Mental Dribble

Body Snachers

2011-11-09T21:50:00.000-08:00

PARASITES.

Creepy.

Gross.

Deadly.
Smart.

The adult PHORID FLY lands on an ant and lays its eggs inside its head. The egg hatches into a brain-eating larva, which eventually decapitates the ant and lives in the head for two weeks until it emerges as an adult.

The good news? This is a way that the United States can control fire ant populations. Fire ants can be nasty buggers, and have been known to bite ('sting') a person to death in the past. Although that isn't very common, it would be a terrible way to go! I don't agree with exterminating ANY animal, no matter what it does or how it lives its life or how many human lives it takes - but controlling a dangerous population is different. The horrific death those fire ants face from the phorid fly is upsetting though.

The male ANGLERFISH is much smaller than the female anglerfish. The male will bite onto the body of the female until their skin and eventually their blood vessels fuse together. the withered male then becomes part of the female body forever. It becomes entirely useless other than playing a role in fertilizing the females eggs.

[ Isn't that kind of how it is already?
Men being useless other than for making babies, that is. ;)

It's a joke. Chill :) ]

Some FUNGI can infect caterpillars and other insects, killing them and mummifying their bodies. Some fungi even turn the insect host into a zombie, making them walk to an area that will further spread the fungi spores to other insects just before dying.

A parasitic BARNACLE attaches itself to crabs, invades their egg pouch and forces the crab to take care of its eggs as well. If the crab is a male, the parasite sterilizes it and makes its abdomen bigger - essentially turning it into a female.

[[ CYMOTHOA EXIGUA ]] is a crustacean parasite that clamps onto the tongue of a fish, sucking it dry until it withers away and dies. Then the parasite BECOMES the tongue, eating scraps, blood and mucus.

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Although this next one isn't considered a parasite, it is still somewhat relevant to this topic of body snatchers and feeding on the flesh of its living host:

After suffering from constant nosebleeds for 5 days, a 70 year old woman had 40 maggots removed from her nose by doctors at a hospital in Sion, India. A housefly had entered her nose and laid eggs inside it. when the eggs hatched, the larvae started feeding on her flesh, causing her nose to bleed.

I once heard a story about a women in California who licked an envelope and got a paper cut. A few weeks later, her tongue was swollen and when she went to the doctors they sliced it open and live cockroaches came crawling out. Apparently there were cockroach eggs on the envelope sticky part and they got inside her tongue from the cut. The tongue was warm and damp and a perfect place for the eggs to hatch.

I googled this but there is lots of argument if this story is real or not (apparently some cockroaches give birth to live young, meaning if the eggs were not inside the momma-roach, they were 'aborted'.) Still others say it could have been entirely possible. If anything, I keep an open mind. Some really weird things happen out there, this could be a true fact. Besides, envelop licking is disgusting and you should always just use a sponge anyways!! It just tastes so awful, and the feeling of my tongue sliding along the sticky part makes my skin crawl! So if anything, the story keeps my tongue in its mouth where it belongs when envelopes appear, nice and safe!

Fun Fast Facts

2011-11-07T19:20:00.001-08:00

One of my favorite things to read are "Ripley's believe it or not!" books or the "Guinness Book of World Record" books. I just find it so fascinating what some people will do!!

I think the best way for me to get into the routine of blogging more frequently would be to share some facts with you daily, and maybe state my immediate opinion or pose a question afterwards. So here goes:

BIRD LOVER:
A male traveler arriving at LA international Airport in 2009, was found to have 14 live birds strapped to his legs under his pants. Officials became suspicious after spotting bird feathers and droppings on his socks - and tail feathers protruding beneath his pants.

This made me giggle. Why on earth would a man want to smuggle birds onto a plane? and fourteen of them, at that! And how did he think it would have been possible?

And how did customs find it suspicious with the feather and droppings, wouldn't they have made noise and moved as well? plus, would he not have appeared to have rather odd shaped legs? You'd think more practical facts like that would have raised suspicion first!

