Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2011 December 27

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December 27

Snake handling evangelists

I've been doing a little research on Snake handling Pentecostal churches lately, and I'm a bit confused about a couple things. There are some evangelists who run services handling snakes for decades and "miraculously" survive hundreds of bites (this guy survived over 400, his faith evidently ran out in the end though), but some people die during their first "leap of faith" in a service. Why is that? I know next to nothing about ophiology (having a decent case of ophidiophobia), are some people less likely to die from snake bite than others due to some kind of natural immunity? Is there some trick to handling poisonous snakes that makes you less likely to die? Or is it just like a long game of Russian roulette where the luckiest players are perceived to be anointed by God? Mark Arsten (talk) 01:51, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't think that the venom always goes in when a snake bites. Or if it does, sometimes not a whole lot. I also wonder if they're considering being raked with the teeth hard enough to draw blood to be as much of a 'bite' as if the snake clamped down, pierced you deep and held on... --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 01:59, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

As Kurt Shaped implies, there's probably a sort of non-intentional mithridatism going on here. - Nunh-huh 02:55, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

There's venom, and then there's venom. Of the world's ten most venomous snakes, only one is from the USA, and it's from nowhere near where the Snake handling Pentecostal churches are located. Temperament is important too. Maybe they play with friendly snakes. HiLo48 (talk) 06:48, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Both occur in the Southeast United States. I think nowhere near is an overstatement. Rmhermen (talk) 15:11, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

The only experience I have with snakes is with a friend's (huge) boa constrictor that was mostly lying around doing very little whenever I saw it, but I'm wondering if snakes have varying levels of 'intent' when they bite, depending on how angry/threatened they feel? Do they have a 'back off', fairly gentle (relatively) warning-type bite, for instance? --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 13:35, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

There's a huge variation in levels of intent between breeds. A professional Australian snake handler (not a religious charlatan) recently told me that he hates his tiger snake and the only reason he keeps one is to keep the customers happy. I've met them in the bush. They act like they're in charge. HiLo48 (talk) 22:01, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

As Nunh-huh alludes, it is possible for people to develop resistance (or in some cases immunity) to many venoms as a result of repeated exposure. Snake antivenom often consists of a distillation of immune system antibodies created by non-human animals after exposure to venom. Humans can learn to produce similar antibodies naturally if frequently exposed to small amounts of venom. In addition, if you are a snake handler you could improve your odds by intentionally "milking" the snakes so that they are depleted of venom before handling them. If you really wanted to "cheat", then it is also possible for many species to surgically remove the venom glands, though I suspect that wouldn't go over well with the faithful. Dragons flight (talk) 08:52, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

And per HiLo, it's perhaps unsurprising that there's an almost total lack of 'snake handling evangelists' in Australia (with 5 of the top 8 on the deadliest list). --jjron (talk) 10:39, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

• That last comment made me laugh for some reason. But thanks for the answers everybody. I wonder if Bill Haast ever realized that he could have started his own cult since he was almost totally adjusted to snake venom. I guess a true test of faith would be for a snake handler to use a black mamba, but I guess we're unlikely to see that since they don't make it to rural appalachia very often. Mark Arsten (talk) 20:38, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

A true test of faith would be to drink some cyanide. After all, the same Biblical passage that mentions snake handling also says "They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover." --99.237.252.228 (talk) 20:52, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

And then any resultant deaths would be down to God's will? --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 21:49, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

What's the big deal about the OPERA neutrino anomaly?

Hi. Recent CERN experiments showed that neutrinoes arrived at long-distance detectors faster than the known speed of light by several milliseconds and outside the probable margin of error. Numerous hypotheses were put forward to preserve special relativity, including ones involving quantum tunnelling, suggesting the existence of multiple embedded dimensions à la string theory, or interpreting the results as showing that neutrinoes travel in a "straighter" straight-line path than light photons.

