The good people at National Geographic are advertising these as educational toys in their catalog. Perhaps, but I guess they do not know a lot about cat behavior! My nephew came to the house tonight and he had one of these amazing things. We have hardwood floors and these things scurry along the hardwood floor quite well. So what you do is place one under the couch and then call your unsuspecting cat in and wait for the barrels of laughs to begin. When the cat enters the room, out comes the tarantula, running across the floor in front of the cat. The fun is non-stop from that point until when the cat knocks the spider over and you have a spider on his back with eight legs whirring away. No, this is not being mean at all, it is a wonderful way to exercise the cat while sitting on your duff in the recliner. Funny that National Geo never thought about this or mentioned it in their catalog add! Guess they didn't know any thing about cat behavior. Or, perhaps they are not as devious or lazy as I am! I can vouch for the fact that Persi is going to have many, many hours of exercise with this device and the satisfaction of the "kill" when he finally knocks the fake spider over with its legs whirring a way at which time I kill the remote and Persi has won another victory!