6. No animal shall kill any other animal.

April 14, 2007 10:01 PM

OMG!! Chicken cops break up bunny brawl!
posted by orthogonality (52 comments total)

Somebody call the pigs!
posted by found missing at 10:08 PM on April 14, 2007 [1 favorite]

Bunnies brawl? First the Tooth Fairy, now this?
posted by k8t at 10:13 PM on April 14, 2007

Bizzare.
posted by delmoi at 10:13 PM on April 14, 2007

lol thats what ya call hen pecked lol
posted by Citizen Premier at 10:13 PM on April 14, 2007

Those weren't chickens, they were wee T. rexes.
posted by rob511 at 10:14 PM on April 14, 2007

I think you got metafilter confused with metachat.
posted by puke & cry at 10:16 PM on April 14, 2007 [1 favorite]

Which one was good chicken & which one was bad chicken?
posted by miss lynnster at 10:18 PM on April 14, 2007

you dumbass . . .i lov this.
posted by nola at 10:22 PM on April 14, 2007

Yeah, puke & cry, my thoughts exactly.
posted by AwkwardPause at 10:27 PM on April 14, 2007

I never would have thought it possible for a chicken to stare anything down, but damn if the one in the foreground didn't give off the "Do you feel lucky, punk" vibe.
posted by lekvar at 10:34 PM on April 14, 2007

You gotta keep 'em separated.
posted by ikkyu2 at 10:39 PM on April 14, 2007

That has given me hope for peace in the middle east.

Oh, shit! Do they have chickens there?!
posted by dirigibleman at 10:45 PM on April 14, 2007

Also.

COCK BLOCKED!
posted by dirigibleman at 10:47 PM on April 14, 2007 [1 favorite]

R1: I am the Easter Bunny!
R2: No, I am the Easter Bunny!

C1: Lay off, you assholes. Those are our eggs.
C2: Punk asses. Stealin' our thunder.
posted by icosahedral at 10:51 PM on April 14, 2007 [3 favorites]

people are going to say a lot of mean things in this thread like "single-link-youtube!" and possibly "monkeybeans!" but i think that the tone of this fpp and the late hour at which it was posted on a saturday nite pretty much deliver exactly what is promised, and sometimes, the best of the web is a short, cute video of two chickens putting a stop to needless rabbit carnage.

+2 points for alliteration, orthogonality!
posted by es_de_bah at 10:56 PM on April 14, 2007

also, dogfight? geese vs turkey?
posted by es_de_bah at 10:58 PM on April 14, 2007 [1 favorite]

Man, I saw this a couple of months ago and I do not think those chickens are a force for good. I think they saw a fight they wanted to get in on and the rabbits were just confused. Chickens are fighters, not lovers. I don't know about the bunnies.
posted by SkinnerSan at 11:05 PM on April 14, 2007

Yeah, it looked like the chickens just didn't like anybody fighting on their turf. So they muscled in.

"If there's gonna be any head-bustin' around here, it's gonna be US that's doing it!"
posted by darkstar at 11:18 PM on April 14, 2007

I think the rabbits were playing, not fighting, and the chickens got mad because it was in 'their' territory.

Still pretty cute. :)
posted by Malor at 11:30 PM on April 14, 2007

es_de_bah writes "i think that the tone of this fpp and the late hour at which it was posted on a saturday nite pretty much deliver exactly what is promised, and sometimes, the best of the web is a short, cute video of two chickens putting a stop to needless rabbit carnage."

Thanks, and that's why the video is fun, but I also posted it because it seemed like anomalous animal behavior, begging for an explanation. Intraspecific fighting for dominance is normal, but interspecific policing? You might interpret it as the alpha cock seeing the (male) rabbits fighting for dominance as a threat to his own position, but what's with the other chicken? And why do the chickens appear to separate the rabbits?

My normal way of looking at these sort of things is to try to find a "normal", evolutionarily adaptive behavior that's being perverted. E.g., why's your dog follow your lead? Because he's a pack animal and he "sees" you as his pack leader. Why's a cat play with yarn? Because it's similar to playing with prey, which is adaptive because it allows the cat to practice hunting and to teach its young. Why do humans in wealthy countries get fat? Because in the Era of Evolutionary Adaptation, frequent famines made it adaptive to pack away as much fat as possible during the good times.

So what's the adaptive behavior being twisted in this case?
posted by orthogonality at 11:52 PM on April 14, 2007

ortho: two behaviors. The bunnies are playing, and the chickens don't like their territory being invaded.
posted by Malor at 11:57 PM on April 14, 2007

I think those are young male bunnies fighting for dominance/access to females.
posted by orthogonality at 12:07 AM on April 15, 2007

Man, lagomorphs fight like girls.
posted by maryh at 12:23 AM on April 15, 2007

I saw a rabbit tree a road runner once, so it goes both ways. It goes both ways.
posted by user92371 at 12:35 AM on April 15, 2007

Chickens from the 14th century would have let the fight continue.
posted by YoBananaBoy at 1:16 AM on April 15, 2007 [4 favorites]

Concerning Heinlein's statement concerning concerning civility and the gendarmes even chickens fail.

