Why don't you ever see a rat vomiting?

Why don’t you ever see a rat vomiting?

Date:	June 1, 2005 / year-entry #136
Tags:	non-computer
Orig Link:	https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20050601-26/?p=35473
Comments:	10
Summary:	Okay, maybe you never wondered why you never saw a vomiting rat, but the intrepid researchers at the Annals of Improbable Research have discovered that there's a good reason, and Anne's rat page will explain in more detail than you probably wanted.

Okay, maybe you never wondered why you never saw a vomiting rat, but the intrepid researchers at the Annals of Improbable Research have discovered that there's a good reason, and Anne's rat page will explain in more detail than you probably wanted.

Comments (10)

muro says:

June 1, 2005 at 9:32 am

Now this is one thing I never needed to know. Or as (I think) Sherlock Holmes put it:

Interesting…now I hope I will forget soon. So my brain can remember important things.
alex says:

June 1, 2005 at 10:54 am

Oh, I feel like vomiting :)
Dave says:

June 1, 2005 at 11:07 am

"Why don’t you ever see a rat vomiting?"

Maybe because I don’t want to see a rat at all, much less a rat vomiting?

I saw a chicken play the piano once though.
D. Philippe says:

June 1, 2005 at 11:43 am

Now there’s two new words I hope I will never need to use in my vocabulary:

<a href="http://www.answers.com/pica&r=67">pica</a>: An abnormal craving or appetite for nonfood substances, such as dirt, paint, or clay.

<a href="http://www.answers.com/emetic&r=67">emetic</a>: Causing vomiting.
Josh Koppang says:

June 1, 2005 at 1:57 pm

Pica also shows up in pregnant women. A flyer that my wife got from her doctor listed reasons that she would need to come in to the doctor. Among them was: "Eating non-food substances such as bleach and charcoal."
KIm says:

June 1, 2005 at 6:38 pm

Makes me wonder how they tested sea sick pills.
Anonymous Coward says:

June 1, 2005 at 8:15 pm

I never saw a Microsoft employee vomiting. Maybe we’re onto something.
Asd says:

June 2, 2005 at 6:55 am

Aha. So that’s why when they’ve eaten poison and are staggering round they don’t try to vomit it up.
Anonymous Coward II says:

June 2, 2005 at 8:47 pm

"I’ve seen Microsoft libraries vomit though."

"Not vomit, throw."

"Oh yeah. By the way, if the owner of this blog sees the way your code abuses exceptions, "

"Shut up."
carlso says:

June 3, 2005 at 12:30 am

From the article: "One of the main functions of vomiting is to purge the body of toxic substances. Rats can’t vomit, but they do have other strategies to defend themselves against toxins… When rats discover a new food, they taste a little of it, and if it makes them sick they scrupulously avoid that food…"

In other words, the human digestive system is exception-based whereas a rat’s system uses error return codes.

Human:

try

{

while (!Full())

{

// Caution: human can throw up exceptions here

EatFoodBite();

}

}

catch (…)

{

RunToBathroom();

}

Rat:

bool fGoodFood = true;

while (fGoodFood && !Full())

{

fGoodFood = EatFoodBite();

}

or, for your highly-optimized rat:

while (!Full() && EatFoodBite())

;

Next time, we’ll examine how the introduction of additional mouths and stomachs to a rat can dramatically increase throughput, and what changes are needed to our food dispatching loop to accommodate them. ;-)

Comments are closed.

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