Photons are generally thought as near-massless particles that exhibit wave-particle duality carrying energy dependant on its wavelength. Neutrinos, meanwhile, are also nearly massless. Both masses are comparable to the plank mass, and their masses are given below:

• Photons: 2.3 eV (energy-based) for green light, or 2.56 x 10^-17 eV/c². The photon article states however that the mass is less than 1.0 x 10^-18.
• Neutrinos: <2.2 eV for the electron neutrino, or <2.45 x 10^-17 eV/c². Other flavours and experimentally generated types can be more energetic.
• Electrons (for comparison): 1 x 10⁶ eV, or 1.11 x 10^-11 eV/c².

One plank mass is 1.22 x 10²⁸ eV/c².

According to tachyon, hypotheses suggesting faster-than-light nature of neutrinos has been around for 26 years, since Chodos et al. (1985). Considering that neutrinos often have less mass than photons, why wouldn't they be more massless than light, and therefore have the ability to travel faster? One of the article states that a particle cannot travel faster than light unless it is truly massless, but given that light as particles has mass, would light itself not be able to reach the speed of light?

Perhaps for non-dark near-zero mass dual-nature matter particles, the "mass" is defined by the amount of interaction with normal matter. For photons, interaction is very high compared to neutrinos, and the interaction of gravitons (if they exist) would be far lower. Particles capable of permeating more matter would be more massless.

Another possible near-zero-mass scale would be a criterion that I forget. I blame Lorentz violation and all its gauginos.

Yet another possible way of measuring (gauging?) near-zero mass would be interaction with forces: protons interact potentially with all four fundamental forces (the strong interaction binding the nucleus together, possibly through gluons; the weak interaction responsible for radioactive decay, the electromagnetic force toward electrons, and gravity). Electrons interact with the weak force (electroweak interaction) as well as the electromagnetic and gravitational forces. Photons, by comparison, interact with the electromagnetic force only by allowing electrons to jump to a higher energy level, and gravitationally by curving under the bending of spacetime. Neutrinoes, meanwhile, are not affected by the electromagnetic force, rarely interact with an atom's nucleus (double beta decay, anyone?), and due to their having mass may interact gravitationally on a pico-scale. Finally, gravitons would have essentially no interaction whatsoever, and as carriers of the gravitational force, would have no mass and no disturbance via gravity.

Thus, if all particles that are more massless than electromagnetic photons are capable of travelling faster than light, has any particle other than neutrinos that has less mass or rest mass than photons been tested for their speed? We see evidence for example in that cosmic ray particles such as protons can travel at nearly the speed of light, but cannot quite reach it. Either this can be explained by their mass disallowing them from reaching that speed, or their nature as an electromagnetic wave would place them at higher frequencies than gamma rays, thus giving them more energy and more relativistic mass than regular electromagnetic particles.

Is any of this close to describing conventional theory? Also does wave-particle duality increase at relativistic speeds? Thanks. ~AH1 ^(discuss!) 02:10, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but most of this seems like a random mishmash of phrases from particle physics papers. Here are some specific comments:

• The Standard Model requires photons to be exactly massless. That means m = 0 in the equation E² = p² + m². E (the energy) is nonzero and is sometimes called the "relativistic mass", but modern physicists almost always mean m when they say "mass". "Less than 10^-18 eV" is an experimental upper bound on the photon mass (m). It's consistent with the Standard Model requirement that m = 0 exactly. There's nothing more massless than a photon.
• You say the particle masses are comparable to the Planck mass, but the Planck mass is, as you say, about 10²⁸ eV, nowhere close to the mass of any known particle.
• Not sure what "experimentally generated types" of neutrinos are. As far as experiments can tell so far, there are just the three SM species of neutrinos, though theorists have been postulating additional species for decades.
• "Tachyon" and "faster than light" are different things in modern field theory. In particular, tachyon condensation of the Higgs field is a part of the Standard Model and has nothing to do with FTL travel. Most particle physics papers with the word "tachyon" in them are not talking about FTL travel. I think this includes Chodos et al. (1985), but I only read the abstract and I'm no judge of anything with the word "supersymmetric" in the title.
• Wave-particle duality doesn't increase at relativistic speeds. Particles are more particle-like at high energies and more wave-like at low energies.

-- BenRG (talk) 06:26, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Why wasn't the Alleghenian orogeny simply an elastic collision?

