In Which I Dramatically Expand My Capacity For Damaging Humanity

I am worried that my volunteering for psychological experimentation earlier today may have drastically warped the averages for the poor researchers forced to analyse my brain-type functions.
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Having sat me down in front of a computer these foolish and unsuspecting head-shrinkers crowned me with a device designed to film my eyes (my very eyes! The windows to my soul! Although they did look pretty good through the camera feed; why am I still single again?). This done (through the slightly disturbing process of turning a screw to tighten the head-set until my skull started throbbing), I was presented with 144 human faces, each of them looking either left or right, and each looking either scared or happy. On one side, at random, was a picture of what my researcher referred to with an alarming degree of childish anthropomorphism as "happy animals", on the other side, the "scary animals" which we have all grown up being taught to fear.

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The idea was to look at the "happy" animal irrespective of whether the face was looking toward it or not, and whether it appeared scared or pleased by whatever animal it was facing. I'm sure no-one hear needs me to tell them what they were aiming to prove here, although just to be on the safe side, the girl running the experiment made sure to explain it to me (after I was finished, presumably to avoid the arcane knowledge ruining my performance; I refrained from pointing out that not only had I worked it out unaided but I had spotted a number of potential confounding variables. I didn't want to make her cry). After the 144 faces/animal pairs were finished, I was then instructed to repeat the process, this time glancing at the scary animals.

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The big problem with all of this is just how badly I understand the idea of "scary animals". Take this pairing, for example.

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Seriously: WTF? One of these is a bull. The other is a fucking bull elephant. Hundreds of people get crushed by these rampaging sharp-tusked killers every year. I'm supposed to feel happy to see one? I'm not saying a bull would necessarily be welcome at my birthday party either, just that anyone that breaks out into a grin as one of those lumbering grey murderers hove into view is, in fact, an idiot.

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And what about item 2?

Sure, the polar bear cub looks cute and cuddly. But does anyone really know at what age they become strong enough to rip out a human's throat? That gorgeous little ball of downy hair might already have massacred entire teams of nature show makers and do-gooder environmentalists. Look at the eyes! The cold dead eyes!

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The bat, though, is just a mouse with wings, however old it gets. Since I'm neither a screaming child nor a vampire hunter, seeing one of these flying pseudo-rodents flapping past my window at dusk presents no response other than "Fuck me, I'd assumed those were extinct by now".

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And observe two more allegedly "scary" animals.

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Eagles are not scary: they are full-on awesome, and anyone who argues is a Commie. Sharks are scary, fair enough, but their hideous grins seem to say "Yeah, I'm terrifying, but does not my perfect evolutionary heritage as a souless killer command respect, you pathetic squawking monkey?". Which makes it hard to avoid looking at them. There's a reason why Eagle vs Shark has the title it has, it's because watching a golden eagle try to fuck up a great white would be the most bone-shatteringly amazing spectacle ever witnessed by humanity, albeit somewhat difficult to set up fairly.

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Also, you can't scare someone who owns dogs the size of donkeys by showing them alsatians with their teeth bared. We just don't give a shit.

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I guess what I'm saying is this: if you read in the paper that researchers in Durham (as oppose to research in Durham, which apparently can incorporate bollocks up to and including cod liver oil making children do better in their SATS) have discovered people of the 21st century are now totally gay for eagles and sharks, and apparently have never seen Cujo, you'll know who to blame.

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(A shiny penny for anyone who can tell me why this post decided that once pictures were inserted, line breaks are suddenly impossible to create. I had to take the line breaks from above the pictures out too, just so that I at last seemed consistent with my total inability to understand the concept of paragraphs).

Update: Also, the preview feature of this blog creates a version of the post that looks nothing fucking like the actual post. What the hell is the point of a preview button that just shows you random shit that bears no resemblance to what you're eventually going to get?

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Update II: Oh, that fucking line break works, no problem. Sheesh...

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Update III: Have solved problem by embarrassingly low-tech solution of inserting invisible letters. I shall now slink off to bed. I hope you people appreciate the effort I'm putting in here.
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Update IV: AARRGGHHH!!! The post now looks fine in preview, and looks fine (albeit somewhat different) on my PC at home. I get into work today to find it's completely mangled on my computer here! I am so sick of these non-deterministic hell boxes I could vomit.