ROADKILL CALENDAR:
Kevin Beresford traveled all over Britain taking pictures of roadkill for a 2010 calendar...that became a best seller. he sold hundreds of copies of his quirky roadkill calendar that featured flattened foxes, squashed squirrels and mashed magpies.

How the heck did this become a best seller?
Believe it or not, I witnessed something along the lines of this at the mall the other day - suicidal rabbits. Its a sketch-like calendar of rabbits brutally about to kill themselves. Although suicide isn't funny, horrible deaths aren't funny, and cute fluffy adorable things dying isn't funny, this calendar was somehow, in its own way, humours.

However, since these are real pictures, I don't think it would have gotten that oddly humouristic appeal. A quick google search only left me with rather amateurish pictures of poor dead cute things :(. I honestly don't know how this became so popular, but something about the outrageous and abnormal choice of a calendar image really spoke to people in England.

ORIGINAL SIAMESE TWINS:
Chang and Eng Bunker (1811-1874) were the original siamese twins. The condition was named after their birthplace - Siam (which is now called Thailand). They were joined at the stomach by a small piece of cartilage and were later exhibited. they went on to marry two sisters and had a total of 21 children!
In 1874, Chang suffered a stroke in his sleep and when Eng awoke to find this brother dead, he refused to be separated form him and bled to death three hours later because the blood was not being pumped back from his twins body.

Wow. I couldn't imagine being with someone my whole life like that. Just right there, up in my face all the time! No privacy, ever! You'd have to wonder how they were ever intimate with their wives... who were sisters to boot. At least they lived semi normal lives considering their condition, especially at that time in history when things were just so much less understood. Today, they would have most definitely been separated at birth because no vital organs seemed to have been shared. Also, it interests me that Eng chose death over living without being joined to Chang anymore. Its quite sweet in its own way, and very sad in another.

This reminded me of the movie " Stuck on You". It's pretty good, although I remember it vaguely. If you haven't seen it, grab some popcorn and watch it! it's a comedy from 2003 and stars Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear.

Thats it for tonight folks!

Factual Discussion

2011-11-06T15:24:00.000-08:00

Do you remember that one scene in the movie Super Size Me, where the main character is showing children pictures of food companies and asking if they recognize them?

The kids could accurately recognize and name Wendy, Ronald McDonald and the like... but mixed up facts about the presidents of their country or Jesus Christ.

In fact, children can recognize over 200 company logos by the time they enter the first grade - age 5/6.

Two-hundred.

Googling my way around the interwebs, people seem to have a slightly different idea on how which brands are top 10, but these are some of the general ones people agree on:

Most logos are either words, or something to do with a circle. Something about the circle must be very appealing to us, I suppose.

I just find it interesting that something as simple as a logo can hold so much information and meaning to us.

A study I found on the almighty interwebs spoke about a correlation between children's social skills and ability to remember logos.

For example, if you ask a child "what would mommy want for christmas?" and they reply "She would want a candle" rather than "she would want a barbie doll" - it shows that they are able to place themselves into their mothers shoes instead of just stating what they would want themselves. This indicates a higher social skill level, and these kids are much more likely to depend on name brands to determine if they want a product or not -- because other kids will think they are cool if they have that toy. This can happen as young as the age of three!!

Carts

2011-11-04T19:18:00.001-07:00

I work at a grocery store.

Most of the time, people are stupid and inconsiderate. They shove carts in the terminal every which way, letting them spill out into the parking lot. I can't say I blame them entirely since normally carts at a store aren't 2 different sizes. But still! It gets frustratingly ridiculous at times.

Today, however, I went to the cart terminal to get carts and OH MY!! People actually put the carts in 2 separate lines in order of size!! I couldn't believe it. Seriously.

This picture doesn't even show how awesome it was. I already did 2 trips by the time I decided this was picture worthy (how sad is that, right?).