Neither Gondwanan Africa nor Euramerica/Laurentia subducted. It seemed that the collision had enough energy to deform rock for about 1500 km outwards from the contact point....but based on what I know about thermodynamics, wouldn't an elastic collision just have been easier? elle _{vécut heureuse} ^{à jamais} (be free) 11:08, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

This is rather a lot like asking: "If two trains are speeding towards each other on a single track, shouldn't they collide elastically and bounce back?" The intuitive answer is, of course not. In order for an elastic collision to occur, the objects involved must deform elastically, which can only occur up to the yield stress of the material. Beyond that, the material will fracture. To use the train analogy, the colliding cars start to tear apart before they can compress enough to store sufficient energy to allow the opposing train to bounce back elastically. Same deal with continents. The rocks break and fracture before they can compress enough to store the necessary force to stop the plate motion. Except that the geological case is worse because the Earth's mantle is actually pushing the plates from underneath and behind, which will continue to drive them together even after the collision has started. It would be a little like if there was an engine at the rear of each train that continued to drive them together even after they collided. Dragons flight (talk) 12:09, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

... and on this timescale, many rocks behave more like putty than rubber. Dbfirs 21:01, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Drafting (aerodynamics) in the rain

A car can go faster and/or save fuel by drafting, but what happens when a car draft on a rainy day? The second car will now have to fight against the trail of water throw back by the lead car’s back tires. Would it be better for a race car to draft in the rain or just forget about drafting? Please note that I’m not recommending drafting in everyday driving. Do NOT draft on a highway, sunny or otherwise. Royor (talk) 12:27, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

You're still much better off drafting. The water off the tyres is not 'thrown back' in any significant way, although you do need to pass through much more water spray than if you weren't drafting. Nonetheless reducing the air resistance is still far more significant and highly advantageous. The main problems with drafting in the wet are to do with safety - the water thrown up can make it almost impossible to see, meaning you're almost driving blind, which raises the risk of rear end collisions, or simply running off at a corner or hitting another unseen obstacle; then couple those issues with increased stopping distances due to the wet, and you've got some real potential dangers there. --jjron (talk) 13:27, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm not so sure. Drafting removes some fraction of the air resistance, but the water is 1000 times denser than air. If the water spray displaces more than 0.1% of the air, then the driver is probably worse off driving through the spray than they would be by not drafting. I'm not sure how to estimate the volume of spray though. Dragons flight (talk) 18:22, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

One inch of rain in an hour is pretty heavy rain. If the raindrops fall at 5 m/s then, according to my calculations, there would be a mere 1.4 g of water per m^3 of air, or 0.00014% by volume. To reach levels of 0.1% by volume, the spray would have to be 700 times thicker than heavy rain. 81.159.105.243 (talk) 21:41, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Everything is much more clear to me now - thanks everyone. :) Royor (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 07:15, 28 December 2011 (UTC).

What is this?

Hi, does anyone know the purpose of this, what I assume to be some kind of aerial:

http://img580.imageshack.us/img580/2610/aerial.jpg

The part at the top is about 9 inches long I guess. It is on a small UK town-centre building used as offices. 81.159.105.243 (talk) 12:40, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Could be a mobile phone mast, but without an idea of overall size I can't say for sure. --TammyMoet (talk) 13:49, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Its location, size and orientation make me think it is not an "ordinary" mobile phone mast. The overall size is no more than what you see. 81.159.105.243 (talk) 14:43, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Can you get a better picture? It's hard to tell from that. It could be a CCTV camera, just pointed straight down (perhaps because it is broken). --Tango (talk) 18:28, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, no, it is definitely not a CCTV camera. Unfortunately it is not possible for me to get a better picture with the camera that I have. 81.159.105.243 (talk) 18:36, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

It doesn't look like any aerial that I am familiar with. Are you sure that it's not a CCTV camera? Dbfirs 20:53, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, absolutely certain. 81.159.105.243 (talk) 20:58, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I think it's a sector WiMAX antenna.--Itinerant1 (talk) 22:03, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

That seems extremely plausible. Thank you! 81.159.105.243 (talk) 23:47, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Or maybe not WiMAX, but Wi-Fi, but it's definitely some kind of directional microwave gizmo. Judging by the size (if your 9 inch estimate is correct), I'd guess a higher frequency band, maybe something above 5 GHz. In the U.S., WiMAX normally operates at 2.5 to 3.5 GHz, and antennas are much longer, typically 30-50 inches long. I don't know what the situation is in the UK.--Itinerant1 (talk) 03:46, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Ballistic vest in films

