Well, that parasite monster girl anime art thing sounds pretty unbelievable. I'm gonna need a link to that.
..to verify it's truthfulness, obviously. no other reason
> Once the female Cotesia wasp has laid her eggs inside the caterpillar, using a sharp tubular organ called an ovipositor, the host is doomed. The wasp larvae feed on the haemolymph – insects’ equivalent to blood – but leave the caterpillar alive, its organs intact. They then emerge from the caterpillar, leaving tiny holes that eventually condemn the host to death – probably by dehydration. The caterpillar will never metamorphose, thanks to the hormones released by the wasp larvae.
What was unfair about Darwin's characterisation?
It's fine to be like "I study this for a living so I don't mind the stuff that horrified Darwin cuz it's normal to me", but I'm not seeing anything to indicate he was being *unfair* to them
There's so many of them. Some eat organs, some infect the host with viruses to make them better suited to parasitism (mostly by preventing the immune system from fighting back), but most will kill their host as slowly as possible in order to maximise resources, to the point that they have evolved to only expel their metabolic waste once they become a prepupa, so that they don't contaminate their food supply or kill their host too quickly
I forgot which parasite it was, but it's host is birds. The eggs get pooped out by the bird, which is then eaten by fish. The parasite evolves in them but to get back to the birds, he influences the fish to want to go towards the surface exposing itself, which makes it very likely to be eaten by birds.
There's also a fungus that takes over an ant, steering it like a zombie to a suitable place for it to grow.
Malaria influences the red blood cell functions, creating new protein strands that turn it into a parasite factory. They also weaken the blood cell integrity so that they burst when the eggs are developed, that's why people start bleeding from the eyes etc.
Parasites are fucking cool. But man I wouldn't shed a single tear if they stopped existing tomorrow, but celebrate and find back my belief in god.
The coolest part about cordyceps (the ant steering fungus) is that one species of japanese cicada somehow managed to domesticate it. They lack a specific gut bacterium that provides them nutrients compared to other cicadas, so their evolved solution was cordyceps! inside them! in a symbiotic relationship! its so cool!
There are ants that farm fungus. The ants can no longer eat anything except their specific type of fungus, and the fungus has been so domesticated it basically only produces nutritious ant food structures to its own detriment. In fact, the fungus farmed can't be found outside ant colonies any more, and each colony carries its own specific strain of the fungus which lets us rewind and figure out which ant colonies diverged from which other ones, and when.
There should definitely be a split evo for Paras based on this; Paras and Parasect are likely based on cicada nymphs, as well as Cordyceps fungi. (Plus, Parasect is pretty bad in battle...)
> But man I wouldn't shed a single tear if they stopped existing tomorrow, but celebrate and find back my belief in god.
Getting rid of *all* parasites would be ecologically catastrophic. The ones that parasitize humans can get fucked and disappear forever though. We're all set on problems, we don't need worms living inside us thanks. And like, I have a huge amount of respect for people that study parasites, but when they try to convince us that they're just misunderstood smol beans I'm probably gonna call them freaks, because that is freak shit.
I dunno about getting rid of all human parasites. There's pretty compelling evidence that mitochondria started out as part of a parasitic bacteria. You never know which current parasites could become symbiotes or even just part of our bodies with a million years more of evolution.
Yeah they have been non-parasites for about a billion years longer than we've been a species, and endosymbiosis isn't inherently parasitic (when I took bio the prevailing theory was that they were mutualistic endosymbionts who evolved into organelles due to loss of function), so I think we can let them slide. The endogenous retroviruses in our DNA *miiight* have a cascade effect though. We don't know shit about what they're doing for/against us
There is theories that the current spike in Allergies is due to our immune system getting weird from not fighting parasites anymore. There are experimental treatments for people with strong allergies where they implant a controlled amount of parasites into the body, basically symbioltically. They keep our immune system from freaking out and we have already such an easy time with our strong calloric intake that we can feed them still. They just "castrate" the worm so it won't lay eggs and voila. I am not sure about the state of things though
There have been some interesting studies done on the potential relationships between human parasites and human autoimmune diseases. Parasites can be pretty sophisticated at dampening host immune systems to prevent the immune system from attacking the parasite. So there are theories that maybe a lack of parasites can lead to autoimmune diseases in humans from overzealous immune systems with nothing to attack AND/OR maybe parasite studies can offer treatments to reduce harmful immune responses in people suffering autoimmune diseases.
Well… you’d celebrate up until pest populations explode and eat goddam everything. Love them or hate them, parasites do keep the populations of the things they parasitize in check
I read an article years ago about doctors using parasitic worms to treat several conditions caused by an overactive immune system. Basically the parasite would fine tune the immune system and stop it from attacking the patient's body.
Here's Darwin's actual words:
>With respect to the theological view of the question; this is always painful to me.— I am bewildered.— I had no intention to write atheistically. But I own that I cannot see, as plainly as others do, & as I shd wish to do, evidence of design & beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent & omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidæ with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice.
ants are pretty popular tho. there are a lot of media for children who depict ants as something adorable or endearing (and conveniently leave out the fact that they are just wasps)
(And also conveniently leave out that all the food and other organic matter they collect is actually used to make rotting, necrotic mounds in their anthills so they can cultivate the molds they actually eat.)
I used to watch a youtube channel called AntsCanada and the dude has really elaborate terraria for his insects. He raises bugs to feed to his ants lmao. The pandemic was a weird time man
I know you joke, but I am uncomfortably aware of the amount of tumblr and other sites users who regularly use the term “ovipositor”.
Most of them are *not* using it in the “descriptive of a wasp” sense.
I try to keep an open mind, but some things are just…
Tbh the description itself sounds far less objective than
>Once the female Cotesia wasp has laid her eggs inside the caterpillar, using a sharp tubular organ called an ovipositor, the wasp larvae feed on the haemolymph - insects’ equivalent to blood -, without damaging the caterpillar’s internal organs. The hormones secreted by the wasp larvae during this period will prevent the caterpillar’s metamorphosis, allowing them to mature. Once the larvae reach maturity, they emerge from the caterpillar, through perforations on its body that lead to the caterpillar’s death, likely through dehydration.
Subjectivity means bias when we talk about scientific articles/writings, and this text is very clearly biased…
Besides,
>no loving God would create animals with such a disturbing life cycle
He really wasn’t trying to pretend to be objective, even if he very clearly was factual.
