[Gpdd] RE: [BEHAVIOR] Pain as a "prey" animal

[Lauren Cordeiro]

I also heard, through the ramblings of my h.s. biology teacher, that for ex. - Have you ever seen a cat "playing" with a mouse it has just caught? (Sickening, if you have although i am a cat person) The mouse will be limp, and will appear dead - it does not run away even while the cat sits there and just stares at it. But then you shoo the cat away and pick the poor thing up and it is still alive. My teacher said, if I recall, that at a certain point, when a prey animal realizes it is about to be eaten, it automatically goes into a sort of "euphoria" state where it ceases to feel pain. Of course, before this point, it may have well endured pain from injuries the predator had caused. I do not remember if he said it was possible for the animal to come out of this state, if not eaten, or if by this point it had to be already too far gone. Interesting. But gruesome.
Lauren