Do This Dumb Thing to Dogs in Normal, Illinois and You Go to Jail
The fact that this is a law means someone has done it before and gotten busted. I'm talking about a supremely dumb thing you could possibly do to a dog in Normal, Illinois that the law says would result in you going to jail.
I am not making this up and I can prove it. Stupid Laws says you cannot do the following thing in Normal, Illinois:
It is against the law to make faces at dogs.
This law is so dumb it's been ranked as the weirdest law in all of Illinois by Only In Your State recently. However, there is some science behind this (although it doesn't make it any less dumb). There was a university study (also not kidding...your tax dollars at work) that did a deep dive about how dogs recognize their owner's face. It includes the following juicy tidbit:
There is also suggestive evidence that dogs can identify their owner or other familiar human individuals by using visual information from the face. However, most studies have used only dogs’ looking behavior to examine their visual processing of human faces and it has been demonstrated only that dogs can differentiate between familiar and unknown human faces.
Dogs know their owners? You don't say? Here's the point: Let's say you decide to be daring in Normal, Illinois (which is named wrong, in my opinion) and make a face at your dog. There's a chance (so you're saying there's a chance) that your dog would then suddenly not recognize you and attack or run away. (Not likely, but let's pretend) This sounds like a reach, but it's the only scenario where I can imagine there is any logic to this dumb Normal, Illinois law.