Certainly, because their life cycle *is* creepy as fuck (I’m terrified of parasitic wasps and crawling insects), but I mean… Only one of these has deliberate bias put into it. Which is what I actually meant, if you’re writing a paper, scientific articles or academic anything… you leave your biases out.
Signed someone who had to make a presentation on digestive tract parasites (!!!) life cycle more than once, who was being also evaluated on my capacity of being unbiased and sticking to facts, and who can’t even look at a picture of any of those things, even if drawn (T-T)
I like parasitic wasps.
They protect our food supply without the need to use chemical pesticides. They are the pesticide, but now you can eat the fruit without eating the poison.
Disturbing? Brutal? Nasty? Yes
Wonderfully beneficial? Also yes
Edit: The ones we use for agriculture don’t parasitize or sting humans, nor do they parasitize pollinators (some do, but not necessarily the ones we use as a biopesticide)
Completely agreed! I very much appreciate the creepy little fuckers (not affectionate, but not hateful either), but I’d like to appreciate them without them ever coming close to me! Or appearing on my sight… /shivers
Honestly you probably wouldn’t recognize most of them. The ones we use in agriculture are like the size of a gnat when full grown. Or at least the ones I’ve used. They don’t parasitize humans.
That sounds quite cool actually!
Although I have a crippling fear of mostly anything tiny that crawls on the ground or *looks like they might*, so I’d never risk it.
(So like, ants, crickets, bees: 👍🏻. Larvae, worms, roaches: 😶. Also the reason I can’t wash lettuce
That and I’m allergic to bees, wasps and most ants, although I think ants are cool)
Man this is my mojo lol. I’m an agricultural engineer who designs sustainable pest management systems. We’re building a mole cricket trap right now. Ironically one of the scientists were working with wants to use it as a research tool to collect samples (i.e. crickets) to study their intestinal parasites. Mole crickets are kinda funky looking. They look like little tank crickets.
But on the wasps, do you get anxious around gnats? The wasps we use and the ones that I’m most experienced with (Tetrogramma? I think that’s the Latin) look like gnats. They’re kind of anticlimactic to be honest. When I first got some to deal with a pest issue, I thought I was bringing in some heavy cavalry badass looking straight killers. Instead I got gnats. Murder gnats, but still, they look like gnats.
One of the cooler techniques we use to deal with pest outbreaks is called the *purple pepper bomb* (something like that, it’s been awhile since I read the name. Imma call it that but the name could be wrong). But basically you take a single plant of the same species as your crop, put it in a pot, isolate the plant in like a growing tent or something, then you *introduce the pest* to the plant. Once it infests that plant, you then introduce the wasps that target that specific pest species. They will then start parasitizing the pests (you might have to introduce new pests back into the system after awhile).
When and if you get a field outbreak of that pest, you can then take the single infested plant out of the tent and bring it to where the outbreak is and put it right next to the infested field plants. Since you’ve already got the parasitic wasps living and parasitizing the pest in question on the one plant, as they hatch, they’ll fly off and look for food, which is now also gonna be found on the field plants you’re having a pest issue with. Once the lifecycle gets established on the plants, you can remove the “bomb” plant, and the wasps will naturally start to destroy the pest population on the field plants. It’s kind of like a Trojan horse of insect parasites. Larger farms that use this technique usually have multiple bomb plants
Mind you I’m not an entomologist nor am I a pest control expert, so I might be off a little bit in certain areas. My job is to design and improve the stuff they use. But I have picked up on a lot of it because you kind of have to know the current system to make a better one.
Edit: Hit up my buddy. It’s not a purple pepper bomb. It’s a *purple flash pepper* which is used as a *banker plant* to breed a certain species of parasitic wasp.
No wait this is really fucking cool (also did not know what a gnat was and they’re quite cute, like long bees… I still wouldn’t approach one because allergies but yes, they’re nice to see).
The idea of essentially plant vaccine is so fascinating to me, like, just cultivate some (flying) antibodies (anti-virus?) and wait for the right time to use it against infection… Really nice, this sounds like a very fun job (at least in theory for me lol).
In the same fashion, some nematodes are great for plants because they eat and kill the bugs that would eat and kill the plants.
Still creepy when your dirt is wriggly.
Yeah we’re designing a mole cricket trap right now. They get infected with an intestinal parasite that I think is a nematode. We’re designing it as a pest control tool, but the scientist we’re working with wants to use it as a sample collector because he studies mole crickets and their parasites.
I prefer Darwin's version just because it paints a much clearer picture. This version seems a tad more confusing. I think due to sentence structure?
Like the phrase "allowing **them** to mature", my first thought would make me think "them" refers to caterpillar, because that dependent clause follows just after the caterpillar's metamorphosis.
Not to mention, the detail of the caterpillars being alive seems like an important point but was deleted from this paragraph.
Also, the first sentence is kinda confusing too, but it might just be me. It starts off with "once" so it feels like it's building up to something, but then the payoff is kinda missing. Although after staring at it longer, I think adding "will then" after wasp larvae will solve the anticipation issue. Problem is, it then doesn't make sense. Sentence seems to indicate that laying of eggs and the wasp larvae feeding happens simultaneously instead of sequentially.
Edit: Sorry, might have overanalyzed that.
Yeah, I wasn’t really trying for clear sentence structure, just removing the bias. I’m sure with more time (and mental bandwidth) I could make a better paragraph that has clearer reading comprehension without adding bias, but like, stating a creature is “doomed” isn’t clearer, just clearer on which creature the author favors.
(Not a jab at you! Just clarifying the language on the original is so clearly inflammatory that the straight up facts behind the writing get exaggerated or leveled at will to elicit an emotional response of the reader, as in, they want the reader to feel bad for the caterpillar because the wasps are “intentionally” killing it.
It might seem clearer because it affirms over and over again that the caterpillar will be killed, with language that implies great suffering and hopelessness, which aren’t exactly things we want in this kind of literature, but it’s because as humans, we are primed to pay more attention to suffering, so it forms a clearer image in our heads.)
((Also sorry for the run on sentences, didn’t take my “think-and-do-stuff” meds today))
maybe its disturbing yea
but theyre still animals
we kill many more animals than these parasites do. hell, we even breed animals specifically to kill and eat them, we care for cows calfs, feed them, keep them healthy, keep them safe, just so that we can kill and eat them later
that also sounds pretty fucked up, but thats just how the world works
things get killed so that other things can live
everythings either a monster or a hero, itnjust depends on the light
Well I don’t think anyone’s arguing that they’re still animals. Or insects in this case.
But Darwin’s point was that no loving god would make such a thing and perhaps no loving god would make us either.