In films a person even in the ballistic vest, when shot, often falls and rolls like heavily wounded. Is it only for dramatic effect? It looks like the vest is actually capable to prevent a person from falling after being hit by a small caliber.--46.204.93.136 (talk) 15:19, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

AFAIK, the point of a bulletproof vest is to prevent the bullet from entering the body; it doesn't completely make it like the bullet doesn't exist. There's still a lot of energy there, and being shot even with such a vest still causes a nasty bruise, sometimes broken bones, and quite a bit of pain. --Jayron32 15:25, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

If you did fall over, I would expect it to be more from surprise/shock. If we take, for example a 9×19mm Parabellum round then the infobox on that page tells us they weigh about 8g and travel at about 400m/s. Since the vest stops the penetrating power of the bullet, all that really matters is momentum. The momentum of an 8g round travelling 400m/s is the same as that of a 145g baseball travelling at 22m/s, or 45 mph. A good pitcher than throw a baseball at 100mph and batters don't usefully fall over when hit by a fastball, do they? (I'm assuming they don't - I actually know nothing about baseball and just looked up a few numbers in Wikipedia for the sake of an example!) --Tango (talk) 15:45, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Impulse absorbed by catching with an arm is drawn out over a longer period of time. The arm is flexible, and it can move backward to recoil, dissipating energy over a longer time and distance. So, a catcher can handle a 100 mph baseball caught in a mitt. The same baseball, thrown to the chest, would not go over so well. Nimur (talk) 16:14, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I was referring to the batter getting hit by the ball, rather than the catcher intentionally catching it. Getting hit by a 100mph pitch must hurt and probably leaves a bruise, but I doubt batters typically fall over. The time element is important, but I think it is reasonable to assume the time it takes for a ball to stop when it hits a batter is about the same as for a bullet to stop when it hits a vest (at least to within an order of magnitude). --Tango (talk) 17:58, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree with the above. This also means the person is almost as likely to fall toward the shooter as away. Also notice that the same force is exerted on the shooter (actually a bit more, due to air resistance). So, if it doesn't knock the shooter over, it shouldn't knock the victim over, assuming both are standing, and of similar weight. StuRat (talk) 18:34, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

The shooter is ready for it and will brace for the recoil. The shootee doesn't have that luxury. That's not a very large effect, though. --Tango (talk) 20:26, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

• The idea that shot people are thrown backwards in the dramatic way depicted in films was tested in an episode of Mythbusters and, as I recall, thoroughly "busted". 81.159.105.243 (talk) 20:55, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps the shootee might have a fair warning in a civil war: "Would you mind terribly much if I shoot you now ?" "Oh no, not at all, that's what we're here for, my good man !". StuRat (talk) 06:52, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

In fact, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCzD5uhSViY. (Great show!) 81.159.105.243 (talk) 21:16, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps an elephant gun might have that effect. StuRat (talk) 21:18, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I believe the term used to measure this effect with bulletproof vests is "blunt force trauma". Basically, the better the vest spreads the impact of the bullet, the less likely you are to get shocked or bruised. Even with a vest on, though, getting hit by a bullet still hurts! In an armed confrontation, you do not let yourself get shot if you can help it.

As an aside, the vest of a police officer must always be able to stop a bullet from the officer's own gun. Many officers have been shot by their own guns when disarmed by a madman or criminal in a confrontation. 58.111.186.225 (talk) 21:05, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm reminded of Barney Fife, who might give his gun to the criminal to hold while he searched for his handcuffs. :-) StuRat (talk) 04:44, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Are the Quarks that make us as old as the universe.

