26 Down the rabbit hole (2/2)

The rabbits' corpse began to move. Though the corpse was still lying on the ground at least I could confirm that in theory, my bugs should be able to inhabit a recently deceased body. But after watching the rabbit, struggling on its back over and over again I could safely deduce that my bugs currently lack the intelligence to realize this.

Moving on to the next subject, I want to test out how the animal would react to the sudden loss of one of its senses.Even though for this kind of experiment a fully-developed rabbit would be much more useful, I decided to still make the best out of it.To get the best result, I need to minimize the damage I deal. otherwise, my deductions could end up being flawed.First I will let my bugs crawl into its nostrils and block its sense of smell that way. The rabbit began to panic and opened its little mouth over and over again sucking oxygen into its system.Seems like by blocking its smell we rob it of its main source of air as well.

Next the loss of vision and the loss of sound. I let the bugs cover the eyes. Due to the visual impairment, the bunny shows signs of stress and began moving its head around. After smelling, it begins to shake more and more. After ordering the bugs to return, I notice that even though its vision was restored the feeling of panic was still lingering inside. After it was robbed of its vision it began to heavily rely on its smell. Therefore after panicking after noticing the different smells. As result stress hormones were released and are now keeping the bunny in a state of suspension.

Waiting for the bunny to return to normal, I pondered how I should test the loss of touch and taste. Testing the loss of taste is nearly impossible to achieve without drugs or sedative medicine. But I wanted to avoid destroying it because it would falsify the achieved the results. So the only thing I could do was doing this test after having finished all the other ones. But their sense of taste is linked to their body hair. that means I can't test it before it as well.The reaction to the loss of sound was similar to the loss of its vision, therefore, the same level of dependence can be deduced.

That means that I have to do this test on 2 different rabbits.The loss of taste should be done first because it is by far the easier one. At first, I put a bug inside of its mouth and waited for its reaction. It tried to swallow the bug after receiving the sensation on its tongue. After taking the bug out again I grabbed the tongue and pulled it out. Afterwards, I let the bug inflict damage to the nerves responsible for the taste and watch its reaction.At first, there was no visible reaction. but after trying to feed it with my bugs again it just tried to swallow it again.I began putting several different things into its mouth. soil, worms and even pieces of meat of the first subject, it did not reject anything and swallowed everything.

The most tedious work will be the test regarding the loss of touch. Mainly because besides the main source of touch being the hairs close to its nose it has several hairs responsible for the sense of touch on its whole body. That means that I will have to shorten each of its hairs. Even though it can not be considered a complete loss, it still means a complete change for the rabbit.After working for an eternity, the rabbit was finally prepared. After letting go of it the rabbit, just looked around and tried to move but walked right into a wall.A change in customs can really confuse this kind of animal.

To summarize, the senses of smell. touch, vision and hearing are heavily linked to one another. meaning that under the sudden loss of its senses, the abilities of the rabbit are severely influenced. The loss, of taste, just leads to a general acceptance and a loss of a safety mechanism regarding harmful food.

And my final experiment is about my little bugs. in preparation for this kind of experiment, I began to line up every bunny next to each other. A dead one, one was still under the influence of stress hormones, the other one was just simply confused, one that was currently bleeding and one I did not harm in any way. After letting out a single bug I ordered it to consume the prey. So let me see what kind of preferences those bugs have.

Now that's kind of surprising the bug did not walk to the dead prey first. That means it does not prioritize how easy its nourishment is achievable. Rather it went straight to the bunny that is currently suffering extreme stress. After removing the bunny out of the equation, I let another bug pick the next pray repeating the process until nothing was left. After the experiment I noticed that the bugs prefer stress, over the bloody wound, followed by confusion. But I am still confused why they would take a healthy rabbit over the dead one.Maybe their growth depends on the state of the being they consume is in. I am lacking samples in order to verify my guess. But still, with that hypothesis, I can do quite a bit.

And now to the last test. I grabbed the healthy rabbit and bit his head off. Drinking the blood that was gushing out of the wound, I waited and waited and nothing happens. Yeah now I am sure my bugs get stronger by consuming other animals and I have to eat humans.

Looking at the bloody mess I have caused, I might have felt a hint of pity, but that did not even last for a split second after I realized that this is just data in the end. Those animals will respawn any time soon, so any kind of feelings regarding killing and torturing these animals is kinda useless and unnecessary.

Having finished my experiments I crawled out of the rabbit hole and began my search for my next prey.