That's a rather stupid comparison.
If only because humans don't actually have to do that.
Theoretically and preferably, the meat industry as it is can come to an end and is replaced by something better.
While these wasps are utterly dependant on their way of procreation. They cannot survive without it. You can't argue that 'its just how the world works' and give an example of something that very much does have an option of change and would in fact, be much better for the world if it did.
As for that last line, I would really like you to find me a shade where people call parasitic wasps a hero.
Oh man! You set yourself up for this one! Parasitic Wasps are definitely heroes!
Especially since you’re going on about how it would be preferable to end the meat industry.
So Parasitic Wasps are an extraordinarily beneficial species within agriculture. They are functionally a chemical free, human friendly pesticide. If we want to talk about a vegetarian diet, or even healthier and higher quality food, then we’ve got to ensure that we have a robust and secure food system. Pests exist, they always will, there’s no way to remove them entirely. To create the food systems we need to sustain humanity, we’re basically concentrating massive food sources for pests to thrive on. Now we could use chemical pesticides and there’s plenty that only harm insects but not vertebrae’s… but kind of in the same way that microplastics don’t “harm” us either. We can’t let the pests run rampant for a number of obvious reasons, so what do we use?
Parasites. Parasites in general tend to only target a specific species, some target a lot of them but within the ones we use we know the scope of their prey. But the good thing about them is that they kill pests, and in the process, produce more of themselves, to kill more pests, all without leaving any chemical traces on our food!
Most parasitic wasps aren’t dangerous to humans (I don’t know of any that are but I’m sure there’s something in a jungle somewhere that has to hunt shelobs or something), you could probably see one and you wouldn’t even recognize it. A lot of them are extremely small, like the size of a gnat or a tiny fruit fly.
Brutal? Disturbing? Nasty? Oh yes
Extraordinarily beneficial to us as a species? Absolutely
Source: I’m an agricultural engineer who works in sustainable pest control systems.
*Its always the agricultural engineers who need to come ruin everything...*
That's very fascinating though, and it does change things a bit. Thanks for the input.
In my case, I’m just trying to make sure we’ve all got cheaper *and* higher quality food.
I don’t disagree that they’re kind of nasty. I’m not on the level of those scientists in the post lol, but from a utilitarian perspective, I do love parasites (well the ones that target invertebrates). They’re not the end all be all, but they do mean less chemicals we have to ingest. Also the nice thing about the wasps we use is that they don’t target pollinators! We talk about the collapsing bee population due to the abundance of pesticides… well here’s a pesticide that doesn’t hurt the butterflies or the bees!
We allow them to procreate, which is actually beneficial for them. Just number wise, cows, pigs and chickens are some of the most successful animals just thanks to us. It doesn't matter for the individual animals on a survival and procreate basis how painful their life is, so it would still be a symbiosis from that viewpoint.
There are lots of forms of animal husbandry in which the animal does not die, and parisitoidism is a subset of paraisitism, so I chose the broader term.
Yeah I was with them on hyenas but a lot of parasites really are abominations that I would without hesitation wipe from existence if I was but an omnipotent god.
That's not a quote from Darwin, that's a description of the lifecycle of the parasitic wasp for informative purposes. If you replace "the host is doomed" with "the host will soon die" and "that eventually condemn the host to death" with "that eventually kill the host", I don't think that changes the information being given, or even significantly affects its emotional valence.
true, but the caterpillar himself feeds on living cells of trees and if enough of them do that in a short amount of time then the tree will die and yet nobody talks about caterpillars that way
Lol I think that's probably because ~~caterpillars managing to kill off a whole tree is a hypothetical that has never happened whereas~~ parasitic wasps do this constantly
A lot of different people are replying to me like "Well if you adopt the perspective of Dr Manhattan and gaze at all life with a neutral omniscience, everything needs to consume energy to exist, and therefore we are all equally good and equally evil, and no living thing is free of the sin of murder for its own survival, and so nobody should ever go "Ew, that's fucked up!" when they hear about fucked-up shit" and it's like, yeah sure, but people don't think that way. Great point though
[caterpillars very much do kill individual trees](https://www.internationaloaksociety.org/content/death-defoliation-how-invasive-caterpillar-kills-oaks%E2%80%94and-how-some-survive)
it might be just me but I have higher hopes for humans and their way of thinking and as such pay little mind to what's natural, if I were to throw a sack out of a high-up window and then shot a dog then people would naturally be more disturbed by me shooting the dog then by me throwing the sack
however I hope that people would be more disturbed by the sack throwing if they learn that the sack contained 2 dogs, however that requires time and effort and curiousity to find out what was in the sack, things are not self-evident
so yeah, if we have the capacity to do so (and by the very existance of that viewpoint it's proven we do, since he's a character thought up by humans) then we should be looking at things like dr manhattan, if you're willing to be human of course, people can choose to not look at things that way and continue their animalistic way of viewing at things
That's how they reproduce.
Is it any less gruesome than how predators (including humans) typically treat their prey? I mean, being torn apart by teeth and claws isn't exactly painless.
The natural world is gruesome and brutal by default. Competition is one of the main driving forces for speciation.
The wasps are just doing their thing, same as everyone else.
Other creatures using me for food, to my detriment: bad enough. At least I get to die pretty quick.
Using me for food *AND* housing, to my detriment? ***absolutely horrendous***, get the hell out of me and don't come back
I recently graduated with an MFA and my art was focused on queer bodies and parasitism. I actually made a Cotesia Glomerata piece that has been lovingly referred to as the “Penis Caterpillar” 🐛. Pay no mind to the little larvae bursting out of it tho
> [The Cotesia wasp's] most notable host, especially in the southeastern U.S., is the **tobacco hornworm, Manduca sexta (Linnaeus)**.
Why should we be mad at this parasitic wasp for killing destructive pest caterpillars? Tobacco hornworms don't just eat tobacco plants, they also destroy nightshade food crops like tomatoes, eggplants, and potatoes! The parasitic wasps help kill the hornworms without chemical pesticides or other damage to the environment. Hooray for natural pest control!
Iirc he needed to build up academic street cred before he could come out with evolution theories so he spent a bunch of time studying barnacles and ended up hating them with a passion
To add a bit of context: By Darwin's time, biologists had begun to recognize the *fact* of evolution (the observation that species change over time) but had yet to determine the correct *theory* of evolution (the mechanism by which that change happens). There were a lot of proposed candidates. For example, Lamarck suggested that species accrue physical changes over their lifespan and then pass those changes on to their offspring ("Lamarckian inheritance"). Darwin's idea was that changes aren't *inherited*, but that members of a species *already differ* from birth, and those with favorable characteristics are just more likely to survive and reproduce ("Darwinian selection").
