- Joined
- Oct 29, 2001
- Messages
- 417
someone once suggested to me that cattle mutilations were a result of rats mutilating the body somehow. not satanic rats or anything, just ones eating their way through life. literally.
Jerry_B said:So you're suggesting that ETs come all the way across space (and possibly time) from wherever they're based to scare a few people in rural areas? If you want to reduce it all to being a product of an ET's mind, then that really is just a tail-chasing argument - it means you don't really have to explain anything, and thus can simply say it's all to do with the whims of ET imagination.
Analis said:Jerry_B:
Well, we don't know if they have to cross space or time each time, they may live near us unnoticed. And we don't know how much time it takes them. Why Earth? Maybe because interesting planets are uncommon. But we can't solve the issue of the motives. There were many discussions about non-human behaviour. Relating to cattle mutilation, they may use Earth as their playground, or as weirder options, they may feed on our emotions, they may be satanic creatures viciously trying to hurt us, or for some unknown reason our brains can't understand...
After all, human behavoiur is often sureptious, we can't understand why our fellow humans act this way. Maybe it seems a tail-chasing argument, but nonetheless it might be true. And more than not to have to explain anything, it may be that we can't explain anything... It seems disapointing or discouraging, but we must have this possibility in mind.
Jerry_B said:And - if the mutilations are indeed being carried out by ETs - it seems that we should not bother trying to figure out what they're doing, because we'll never figure it out. Well, that seems to be the general gist of what people are saying here WRT the ET-based theory...
OldTimeRadio said:Jerry, I didn't say that we shouldn't try.
As people far brighter than I have pointed out, it's hard to get the answers when we don't even know which questions to ask.
OldTimeRadio said:Moreover, so recently as 130 years ago our ancestors couldn't conceive of travelling to Australia in less than many months; the idea of doing it in mere hours would have been totally beyond them.
Dr. Bill Bass is a forensic anthropologist who has a "body farm" outside Knoxville, Tennessee. He puts human bodies out in the yard and studies the various stages of decomposition, his work is used by police departments to try to determine how long a corpse has been dead. It would be interesting to compare the human mutilation photos w/ the corpses in Bass's yard.Jerry_B said:That's very interesting Gitrdone. One wonder why no-one has thought of setting up that experiment before.
wembley8 said:Given the profusion of explanations nearer to home, perhaps those should be looked at more closely before we start invoking angels, demons or extra-terrestrials.
IamSundog said:If they are mystified, could that possibly be due to some sort of hysteria or "cultural contamination" thing? Could the utterly unflappable, down-to-earth blue collar icons of the American heartland be subject to this sort of contagious delusion? Surely the combined wisdom and experience of old hands in the industry would put wild speculation to rest?
Analis said:But this is exactely what we should expect it we deal with a non-human intelligence (and it happens often too with human intelligence...). It is unavoidable that in the universe, some things are out of our reach. We try to constrict those phenomena into an arbitrary set of rules, but certainly they don't have to follow them. Those remarks are not intended to prevent discussion. They only point a true limitation to our understanding. I agree that they imply an impossibility to draw any definitive conclusion. And that the old argument "ETs (or whatever else) would not act this way" is not an answer.
Yeah, I was being a little facetious - there's just this image of cattle ranchers as being like Jack Palance in City Slickers, and people being in the industry all their lives and passing knowledge down generations of families. Which is probably mythic and quite wrong.As to whether the 'down-to-earth blue collar icons of the American heartland' were indeed unflappable is open to question too IMHO.
Gitrdone said:Basically, they left a dead cow out in a field in the heat of the summer and within a day or two it looked just like the mutilation pics.
What an awful little beasty!!!I don't think there's any mystery here.
The body was found on a in the Guarapiranga reservoir
Which is fed by the Guarapiranga River. Now, in the rivers and waterways in that area is the Cetopsis candiru. Not the famous candiru, but a relative. Which;
is also a deadly parasite known throughout Brazil. It has circular mouth filled with sharp teeth to bite through the flesh of bigger prey, leaving a wound that looks similar to that of a bullet hole. The Candiru Asu then proceeds to eats the prey from the inside out. Once a few of these Candirus have entered the body, chances of survival are extremely low since these fishes greatly damage internal organs. Human corpses have been discovered in the Amazon River filled with about 100 of these parasites inside. Scientists have concluded that the victims might have been alive or incapacitated when they were attacked.
http://weirdandcoolanimals.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/candiru-catfish.html
Admittedly, that link isn't exactly 'Nature', but there's not too much available on-line about this pretty obscure S American catfish. And it's still a lot more plausible than aliens. Also, the only distribution map I've been able to find doesn't show them as being recorded from that exact location.
http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/catfish/cetopsidae/candiru.htm
Again though, there seems to be hardly anything on this species available. But, how unlikely is it that a species with a wide distribution in the general area could have made it's way into the Guarapiranga river, and from there into the reservoir?
So, the body appears to have been found in the water, in an area where it wouldn't be too surprising to find a species which is known to inflict exactly the types of injuries described to the body. The wounds also look like they could have been inflicted by other types of scavengers, birds for example, but it's hard to see how they could have removed the deep internal organs.
However, the damage to his face does seem to be consistent with classic scavenging behaviour.
As for the supposed burn marks, have they been verified? Or, is the blackening seen explainable by other means? Has anyone qualified to pass judgement, and their conclusions published and read by anyone equally well suited to explain them?
The article also mentions, 'vasovagal stimulation', about which it says, 'implying cardio-respiratory arrest caused by extreme pain'. And, 'cerebral oedema', adding, 'In a case like this, the presence of cerebral edema without direct traumatic origin is a strong characteristic of an agonizing death'.
Bollocks! Firstly, neither are inconsistent with drowning, and in an article suggesting that man had his entrails sucked out and half his face torn off, alive, it's hard to see why they can also refer to a lack of traumatic cause.
As speculative as this all is, it's a damn sight more likely than aliens.
It's an utter swine Jim.What an awful little beasty!!!
Already removed by user unfortunately.Richard D Hall - interesting talk about animal and human mutilation cases:
Some of this is new to me.