Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2024 July 10

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July 10

Animals in mouse stories

(For clarification, a mouse story is defined as a story with talking animals that is centered on mice.)

We know that cats are often associated with evil in mouse stories. I understand why this is standard. But dogs in mouse stories sometimes represent the need to save mice from cats. Is this logical?? Do dogs often save mice from cats in real life?? If not, then why is it standard in mouse stories for dogs to be used to save mice from cats?? (I want an answer from someone who is a real expert on mouse stories.) Georgia guy (talk) 15:36, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

If you wait for "a real expert on mouse stories" here you could be waiting a long time. Some examples would help. Recalling Tom and Jerry I would suggest that the dog is more interested in getting at the cat, and the consequent saving of the mouse is incidental to that. Shantavira|^{feed me} 15:44, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

True for some episodes, but not all. In “The bodyguard”, the motivation of Spike the dog is to help Jerry, and hurting Tom is secondary. – b_jonas 09:41, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

The creators of the North Korean Squirrel and Hedgehog animated cartoon (semi-notorious among some anime fans) apparently worked out a whole elaborate theory of allegorically good and evil animals... AnonMoos (talk) 16:07, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

There's also Maus, of course. AnonMoos (talk) 19:32, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

In the Krazy Kat stories, a dog tries to protect a cat from a mouse.  --Lambiam 20:52, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

Indeed. That strip was a weird kind of love triangle. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:05, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

Do dogs often save mice from cats in real life??

Surprisingly, this is a good question, it is easier for some breeds of pet dogs to be friends with pet rodents in the home than it is for cats, which appear to naturally want to hunt, torture, and consume them. Obviously, there are some breeds of dogs that will do this too, but there's lot of people who have dogs that don't kill mice, while cats are more prone to just freaking out and getting murder-ish. My guess is that the trope of dogs saving mice from cats arose from this, but is also a way to show that dogs are friendlier and more social with people, and by extension with other animals. Let's also remember the most important thing: in the last 9,000 years, cats were not domesticated like dogs, hence their wild predilection. Viriditas (talk) 21:28, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

The notion of "good" mice as victims of "evil" cats is opposite of reality: mice are pests, and cats help get rid of them. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:51, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

From the human point of view (cats were originally tolerated around human settlements because they preyed on rodents who ate stored grain). AnonMoos (talk) 19:37, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

Don't Panic! The Magratheans are intradimensional beings who take the physical form of mice. What you call "pests" are responsible for building and maintaining the Earth. Be nice to them, they are working on computuational problems of such complexity your puny human mind can't possibly comprehend. Viriditas (talk) 21:40, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Although not directly related to the question, altruism in animals may be of interest here. Shantavira|^{feed me} 08:17, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

For an alternative view, see Ratter (dog). DOR (ex-HK) (talk) 18:39, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Nested Egyptian texts

Lepsius Neferhotep.jpg

This image, charmingly, has a hieroglyphic document within a hieroglyphic document. Are there any more examples like this? Temerarius (talk) 17:36, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

Charming as the image may be, I question the characterization as being nested. The image is that of a scribe holding a document with a text. The image is accompanied by an image caption, a brief text explaining the image. As was then usual, such a caption was not placed above or below the image frame, but written inside it (like film subtitles today, but with a freer placement). In this case, the whole is a wall painting; classifying it as a document is stretching the concept.  --Lambiam 21:06, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

Well they're at different scales, and it's interesting anyway. Why can't a wall painting be a document? Temerarius (talk) 04:47, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

I agree that it can. The Wiktionary entry's definitions 2 and 4 do, I think, cover such wall paintings.

I am also not certain whether the 'caption' to which Lambiam refers actually is the black on white script, or the (more usual) coloured script below it. I would have interpreted the former as part of the illustration: however, not being conversant in heiroglyphics or ancient Egyptian, I cannot tell. Any Egyptologists present? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.82.201 (talk) 06:50, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

I meant the larger coloured hieroglyphs. The white object is part of the depicted scene: a scribe holding up a result of his labour.  --Lambiam 14:58, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

In which case, how is that depicted result, a document written in hieroglyphs, not nested within another document, the painting, also (partly) written in hieroglyphs, as Temerarius originally observed?

Tangentially, do you consider mediaeval illuminated manuscripts to be documents? Some of them also include illustrations of documents, which would also be 'nested'. The substrate of a document, whether parchment or wall, is surely unimportant. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.82.201 (talk) 08:38, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

終戦後の1949年に中国で製造が継続されていた6.5mm×50SR弾の包装。名称も三八式機関銃・小銃弾となっている

Consider the document shown here to the right. Is this an example of a document in Oriental characters within a document in Oriental characters?  --Lambiam 13:09, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Censored paragraph in Commentarii de Bello Civili

Hello, is there a paragraph about sex in Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Civili? My father told me it was censored at school in early '50s.-- Carnby (talk) 22:09, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

I can only say that there was no such paragraph extant in the small section of the work I studied in the late '60s, but as it was about the Siege of Massilia, one wouldn't have expected it to.

Certainly Latin school textbooks could be censored in such a way. I recall our Latin master reading us one of Horace's Odes that was, along with a few others, excluded from the copies available to us impressionable lads. It mentioned a slave being forced to bugger his master and "meeting yesterday's dinner coming the other way." Possibly III.6? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.82.201 (talk) 08:54, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

That's Juvenal Satire IX. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 17:36, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

His edition may have said something like "edited for the use of schools" which while it could mean "with any passages that might embarrass the masters removed" but could also mean "with an index and a gloss of the hard bits". DuncanHill (talk) 10:14, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Nothing to do with Caesar, but when I was taking an undergraduate Latin class about reading the poems of Catullus, there were only 3 or 4 students in the class, and we didn't all use the same book, and in the edition used by one of the students some lines of one of Catullus's poems was omitted! This was not a book intended for high school students, and not necessarily a textbook as such (probably more of scholarly edition), and likely published after the 1950s, but it was still censored to some degree... AnonMoos (talk) 12:24, 12 July 2024 (UTC)