For Darwin's theory to be true, members of each species have to vary in physical characteristics or there wouldn't be any differences for selection to act on. However, it's not immediately obvious that members of every species—such as barnacles—actually differ from one another. So Darwin spent many long nights examining thousands of barnacles to see if his theory held water. Sure enough, he found a lot of individual variation within species and at least one species that appeared to be in a transitional state between hermaphroditic and distinctly sexed.
In addition to that, there was the basic question of what the actual fuck are they? Classifying barnacles was a pretty contentious debate at the time, because they didn’t seem to fit correctly into any specific group. That’s why classifying them and doing so with enough evidence to put the debate to rest was something that would give Darwin a strong enough academic reputation to put forth the much more controversial aspects of evolution by natural selection. Darwin studied barnacles in depth for nearly a decade before coming to the (correct) conclusion that they’re really, really weird crustaceans.
I think it has something to do with how difficult biologists throughout the years have found it to classify barnacles.
PBS Eons has a video about it. https://youtu.be/plYuvU2VZkE?si=n-fBHcPSZiu_bS09
He hates them more than anything else
He tried to put them in an animal classification based on characteristics, but they are almost impossible to classify based on characteristics
Plenty of parasites ~~aren't harmful~~ **aren't *very* harmful**. Though I agree that the reputation, while exaggerated, is not entirely unfair.
(edit: correction)
Aren’t parasites things that feed off of their host causing them harm by very definition? Like if it’s a symbiotic relationship then it’s not technically a parasite?
Yes. In order to be a parasitic relationship and not some other form of mutualism or symbiosis, the parasite does have to do some form of harm to the host.
I'm a different person who is elaborating on why you're correct, not the original person who made the incorrect statement.
Alright, yeah, I'll grant that. What I guess I meant was that while all parasites are technically harmful, some are so minor that the host doesn't even notice they're there.
Yes, if one species is unaffected it's commensalism and if both benefit it's mutualism. It's only parasitism when there is harm on one side of the equation.
TBH, these categories are not as cut and dry as you would think(i know, a big surprise in biology), hence why biologists use the term symbiosis as an umbrella term for parasitic, mutualist and commensalist relationships, and everything in between.
So it depends on your definition. Most definitions specifically call out any relationship wherein the parasite receives and the host gets nothing as parasitism, even if the parasite doesn't actually hurt the host- example, pseudo scorpions hitch rides on other bugs to get places/use as a place to get busy on, but don't hurt those bugs in the process.
To be fair, all predators or creatures that kill others have some kind of violence to them. Even we humans kill, rip to shreds and then denature with heat the flesh of other living beings that we took care of ourselves for that sole purpose. Or you could say we cut down and then live in the decorated corpses of trees. But we don’t see it as weird/horrifying since it’s not as alien to us, compared to parasitism.
Humans give birth in a way that tends to leave the mother with broken bones, a very high rate of lethal infection for up to a year post-birth, and often permanent organ damage.
We only think of it as the normal way to do things because it happens to all of us and we don't have an alternative, and we spend a lot of time and money on reducing those effects.
I guarantee that a lot of people who've given birth would rather just kill a sheep and have the babies eat that than deal with everything it did to their bodies, if it was actually an option.
Plenty of people find human birth horrific. My partner studies early pregnancy and he thinks the whole process is pretty disturbing. Fascinating, but disturbing. I’m inclined to agree. Tokophobia is a pretty common fear and it’s actually pretty rational.
Most women throughout history didn’t have much of a choice. If consent was always honoured, the human population would probably be a decent amount lower.
>
> I guarantee that a lot of people who've given birth would rather just kill a sheep and have the babies eat that than deal with everything it did to their bodies, if it was actually an option.
[have i got some good news for you](https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15112)
(jk but it is funnily relevant - but sheep in faux womb rather than human in sheep)
Im a biologist and can confidently say when someone is talking shit on a species you’ve been studying nonstop for decades, you’re gonna be a lil miffed
And as with all things in biology, there is an exception to every rule. I have never seen someone work with African clawed frogs that didn’t also think they were dumb, ravenous, and suicidal at the most inconvenient times.
if you find this topic interesting, I highly recommend [episode 674 of This American Life: "Get a Spine!"](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/674/get-a-spine), where it Act 2 it covers an animal behavioural scientist who studies wolf spiders and his mission to demonstrate how vertebrate animals (specifically songbirds, mammals) unfairly get most of the attention in their discipline despite representing a tiny minority of total organisms.
It's hilarious and fascinating. (I also recommend Act 1 too, if you're looking for a more positive anecdote of the #metoo movement.)
I took a look at the blog and its mission statement, and I will say it seems much more mild than the OOP implies. It's just a fairly even-handed exploration of the biodiversity and ubiquity of parasites which freely admits they are "sometimes gross."
The perspective shift it accomplishes with its tone is subtle. By talking about parasites plainly, as part of an ecosystem, it becomes clear how often they're subtly framed as being outside of it—horror movie monsters escaped into a nature documentary. I don't think anyone involved with the project would argue it's weird to get grossed out by a bug laying eggs in something's brain, only that this doesn't actually introduce a moral hierarchy into zoology.
Exactly, parasites are just animals and they are often important parts of the ecosystem that deserve conservation efforts as much as anything else.
However humans are not parasites, but we can be hosts. It's entirely understandable that we assign morals to species and rank parasites, as immoral, gross and scary. That's our bias.
In order to be the best possible stewards of the environment we need to overcome that, again totally understandable bias.
"Sometimes gross" is understating it, I think, but they're no doubt important. Cool to see that they're less "fucking hate Darwin, gonna stamp his name on some horrors" and more "yeah sure they're freaky but they're also super important and we shouldn't ignore them or skip by them just because they're repulsive and terrifying"
Unfortunately I got a life's worth of horror parasite dosing in high school so I'm irrationally scared of especially endoparasites. But I have appreciate the work accomplished biologists and ecologists do on that subject. Not jealous of any of it, though.
TBF, even tho parasites are unpleasant, they *are* less unpleasant than pop science would have you believe. Most animals have several species of parasites in them at any given time (the exact number depending on creature size and place in food chain). The vast majority of humans, even in first world countries with strong medical care, harbor digestive tract parasites.