Even though our elements were made probably 5 billion years ago, are the Quarks themselves indestructible and thus as old as the universe? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.30.134.36 (talk) 20:07, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Nope, the weak force works them over all the time. Your body has considerably more neutrons per unit weight than the mix of H, He and Li that the Big Bang left behind and each proton to neutron change converts one type of quark into a different type. So it's not your fault that you're feeling down, blame it on Supernova nucleosynthesis. Hcobb (talk) 20:30, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

In modern physics, subatomic particles are thought not to have individual identities. When you have multiple quarks of the same type, you can't, even in principle, label them A, B, C, etc, and follow them as individuals over time. So it isn't really meaningful to speak of the age of a given quark. Looie496 (talk) 16:36, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Do heavier objects fall faster?

In school physics class, we are all drilled to think that objects of the same size and shape, but different masses will fall at the same speed and hit the ground at the same time if dropped from the same height. Galileo's famous leaning tower of pisa experiment is frequently references. But looking at the formula for terminal velocity, the terminal velocity is proportional to the square root of the mass of the object. With all other factors constant, doesnt this mean that the more massive object will hit the ground faster than a less massive object? Even if the two object do not reach terminal velocity, won't the more massive object be traveling faster when it hits the ground and hence, hit the ground first? Acceptable (talk) 20:17, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

The first part ignores air resistance, the second is based on it. If there is no air resistance, everything falls at the same rate (at least until the objects get so massive that they pull the Earth towards them to a noticeable degree) and the terminal velocity is near the speed of light (of course, the object will strike the Earth before it gets near that). When there is air resistance, then more dense objects fall faster and reach a higher terminal velocity. StuRat (talk) 20:22, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

(ec)The old idea was that objects fell at a speed proportional to their mass. Galileo disproved that with his experiments. In a vaccuum, the two objects will fall at the same rate. In the atmosphere, they won't necessarily. Consider a small weight and a feather with the same mass. In the atmosphere, the weight will fall way much faster. In a vaccuum, they will land at the same moment. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:24, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Especially, if its a Falcon feather and a NASA verified Apollo hammer, then they fall at the same speed. Feather & Hammer Drop on Moon Isn't it wonderful how the government knows how best to spends our tax dollars to demonstrate to us what we already know? Almost as if they can't quite believe it themselves! Let's just hope they don't want to prove the existence of water on Mars.... that will cost the poor lower and middle class Americans a fortune. Why can't they wait a few yeas until the Chinese send a manned mission there and find out for sure?--Aspro (talk) 20:47, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

And since this is Wikipedia Ref Desk (-which is well populated with individuals that are familiar with kinematic trickery), I suppose we ought to present the other side (far side?).The hammer and feather hoax. Note the slow motion bit at the end.--Aspro (talk) 21:06, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

That's pretty funny. I was waiting for the guy to say something about how the earth is flat. In our high school physics class, they demonstrated the concept using a plexiglass tube with most of the air pumped out. A feather and some heavier object (a ball of some kind) fell at the same rate when you would invert the tube. But doing it on the moon is more dramatic. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:20, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

This reminds me of one of my favorite trick questions: Which is heavier, a pound of feathers or a pound of gold?

Answer: Of course, a pound of feathers is heavier than a pound of gold. --Trovatore (talk) 11:34, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

And your $0.02 worth Trovatore, reminds me of that paragraph by Douglas Adams in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy...
“It startled him even more when, just after he was awarded the Galactic Institute’s Prize for Extreme Cleverness, he got lynched by a rampaging mob of respectable physicists who had finally realized that the one thing they really couldn’t stand was a smart-arse.”[1] Emphasise added ;-)
--Aspro (talk) 18:06, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Marsquake

In reading the article on Quakes, the section on Marsquake says that there is currently no explanation for why Marsquakes occur. Is there any evidence of some form of plate tectonics or perhaps Marsquakes come from the same kind of source as Moonquakes? 72.136.132.216 (talk) 21:47, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't believe there's any sign of plate tectonics, which requires a molten core. Mars does have moons, though, and their gravitational attraction, in conjunction with that of the Sun and Jupiter, may cause some quakes. Also, since solar heating doesn't have oceans and a thick atmosphere to distribute itself, that could lead to expansion and contraction. StuRat (talk) 22:28, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Phobos and Deimos hardly seem like they would have the mass to cause significant gravitational influence on the Martian surface. — Michael J 02:26, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

i don't get fracture mechanics, the orientation of J1 joints of the Appalachians, and the stress field 315 mya

I'm trying to comprehend this paper. So J1 joints are ENE-trending joints ... that are parallel to today's stress field...but would they have been perpendicular to the stress field felt by North America 315 mya?

