The Deadly Shrew

[42]

So I was watching a show on Animal Planet where they ranked different predators. They're number one predator was the shrew.

Now despite the fact that shrews are just ugly( and not threatening in anyway), apperrently a shrew has to kill and eat something every couple of hours. It also has a great sense of smell, venomous saliva, and an extreme metabolism. (The show's stat was that a shrew consumes a hundred time the amount of oxygen that a elephant uses).

Despite the shows reasoning, I can't see a supper-villian using the title of "The Shrew." It's just not threatening enough, even if you change the name to something like, "The Black Shrew," or "The Shrew of Doom." I think the shrew should be taken off the list simply for its lack of marketability to super-villians as a potential business identity.

[Entsuropi]

Why arn't humans number one? Have we not killed our way to the head of the food chain?

[Gemm: Rock & Roll Star; Born to Rock]

So what you're saying is that we need to go on a shrew hunt?

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing

Acts 17:21

I see this sort of thing a lot. Bart Ehrman is a theologian who pushes academic theories primarily, it seems, designed to disagree with most Christians' faith.

Animal Planet seems to be doing it to generate discussion about their show. (and it worked)

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

I just dont see how you can compare animals with specailzations. Sure a shrew is good eating crickets, but have it try to eat Sealions and Seals like an Orca, or catch flying insects like spiders, or destroy whole ecosystems like mankind....

Entropy I wouldn't put man in the greatest predator catagory,... oh we can be when we set our minds to it. But we arn't as clever as we let on. The story behind the Ghost and the Darkness is true and two lions (now stuffd in the chicago zoo hunted down and killed over 130 people in a nine month period while bones in a lair of their indicated that they had killed more, it was impossible to find out the exact number of dead.  http://www.lionlmb.org/gandd.html

and lets not forget that the most efficent "predators" in the world are the lowly virus and bacterium.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

The problem with that argument, Jeffe, is that if you're going to say they have to be universal hunters, you should also exclude specifically unusual representatives of the species as well.

I think to qualify as a "predator" you have to deliberately hunt a creature, so microbes are out.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

Ok but not viruses

oh and I wasn't saying lions were the best predator,... just that individuals dont count.. which you clarified for me.

[Entsuropi]

Does the virus specifically hunt stuff? I thought the little buggers were like cancer, almost a side effect.

And i was thinking about potential for destruction/death. A shrew can kill a lot of rats. A lion can kill a lot of deer. But a human, with the ability to make tools (and the time) will be able to massacre any animal in insane numbers. Simply because we do not fit into the natural balancing ecological systems. These balance it so that the wolves do not wipe out the deer and the deer do not wipe out grass etc. We, by not dying enough or whatever, upset these and send them out of all balance. It's doubtful that any enviroment could support humans without this happening sooner or later - even on alien planets or whatnot.

[Mistress of Darkness]

I don't know. I think a whole bunch of shrews might be sufficiently scary. Especially if they all gang up and start killing humans to feed their high metabolism.

I'm not saying it would be a "good" horror movie.

[Fellfrosch]

But it did get pretty good reviews, nevertheless.

[Mistress of Darkness]

They made a movie about shrews? What was it called?

[Gemm: Rock & Roll Star; Born to Rock]

Maybe "Shrewball," or "Schrewless," or the ever classic "Shrews."

[Mistress of Darkness]

I'm asking for movies actually made, since Fell's post would seem to indicate that one exists and got good reviews.

But maybe it was a typo?

[42]

"Taiming of the Shrew"

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

Taming. Man, you're starting to type like Sprig.