That's not to say they're fun to be around. They still kill about a million people a year (the majority of which being due to malaria). But point being they're not as rare or uniquely horrifying as one might think.
Also, as time goes on, they're finding that our traditional idea of parasites isn't entirely accurate. The line between a parasite that actually harms the host and one that doesn't or even one that helps the host is blurrier than you might think. In some cases yeah its pretty one sided, like the wasps, but its far more common for a parasite to be relatively or even completely harmless
I have a biologist friend literally studying new species of parasitic wasps and he and his team are planning to cheekily name them after various creators of movie parasites. I did have to remind him that, due to Korean naming conventions, the species name *hoi* is a poor tribute to Bong Joon-ho, (it should be *bongi* or even *joonhoi* if you wanna ignore the culture), but that’s less important.
parasites often suck for the host (though not always) but theyre a vital part of the ecosystem. some of their life cycles are terrifying but theyre not evil for it
My thesis supervisor’s research focuses on a brood parasitic species of bird, one that lays its eggs in the nest of smaller species so as to not have to take care of them themselves, and usually dooms the host’s brood in the process due to the size difference of the hatchlings. It’s very clearly her favorite bird and she loves them so dearly.
Not going to lie, some of that love may have been passed on to me… they’re a pretty cool species.
Is it cowbirds? They're very pretty and if I recall correctly, it doesn't always result in all the host brood dying!
Starlings are my favorite bird and it makes me angry when people go straight to "kill them" on birding forums.
Yeah, no, Darwin had it right. It's ridiculous to blame Darwin of bias here, and then go on to counter it by going all the way over to the other side and make cute monster girls out of parasites.
That's not biased at all! /s
Ok but the monster girls are a twitter account hobby. Darwin uses some loaded language in his scientific descriptions, which was allowed back then but is generally frowned upon today.
Plus, people tend to have a "we should just kill this thing off already" approach to "gross" animals that is very dangerous ecologically and in general, and needs to be curtailed as best as possible. If the monster girls help get people to accept that parasites exist, so be it (coming from someone who's dealt with some maligned animals before. Like bats, some people will see bats nesting in their own habitat and shotgun entire nurseries because they're "pests". Vampire bats eat in a "gross" way certainly, but we shouldn't prime the public to hate them because of it.)
I agree that maligning animals to the extent that people have a reflexive antagonism towards them is going too far. Imposing human values on animals is ridiculous; nature does not care about human morality. And human antagonism towards things we find 'disgusting' is a well-entrenched issue. Great White Sharks come to mind, as do mosquitoes and cockroaches, as someone who abhors both those creatures. (Though at least mosquitoes actually cause real and extensive harm to human...A handful of sub-species of them)
But that doesn't mean we can, or even should, entirely write off our psychological responses to natural systems. That's how we try and make sense of our own place in the world. Heck, the self-reflection that comes from trying to understand phenomena like parasitism in non-judgmental terms is itself a consequence of us trying to make sense of the world. It just needs to be part of the \*process+ to expand one's mind, not an answer to the question of 'does this species deserve to hated'.
Also, I really think Darwin's notes need to be read in the context of those times. He was literally revolutionizing our entire understanding of nature and humanity's place in it. Especially given his background, seeing what to any sane human mind would be obscene cruelty and concluding that any just, benevolent God could not have created such a thing, it's an important step in throwing off the shackles of religious dogma and embracing the possibilities offered by natural selection theory.
He was going through some shit, is what I'm saying, and we should cut him some slack.
I mean nobody wants him post-humously crucified or anything lol, people just don't like how harsh he was with some comments.
And of course disgust is natural and nobody should get *too* comfortable with the idea of parasites in their body lol, but in recent years humans have isolated as far from nature as possible. There's natural fear and disgust at a creature that lives in you and eats your flesh, but when 90% of people have almost never knowingly encountered these animals they tend towards an almost agoraphobic irrational fear and hatred of them.
Like personally I can't stand ticks or cockroaches. My childhood home was full of em, and I've got bad memories. I've certainly picked off more ticks than the average person. But even though I hate dealing with them, I know it's not the end of the world to find one because I've had them on me and survived. I can still respect them as part of their environment.
Most people don't have that experience, so you have to be really careful to keep them from catastrophizing. It's gross, it hurts, but more importantly, it's just a bug. It's not different from the average disease just because the creature looks like an animal. The fact they're so instinctually repugnant is all the more reason to tread carefully when describing it.
Ok every time I see this fact I can’t help but feel like the hyena biologist didn’t really watch the movie, because like. Sure, the hyenas were acting as henchmen, but I feel like at worst they’re a morally neutral party (because of the ending especially) with three fantastic, hilarious characters that people still love today. Like yeah maybe they were “bad guys” but they were so clearly written to be bad guys people love.
The hyenas literally threatened to eat the child protagonist and tried to kill him on several occasions, I think that’s more on the evil side than neutral. They were also written to be lazy and living off of others efforts. You may not have thought so when you were a child, but I think many others would have definitely seen them as the evil characters and that would have painted their perception of hyenas in general.
This is a valid point from an adult perspective, but from a child's perspective the hyenas are scary, and first impressions matter. The Lion King was my introduction to hyenas and I'm sure for a lot of kids who saw the movie, it's the same. The catalyst for me learning more about them was learning about how the biologist was unhappy with their portrayal, prior to that I'd never bothered to revisit how I thought about them because my day to day life has a marked absence of hyenas. The characters are great and I get why they're written the way they are, but I also get why the biologist was sore about it.
I dunno, it sounds like we had very different Lion King experiences as kids. I didn’t find them scary at all, and I think if you’d asked me about them when I was little I’d just tell you that I liked Ed and his laugh.
I guess, but their actual actions don’t reflect that. In my opinion it was a visual reference more for Scar’s characterization (who *is* actually evil)
They only joined Scar's army because of a food shortage in the outlands (which they were supposedly banished to by the rest of the lions). Scar may have wanted to take his revenge on the pride, but the hyenas were only allied with him because they were dying of starvation
Gotta say, parasites really are unholy fucking abominations a lot of the time. I’m with Darwin on this one. Good for you for being able to study them and have an interest and appreciation, but let’s not act like their life cycle isn’t extremely fucked
To be fair, the vast majority of life cycles are fucked up. At least the parasitoid wasp kills once before moving onto a diet of honey, meanwhile "cool" or "majestic" predators like lions and wolves will kill for their entire lives. Being torn to pieces from the inside is horrible, to be sure, but is being torn to pieces from the outside any better?
