing dead then wind up sacrificing their "neighbors in the group or community."
I don't agree with them that it's selfish to up your own odds of survival in this type of situation. The human example they give is a bank robbery gone bad:
"For humans, this can happen when an attacker enters a building and starts randomly targeting victims. People who play dead often survive, while their fleeing colleagues usually aren't so lucky."
It's not like you're going to shout out to everyone around you- hey- play dead! That would sorta take away from the whole acting like you're dead thing.

But the real reason I am posting about this article is because of this line:
"We can imagine such a (death-feigning) person might survive more," Miyatake said

I started thinking of a comedy short- you know, like a 20 minute move or whatever, where the protagonist is a play-dead kind of person. So at the first sign of danger, this person plays dead. Funny, right?

I know a stand up comedian, maybe I should send him the idea. He could add it to his skits. I'm sure he could come up with a suitably silly situation where someone playing dead would be completely inappropriate (and yet side-splittingly funny)

1 comment:

  1. I can't help but think of all those weird, funny side characters in all the Shakespeare comedies. (think the stupid actors in the play within a play in Midsummer Night's Dream). That would so fit right in. :)

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