[lit-ideas] The Opposum's Implicature
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2014 18:06:17 -0400 (EDT)
Geary writes:
>opposum
and
>implicature
among very interesting other things.
Some follow-up in ps, mainly from Wikipedia.
Cheers,
Speranza
When threatened or harmed, an opposum will "play possum".
It will mimick the appearance and smell of either a sick or dead animal.
This physiological response is involuntary (like fainting), rather than a
fully Griceian conscious act.
(Grice was a human Oxford philosopher).
In the case of baby opossums, however, the brain does not always react this
way at the appropriate moment.
Therefore a baby opposum can fail to "play dead" when threatened.
When an opossum is "playing possum", the animal's lips are drawn back, the
teeth are bared, saliva foams around the mouth, the eyes close or
half-close, and a foul-smelling fluid is secreted from the anal glands.
The stiff, curled form can be prodded, turned over, and even carried away
without reaction.
The opposum will typically regain consciousness after a period of between
40 minutes and 4 hours, a process that begins with slight twitching of the
ears.
Grice's advice: give a "dead" opossum the benefit of the doubt before
disposing of the body.
----
After all, the opposum may be "playing possum" as an involuntary response
to a threat, in which the opossum becomes comatose in the face of danger and
appears dead.
This may last from 40 minutes to 4 hours.
During this time, the opossum lies on its side, becomes stiff, the eyes
glaze over, the opossum drools, the tongue lolls out the side of the mouth,
and green anal fluid may be seen.
Don't film it.
This fascinating defense mechanism helps the opossum survive (in a
Darwinian way, as McEvoy and Popper and Magee would say) an attack from a
predator
because many predators give up the attack if they believe the opossum is
already dead.
(This is what Grice calls the cancellation of the implicature).
Grice's further advice:
Leave the area and give the opossum a chance to recover and move on.
The opossum will not respond to prodding or poking.
When the opossum is about to recover, the ears move very slightly -- "or
not", as McEvoy may add. Or not.
Finally, if you see what looks (or 'seems' as Grice prefers) an obviously
dead female opossum and detect movement in the pouch area, have the body
and infants transported to the nearest wildlife rehabilitator or
veterinarian.
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