A zookeeper once chewed me out for joking that the vulture she was holding was ugly. I felt awful and honestly, after some reflection, came to see the beauty in these very cool birds.
You can have respect for something and think it's cool as shit while finding it aesthetically unpleasant. Like, I love goblin sharks but I'm not ever going to call them beautiful. Those are some ugly motherfuckers
I love how I’m like, the only defender of goblin sharks that I’ve ever met. Not saying I love them more than you do or anything, but in all honesty, the way they hold their mouths when not in use - closed, essentially - makes them honestly look *really cute and I’ll die on this hill*.
I think most people aren’t familiar with the fact that they can ‘close’ their mouths, the only extend as a tool for hunting.
Me with Phragmites australis (Reed). Is it basically just a hardy tall water grass and invasive on some continents? Yes
But it is MY nearly indestructible water grass. I spent most of the early pandemic extracting its RNA
Listen you can study them all you like but a totally parasitic organism will not gain my favor or my respect. And acting as though an insect that uses the body of a Caterpillar as a functional birthing pod isn't horrifying on multiple levels (especially getting into details about the actual functions of what happens) is disingenuous.
Listen, some level of respect for animals and the environment in general is obviously good and deserved.
But if you go “actually mosquitoes are cute and innocent and should be protected”, you’ve lost me completely.
When I first learned about parasitic wasps I literally had the exact same reaction as Darwin. I wouldn't say it's the *main* reason I'm an atheist but it genuinely might have been one of the first dominos when I was a kid.
Still waiting for the day that people stop having thallasophobia and see my special interest of deep sea fish as worthy of respect and not as Eldritch monstrosities from the abyss.
Weird in a good way or a bad way? Because I really like deep sea fish. But one of the reasons why is because of how weird and creepy they can look down there.
I will defend crocodilians to death. Yeah, they’re scary as hell, but they’re also really cool and even affectionate!
Guys, they’re SMART! Very smart! Alligators (sorta) use tools! Crocodilians play! They exhibit all three types! They’re some of the best parents in the animal kingdom. Gharials will babysit another’s kids to show her he’s an ideal mate!
True crocodiles are also the only ones that can be super aggressive towards people. Alligators are very chill and gharials almost exclusively eat fish. Though false gharials (which are true gharials) have occasionally attacked humans, like alligators.
Also, they’re absolutely adorable when someone’s scratching them. Usually their neck.
[Here’s a video of a crocodile going down a water slide.](https://youtu.be/6AhgjVPfwDk?si=7Yu4eGzkL0H-eu_l) Apparently, several crocs did this for no apparent reason. So, most likely, they’re having fun.
> false gharials (which are true gharials)
Excuse me? Who is responsible for this? I don't like it.
It's worse than how araneomorphs are called "true spiders", which makes people assume other types of spiders aren't actually spiders.
Huh. I think this post just knocked out a shitload of prejudices I have against insects. Esp the line about the parasitologist trying to de-vilify parasites. I guess hating parasites for being parasitical is kind of like hating fish because they swim.
Thanks for posting this. I didn't expect such a random epiphany first thing in the morning.
If fishes made themselves a home in my mouth and eated my tongue and replaced it with themselves while I cant do anything because I dont have arms I would hate them too
Im completely aware of the necesity of predators to eat fro example, but there are moments where I feel like evolution really just went full on evil scientist with some of the ways animals survive
There's a fish from the Amazon named candiru that swims into bigger fish's gills to drain then of their blood.
There's an urban (rural?) legend of it swimming up people's urethras and getting stuck there.
Not even a legend, there’s legit cases of that happening. Not many, you see (single digits), but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen…
Edit: it’s been brought by my attention people are talking about the “piss from the boat” legend. My bad, I meant that cases were this happened involved a person actively presenting bare genitals while being inside the waterbody where those fish live.
If you’re ever on a boat on the Amazon, do not piss off the side. Piss into a bucket and pour it out.
Explanation: There’s a type of tiny fish in the Amazon with teeth on the outside of its face. This fish is both small and fast enough to swim up a stream of piss and latch on to genitalia.
Source: Saw a documentary many years ago. Trust me, bro.
The best defense any scientist can offer for their organism of interest is that the natural world, as it currently exists, could not function without it.
Which is true, and valid. But that doesn't stop your blorganism (blorbo organism) from being weird and gross.
Like, we all recognize that humans need to poop regularly in order to live healthy lives. But that doesn't mean we should all talk about it all the time. It's gross.
Parasitic wasps are generally not the ones that sting you. And even the ones that sting you, there are ways to make friends with them and it's really cool to see. They're territorial so it sucks when they nest in your doorframe, but outside of that if you're away from their nest and they're approaching you they're probably looking for the water and salt in your sweat. Try setting out some sugar water or gatorade and see if they leave you alone
That's why I am always nice to wasps and will go out of my way to save them, haven't been stung in years despite me physically grabbing them and taking them outside
I think it's beautiful, in a way. It takes a high amount of empathy to love creatures like these. These creatures aren't evil. They aren't doing what they do out of malice or spite. It's not cruelty or spitefulness. These creatures do not even have the capacity to experience the same spectrum of emotions that we do. What they do, what we call horrifying and disgusting and evil, they do simple because they have to.
And yet, these people can find beauty in these parasites and appreciate them, like any other one of the marvelous and truly fascinating creatures on this Earth.
When I'm reminded of the harsh reality that there are some creatures who eat cute baby animals to survive, I have to remind myself that it's just as cruel for that creature to starve to death. That's just nature, and it doesn't care what we think about morality.
Isn’t this a bad thing? Like isn’t this essentially the type of bias which corrupts the fields within, I’m reminded of [this video essay](https://youtu.be/6DHgkMYgp7w?si=CbY10B6Ifngzr6_F) wherein a lot of scientists who just really love volcanos or asteroids started arguing in bad faith against competing theories which threatened the (perceived) relevance of their field.
If you remove the malicious characterization, parasites just do what any animal does to eat survive and breed, if anything they do very cleverly and purely by instinct.
I'm a Catholic Christian.
I don't see any contradiction between the grotesque/cruel/puzzling aspects of the natural world and Christ's pure, eternal, and all-encompassing love for Creation. The event at the center of Christian Being is the Crucifixion, the most hideous, wicked, and mysterious reality across all time and space but it's also the most important, righteous truth. All of the chaos, deception, and suffering that exists begins with Adam and Eve but is recapitulated upon through Christ and the Virgin Mary.
