There is a natural order to things, a set of immutable rules that all beasts must adhere to: The strong eat the weak, the fast catch the slow, the early bird gets the worm, don't fuck with the honey badger, never go to Australia without life insurance, and so on and so forth. But just like with humans, some animals refuse to play by the rules ...

5 Stoats Exploit a Glitch in the Rabbit Matrix

David Morison via E-group.uk.net

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

Stoats employ an ingenious hunting tactic, carefully refined over countless millennia, and it goes like this: They flip the fuck out.

When a stoat encounters a rabbit, its natural prey, the standoff is intense. The bunny is both instinctively wary of and much faster than the stoat in a straight-out chase, but if the predator gets close enough to its prey, it can strike faster than the rabbit can run. There's a small moment of opportunity between when the rabbit registers the stoat as a threat and when it bolts. In that moment, the stoat goes methodically, scientifically nutbar. It starts jumping, twisting, rolling, and flopping around at complete random. The jerky movements are somewhere between "stop, drop, and roll" and "the worm," as performed by an octopus in the middle of an aneurysm.

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

But with every confusing twitch and convulsion, the stoat inches ever closer to its target. And for no particular reason, the rabbit stays put. The bunnies display some classic signs of hypnosis: They're both curious and lethargic, seemingly mesmerized by the ridiculous shenanigans going on in front of them, unaware of emotional cues like "this thing is crazy" and "I'm pretty sure it usually eats me at this point." Soon the stoat's flailing, undignified dance brings it within striking distance, and boom: No more rabbit. Researchers don't fully understand why Mr. Hoppy just sits there and watches his ridiculous spastic death break dance inexorably toward his own face, but the stoat's epileptic war dance works consistently. This is not a one-off thing. This is not a handful of stoats occasionally deploying lethal funkiness. This is a persistent hunting strategy employed by whole stoat species throughout the ages.

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

This, ladies and gentlemen, is a tactical freakout.