The strike occurred "south of east" (which makes sense -- Gondwanan Africa was colliding into Laurentia). But the picture is still really hazy to me. Can someone explain to me the basics, of what is perpendicular to what and what are the directions of the vectors of stress and strain due to two continents brushing together in a strike-slip faults (the first interaction early in the Alleghanian orogeny)? Because I am really confused.

I have like some experience in introductory materials science, but we never discussed shear stress all that much. elle _{vécut heureuse} ^{à jamais} (be free) 22:07, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I just knew that this would be Terry Engelder - that's a long paper (or two papers - I've not finished reading them yet). One thing to say is that even in highly oblique convergence the deformation is often completely partitioned into pure strike-slip along a main strike-slip zone with a small component of pure shortening perpendicular to it - that's why you get structures like the Chaman Fault and the Great Sumatran fault along oblique collisional zones while the displacement at the leading edge in each case is nearly pure dip-slip (see also the Zagros fold and thrust belt). Mikenorton (talk) 22:57, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Is there a name for this effect?

When someone's beloved pet snake, snapping turtle or crocodillian, acquired as a tiny baby, grows to be a hulking great beast, verging on man-killer size, almost without the owner noticing, because it happens quite slowly - is there a name for this? --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 22:36, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Google Books has lots of information about selecting pets that don't grow as large as other species, and about people releasing snakes, turtles and such which have grown too big, but I couldn't find a name for "pets gradually growing too big unnoticed." Edison (talk) 23:32, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

This seems to just be one aspect of us not noticing things which happen gradually. The classic example is the frog that won't jump out of a pot slowly brought to a boil (not sure if this is really true or not). StuRat (talk) 23:39, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Could be another one for MythBusters. Do NOT try this at home! 81.159.105.243 (talk) 23:48, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

The ASPCA might not like that episode much. StuRat (talk) 23:54, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

No need for Myth Busters, the frog boiling anecdote is literally false, but still a useful metaphor (see snopes article here:[2]). SemanticMantis (talk) 23:53, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Our boiling frog article has quite a bit on this particular anecdote, with multiple scientific sources discussed. --Mr.98 (talk) 23:56, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Although, from personal experience I can say that if you cook a crab this way, the crab won't try to move, it will just expire quietly as the water warms up. ~Amatulić (talk) 16:48, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Ever hear the one about how if you drop a frog into a jug of water, it will swim around and try to get out - whereas if you drop a frog into a jug of absinthe, the frog will become calm and remain there indefinitely? --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 00:41, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

This is closely related to the sorites paradox, a.k.a the "heap paradox" SemanticMantis (talk) 23:53, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Creeping normalcy "refers to the way a major change can be accepted as the normal situation if it happens slowly, in unnoticed increments, when it would be regarded as objectionable if it took place in a single step or short period." -- ToE 00:12, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable. I was just thinking about the boa that one of my friends used to own - it was about 8/9ft long when I saw it (him? her? don't know), and as thick as a man's leg in places. He (my friend) fell for the 'they only grow to a size appropriate for their enclosure' story when buying the snake - and as the snake grew, he also grew to accept the idea of having a really big snake around the house (even when he nearly ended up getting constricted once, when drunk and careless). I clearly remember him saying that if he'd known, there was no way that he'd have bought it - but it was his pet snake now, and still his baby in a way, so best just to get on with it... --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 00:41, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Don't know a name for it, agree it merits a particular name... when I lived in West Africa our cook pannicked somewhat when he saw my wife looking at cute baby crocs someone had brought to the house gate trying to sell. Of course the President had many pet crocodiles then so there was a precedent... --BozMo talk 09:22, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

People who keep fully-grown crocodiles (and related) in their homes are a special breed indeed. I've just seen some really good videos on YouTube (better not link them, as they seem to be TV captures). I don't supposed that there's any way of owning something like that without coming to be considered the local eccentric. Moreso if you already have one croc and then get another because you like it so much. --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 12:05, 28 December 2011 (UTC)