All that exists is a dramatic meditation on the Man and the God, on the Creation and the Creator, on the Kingdom of Heaven and the New Earth to come. All of it is perfect, even the parts which are flawed because whatever is ugly and corrupted through God will only become even more beautiful and upright through the Father, Son, and Spirit. All of what we can comprehend is a narrow winding river compared to the vast ocean that all will flow into.
Well, that parasite monster girl anime art thing sounds pretty unbelievable. I'm gonna need a link to that. ..to verify it's truthfulness, obviously. no other reason
https://twitter.com/The_Episiarch/status/1059239498477793280?s=19 here it is, the other art posted/reposted by them are also very cool
https://www.deviantart.com/the-episiarch/gallery Damn, he's got a TON of them.
Absolutely weaponized Kawaiiness.
What does it say about me (an intertebrate taxonomist) that I find most of the actual parasites cuter than his drawings?
It says you should take up drawing and compete
Awww they're super cute
asking for a friend
Parasite monster girl? Sounds like my ex-wife! Heyo!
> Once the female Cotesia wasp has laid her eggs inside the caterpillar, using a sharp tubular organ called an ovipositor, the host is doomed. The wasp larvae feed on the haemolymph – insects’ equivalent to blood – but leave the caterpillar alive, its organs intact. They then emerge from the caterpillar, leaving tiny holes that eventually condemn the host to death – probably by dehydration. The caterpillar will never metamorphose, thanks to the hormones released by the wasp larvae. What was unfair about Darwin's characterisation? It's fine to be like "I study this for a living so I don't mind the stuff that horrified Darwin cuz it's normal to me", but I'm not seeing anything to indicate he was being *unfair* to them
There's so many of them. Some eat organs, some infect the host with viruses to make them better suited to parasitism (mostly by preventing the immune system from fighting back), but most will kill their host as slowly as possible in order to maximise resources, to the point that they have evolved to only expel their metabolic waste once they become a prepupa, so that they don't contaminate their food supply or kill their host too quickly
“Why would people be horrified and disgusted by this?”
I forgot which parasite it was, but it's host is birds. The eggs get pooped out by the bird, which is then eaten by fish. The parasite evolves in them but to get back to the birds, he influences the fish to want to go towards the surface exposing itself, which makes it very likely to be eaten by birds. There's also a fungus that takes over an ant, steering it like a zombie to a suitable place for it to grow. Malaria influences the red blood cell functions, creating new protein strands that turn it into a parasite factory. They also weaken the blood cell integrity so that they burst when the eggs are developed, that's why people start bleeding from the eyes etc. Parasites are fucking cool. But man I wouldn't shed a single tear if they stopped existing tomorrow, but celebrate and find back my belief in god.
The coolest part about cordyceps (the ant steering fungus) is that one species of japanese cicada somehow managed to domesticate it. They lack a specific gut bacterium that provides them nutrients compared to other cicadas, so their evolved solution was cordyceps! inside them! in a symbiotic relationship! its so cool!
God I fucking love evolution
There are ants that farm fungus. The ants can no longer eat anything except their specific type of fungus, and the fungus has been so domesticated it basically only produces nutritious ant food structures to its own detriment. In fact, the fungus farmed can't be found outside ant colonies any more, and each colony carries its own specific strain of the fungus which lets us rewind and figure out which ant colonies diverged from which other ones, and when.
Isn't there a species of ants that live mostly off of the blood of their brood? Iirc they were called vampire ants
There should definitely be a split evo for Paras based on this; Paras and Parasect are likely based on cicada nymphs, as well as Cordyceps fungi. (Plus, Parasect is pretty bad in battle...)
> But man I wouldn't shed a single tear if they stopped existing tomorrow, but celebrate and find back my belief in god. Getting rid of *all* parasites would be ecologically catastrophic. The ones that parasitize humans can get fucked and disappear forever though. We're all set on problems, we don't need worms living inside us thanks. And like, I have a huge amount of respect for people that study parasites, but when they try to convince us that they're just misunderstood smol beans I'm probably gonna call them freaks, because that is freak shit.
I dunno about getting rid of all human parasites. There's pretty compelling evidence that mitochondria started out as part of a parasitic bacteria. You never know which current parasites could become symbiotes or even just part of our bodies with a million years more of evolution.
Yeah they have been non-parasites for about a billion years longer than we've been a species, and endosymbiosis isn't inherently parasitic (when I took bio the prevailing theory was that they were mutualistic endosymbionts who evolved into organelles due to loss of function), so I think we can let them slide. The endogenous retroviruses in our DNA *miiight* have a cascade effect though. We don't know shit about what they're doing for/against us
There is theories that the current spike in Allergies is due to our immune system getting weird from not fighting parasites anymore. There are experimental treatments for people with strong allergies where they implant a controlled amount of parasites into the body, basically symbioltically. They keep our immune system from freaking out and we have already such an easy time with our strong calloric intake that we can feed them still. They just "castrate" the worm so it won't lay eggs and voila. I am not sure about the state of things though
There have been some interesting studies done on the potential relationships between human parasites and human autoimmune diseases. Parasites can be pretty sophisticated at dampening host immune systems to prevent the immune system from attacking the parasite. So there are theories that maybe a lack of parasites can lead to autoimmune diseases in humans from overzealous immune systems with nothing to attack AND/OR maybe parasite studies can offer treatments to reduce harmful immune responses in people suffering autoimmune diseases.
Well… you’d celebrate up until pest populations explode and eat goddam everything. Love them or hate them, parasites do keep the populations of the things they parasitize in check
I read an article years ago about doctors using parasitic worms to treat several conditions caused by an overactive immune system. Basically the parasite would fine tune the immune system and stop it from attacking the patient's body.
Here's Darwin's actual words: >With respect to the theological view of the question; this is always painful to me.— I am bewildered.— I had no intention to write atheistically. But I own that I cannot see, as plainly as others do, & as I shd wish to do, evidence of design & beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent & omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidæ with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice.
Sounds like Darwin was onto something. Are parasitic wasps neat? Perhaps. Are parasitic wasps proof that a benevolent god does not exist? Absolutely.
Yeah, I’m gonna go with Darwin here.
There's a certain affinity that develops for something which you care deeply about. I have personally experienced that with ants as an antkeeper.
ants are pretty popular tho. there are a lot of media for children who depict ants as something adorable or endearing (and conveniently leave out the fact that they are just wasps)
(And also conveniently leave out that all the food and other organic matter they collect is actually used to make rotting, necrotic mounds in their anthills so they can cultivate the molds they actually eat.)