But I'm with Ortho. We simply overlay our primate interpretation of this onto very simple gallus behavior.
posted by sourwookie at 1:41 AM on April 15, 2007

We've all seen COCK-blocking before, right?
posted by sourwookie at 1:44 AM on April 15, 2007

aww-fuck you dirigibleman.
posted by sourwookie at 1:46 AM on April 15, 2007

rabbits do indeed fight, and they fight dirty. i have two spayed female rabbits that hate each other. we had the older one for a year before we got the younger one at only a few months old to keep the first one company -- the younger one initiated the first fight, and they have despised each other since. we've had them for three years now, and have tried all kinds of suggestions from this site, and nothing has worked. so they live in two separate cages and get to get out and run around the house and yard separately. if they ever get together by accident, the fur flys everywhere -- they pull out big chunks and have even drawn blood.

we obviously need a couple of chickens.
posted by doplgangr at 2:50 AM on April 15, 2007

I am delighted by this because I do not know what is happening. And I don't wish to.

Mystery is good.
posted by django_z at 2:56 AM on April 15, 2007

Lame post.
posted by Firas at 3:44 AM on April 15, 2007

Dogfight

the comments to that are a real love fest, aren't they? ... greeks and turks telling how much they respect and appreciate each other ... NOT!!
posted by pyramid termite at 4:09 AM on April 15, 2007

BWAAAK - NO PANCAKES FOR YOU!!
posted by pyramid termite at 4:14 AM on April 15, 2007

I saw this awhile ago and it's still funny.
posted by squidfartz at 5:12 AM on April 15, 2007

When our pet rabbits start to fight, we often solve the problem by hurling chicken McNuggets at them. It works, but as we bend down to clean up the sweet and sour sauce stains off our floor, we can't help but wonder if it would be best, in the long run, to let the rabbits work their issues out once and for all.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 5:53 AM on April 15, 2007

Bad buns, bad buns. Whatcha gonna do? Whatcha gonna do when the cocks come for you?
posted by FunkyHelix at 8:31 AM on April 15, 2007

[remembers video of bunny chasing snake]
posted by five fresh fish at 8:56 AM on April 15, 2007

Lame post.

Lame comment.
posted by Foosnark at 9:12 AM on April 15, 2007

maryh wrote: Man, lagomorphs fight like girls.

...fight like aristocrats on horseback.
posted by ryanrs at 9:25 AM on April 15, 2007

orthogonality, I just loved this post - those chickens are hilarious. Those bad bunnies obviously violated the pecking order.
posted by madamjujujive at 11:23 AM on April 15, 2007

obviously violated the pecking order.

Bad pun. Take that bock.
posted by YoBananaBoy at 12:34 PM on April 15, 2007

This post does set a precedent we might be better to avoid, because, as a cuteoverload addict, I can testify to the proliferation of awesome things that animals can do on video.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 1:53 PM on April 15, 2007 [1 favorite]

Ambrosia: If God had wanted cats to masturbate, he would have given them opposable thumbs.
posted by anthill at 2:42 PM on April 15, 2007

17 hours, 45 comments and nobody's yet come up with...

"It's Starsky and Hatch!"

"Bawk, bawk, bawk 'em Dan-o"

or "NYPD Blue? No, Rhode Island Red"

It's a good thing I'm still around...
posted by wendell at 3:28 PM on April 15, 2007 [1 favorite]

OMG Cat with thumbs!
posted by dog food sugar at 4:01 PM on April 15, 2007

Oooh noes!! Every time a cat masturbates, God kills a baby!
posted by five fresh fish at 4:25 PM on April 15, 2007

"It's Starsky and Hatch!"

vs. Starsky and Hutch

You know, 'cause rabbits live in hutches...

...

...

well, I could have gone for the Warren(!) Beat(!)tie joke, so there's something to be thankful for right there.
posted by Sparx at 6:13 PM on April 15, 2007

Thank you, Sparx.
posted by wendell at 8:21 PM on April 15, 2007 [1 favorite]

Good thing those bunnies didn't take any hostages! They would have had to call in the S.Q.A.K. team.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 1:11 AM on April 16, 2007 [1 favorite]

Hungarian motorway blocked by escaping rabbits
posted by homunculus at 10:03 AM on April 16, 2007

Actually, this was posted on Metachat a while back. *smug*
posted by deborah at 1:31 PM on April 16, 2007

"There are thousands of them on the road but they're not using their newfound freedom well; they're just sitting around, eating grass and enjoying the sun," Galik told Reuters.

That sounds like the best use of freedom to me.
posted by Citizen Premier at 11:30 AM on April 17, 2007