Recently discovered species chucks random crap onto frozen lake

SEATTLE, Wash., Jan. 7, 2017 /TPRI/ — Researchers studying a subspecies of Homo sapiens living in the Pacific Northwest, the recently classified Homo seattlus, have been documenting their study subjects’ response to a rare freezing of Green Lake.

Temperatures in the region rarely dip below freezing for more than a few hours, and the locals seem to be utterly flummoxed by the hardening of their lake’s surface, which is usually a liquid.

“It’s frozen,” one subject ventured, furrowing his brow and tugging on his “12th man” ritual headgear.

Despite the novelty of this stimulus, however, H. seattlus seems to have an instinct for how to respond to the ice. Dozens of research subjects spontaneously reacted the same way, chucking objects out into the lake, often as far as they could.

“This seems to be an innate response,” posited one researcher. “They just seem to know that they’re supposed to do this, but don’t seem to know why they are doing it. And we don’t know why they are doing it, either, or what evolutionary advantage it could confer. It may be a dominance or mating display, as the behavior seems to be more common in males.”

Even if the response is innate, as researchers hypothesize, not all H. seattlus study subjects seem to intuit how gravity and the mass of objects will affect outcome. Most object throwers successfully hurled sticks, stones, and empty beer cans at the lake, and these objects rest on the surface of the ice or slide several feet or even yards across it, a result that gratifies the object throwers. But one group of study subjects made the dubious choice to push an entire dumpster of garbage off the end of the dock near the boat house, which rapidly sank to the bottom of the lake, drawing the ire of other individuals and the Parks Department.

Researchers have not observed any study subjects throwing children onto the ice, a behavior that would likely confer an evolutionary disadvantage unless performed in very shallow areas.