• CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social
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    7 months ago

    To be fair on the deer, no natural predator is going to be chasing them at that kind of speed, so their instincts have no reason to be adapted to understanding objects moving that fast

    • herrvogel@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Nah dude, that don’t make no sense. Do animals only ever run from predators? Do they not have an instinct to avoid colliding with objects? Do they simply let 2 tons of steel smash into them just because it doesn’t look like anything they know that would want to eat them?

    • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      no natural predator is going to be chasing them at that kind of speed, so their instincts have no reason to be adapted

      Nonsense. Deer, including wild deer, live in parts of the world where that threat exists.

      Adaptation being beneficial for survival is about what IS, not only what’s natural. As far as reasons go, survival is kind of a big one for “instincts to be adapted”.

      • CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social
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        7 months ago

        Sure, but evolution takes a long time and cars have been a common enough threat to potentially cause selection pressure for what, a century or so maybe?

  • Veedem@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Being that many deer impacts happen at night, I believe I read a long while ago, that their delay in response is because the headlights temporarily blind them since they’re in the dark and suddenly are looking right into light. That period of freezing is them waiting for their eyes to adjust so they can decide on the action to take.

    • kattenluik@feddit.nl
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      7 months ago

      I don’t blame them, ever walked when it was dark out? Headlights are blinding and I’d freeze too.

        • cryostars@lemmyf.uk
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          7 months ago

          I live in a fairly rural area with a very healthy population of deer. I have a dashcam video of a doe jumping out in front of my vehicle and just freezing there. Thankfully I was alert and had just enough time to to stop but came within 1-2 feet of hitting her. This was about 4 pm on the summer, so broad daylight. No headlights. But yeah a lot of times they do jump away, especially if they’re not already in the road.

  • thedarkfly@feddit.nl
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    7 months ago

    It’s actually a very reasonable behavior if cars were normal predators: wait for the last moment before jumping out of the way so that the predator has to do a 180° and you’ve already left.

  • Turun@feddit.de
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    7 months ago

    Humans when they see a vaguely humanoid shape in the dark: your upper picture

    Humans when they are actively destroying the very basis of their existence, causing large, currently inhabited areas, to be uninhabitable in a few decades: this is fine meme, photoshopped to see the rain forest burning and cities flooding.

  • Pharmacokinetics@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    “There was a time where they cared nothing for General Motors when their only experience of humanity was a Volkswagen golf 1974 coming at them down a steel corridor.” -Gman