Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site imsvax.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!umcp-cs!cvl!elsie!imsvax!ted From: ted@imsvax.UUCP (Ted Holden) Newsgroups: net.origins Subject: more on killing mastodons etc. Message-ID: <372@imsvax.UUCP> Date: Tue, 13-Aug-85 17:09:15 EDT Article-I.D.: imsvax.372 Posted: Tue Aug 13 17:09:15 1985 Date-Received: Thu, 15-Aug-85 08:35:33 EDT Organization: IMS Inc, Rockville MD Lines: 31 This one just gets better. My original reply to Don Heller's comment about killing mastodons with rocks was: > In real > life, of course, a thirty lb. boulder falling on a Mammoth or > Imperial elephants head MIGHT have gotten his attention. Twenty > people throwing rocks at him would undoubtedly have gotten him > pissed off. Mr. Heller now replies: >Getting the [mastodon|elephant|...] pissed off is the whole point. Then you >can get it to do something stupid, like killing itself in the fall off a cliff. Remember now, the original discussion was about the possability that man caused the total EXTINCTION of mammoths, mastodons, imperial elephants etc. I will admit that men could have killed an occasional elephant, although at a cost in human lives. That is a very far cry from killing ALL of them. If any of you readers are planning an elephant hunt anytime soon, use a 460 Weatherby safari rifle; please don't use rocks. Rocks couldn't hurt an elephant's body and it's damned unlikely they could hurt his feelings badly enough to make him commit suicide by jumping off of a cliff. A far more likely reaction would be to stomp the rock thrower(s) flatter than one of Aunt Jemima's finest; even if the elephant had planned to commit suicide that day anyhow for some ulterior motive known only to him, he would probably stomp the rock throwers FIRST, and then commit suicide. There also remains the problem of how this technique was used to exterminate the elephants in Oklahoma and the plains states, where excavating artificial cliffs would have been very difficult in the age before bulldozers.