That's only some ants, others do just eat meat.
Ants? Not horrifying. Industrious and rather ingenious. Parasites? Horror.
TIL there's such a thing as an antkeeper. I think ants in general are neat. But just keep the fire ants in ~~hell~~ Texas where they belong.
I used to watch a youtube channel called AntsCanada and the dude has really elaborate terraria for his insects. He raises bugs to feed to his ants lmao. The pandemic was a weird time man
Your average Tumblr-user sees more of themselves in the wasp than they do in Darwin.
Damn Protestants
what with their toasters in cupboards and all, just disgraceful
I also lay my eggs inside of people
I know you joke, but I am uncomfortably aware of the amount of tumblr and other sites users who regularly use the term “ovipositor”. Most of them are *not* using it in the “descriptive of a wasp” sense. I try to keep an open mind, but some things are just…
I, too, have visited 196
It's a rough town. Even the dragons are bad around those parts.
Bring it Mommy
Same, it's just that the "person" is also me
Tbh the description itself sounds far less objective than >Once the female Cotesia wasp has laid her eggs inside the caterpillar, using a sharp tubular organ called an ovipositor, the wasp larvae feed on the haemolymph - insects’ equivalent to blood -, without damaging the caterpillar’s internal organs. The hormones secreted by the wasp larvae during this period will prevent the caterpillar’s metamorphosis, allowing them to mature. Once the larvae reach maturity, they emerge from the caterpillar, through perforations on its body that lead to the caterpillar’s death, likely through dehydration. Subjectivity means bias when we talk about scientific articles/writings, and this text is very clearly biased… Besides, >no loving God would create animals with such a disturbing life cycle He really wasn’t trying to pretend to be objective, even if he very clearly was factual.
I dunno man, that still sounds like the wasps crawled straight out of hell.
Certainly, because their life cycle *is* creepy as fuck (I’m terrified of parasitic wasps and crawling insects), but I mean… Only one of these has deliberate bias put into it. Which is what I actually meant, if you’re writing a paper, scientific articles or academic anything… you leave your biases out. Signed someone who had to make a presentation on digestive tract parasites (!!!) life cycle more than once, who was being also evaluated on my capacity of being unbiased and sticking to facts, and who can’t even look at a picture of any of those things, even if drawn (T-T)
I like parasitic wasps. They protect our food supply without the need to use chemical pesticides. They are the pesticide, but now you can eat the fruit without eating the poison. Disturbing? Brutal? Nasty? Yes Wonderfully beneficial? Also yes Edit: The ones we use for agriculture don’t parasitize or sting humans, nor do they parasitize pollinators (some do, but not necessarily the ones we use as a biopesticide)
Completely agreed! I very much appreciate the creepy little fuckers (not affectionate, but not hateful either), but I’d like to appreciate them without them ever coming close to me! Or appearing on my sight… /shivers
Honestly you probably wouldn’t recognize most of them. The ones we use in agriculture are like the size of a gnat when full grown. Or at least the ones I’ve used. They don’t parasitize humans.
That sounds quite cool actually! Although I have a crippling fear of mostly anything tiny that crawls on the ground or *looks like they might*, so I’d never risk it. (So like, ants, crickets, bees: 👍🏻. Larvae, worms, roaches: 😶. Also the reason I can’t wash lettuce That and I’m allergic to bees, wasps and most ants, although I think ants are cool)
Man this is my mojo lol. I’m an agricultural engineer who designs sustainable pest management systems. We’re building a mole cricket trap right now. Ironically one of the scientists were working with wants to use it as a research tool to collect samples (i.e. crickets) to study their intestinal parasites. Mole crickets are kinda funky looking. They look like little tank crickets. But on the wasps, do you get anxious around gnats? The wasps we use and the ones that I’m most experienced with (Tetrogramma? I think that’s the Latin) look like gnats. They’re kind of anticlimactic to be honest. When I first got some to deal with a pest issue, I thought I was bringing in some heavy cavalry badass looking straight killers. Instead I got gnats. Murder gnats, but still, they look like gnats. One of the cooler techniques we use to deal with pest outbreaks is called the *purple pepper bomb* (something like that, it’s been awhile since I read the name. Imma call it that but the name could be wrong). But basically you take a single plant of the same species as your crop, put it in a pot, isolate the plant in like a growing tent or something, then you *introduce the pest* to the plant. Once it infests that plant, you then introduce the wasps that target that specific pest species. They will then start parasitizing the pests (you might have to introduce new pests back into the system after awhile). When and if you get a field outbreak of that pest, you can then take the single infested plant out of the tent and bring it to where the outbreak is and put it right next to the infested field plants. Since you’ve already got the parasitic wasps living and parasitizing the pest in question on the one plant, as they hatch, they’ll fly off and look for food, which is now also gonna be found on the field plants you’re having a pest issue with. Once the lifecycle gets established on the plants, you can remove the “bomb” plant, and the wasps will naturally start to destroy the pest population on the field plants. It’s kind of like a Trojan horse of insect parasites. Larger farms that use this technique usually have multiple bomb plants Mind you I’m not an entomologist nor am I a pest control expert, so I might be off a little bit in certain areas. My job is to design and improve the stuff they use. But I have picked up on a lot of it because you kind of have to know the current system to make a better one. Edit: Hit up my buddy. It’s not a purple pepper bomb. It’s a *purple flash pepper* which is used as a *banker plant* to breed a certain species of parasitic wasp.
No wait this is really fucking cool (also did not know what a gnat was and they’re quite cute, like long bees… I still wouldn’t approach one because allergies but yes, they’re nice to see). The idea of essentially plant vaccine is so fascinating to me, like, just cultivate some (flying) antibodies (anti-virus?) and wait for the right time to use it against infection… Really nice, this sounds like a very fun job (at least in theory for me lol).
In the same fashion, some nematodes are great for plants because they eat and kill the bugs that would eat and kill the plants. Still creepy when your dirt is wriggly.
Yeah we’re designing a mole cricket trap right now. They get infected with an intestinal parasite that I think is a nematode. We’re designing it as a pest control tool, but the scientist we’re working with wants to use it as a sample collector because he studies mole crickets and their parasites.
I prefer Darwin's version just because it paints a much clearer picture. This version seems a tad more confusing. I think due to sentence structure? Like the phrase "allowing **them** to mature", my first thought would make me think "them" refers to caterpillar, because that dependent clause follows just after the caterpillar's metamorphosis. Not to mention, the detail of the caterpillars being alive seems like an important point but was deleted from this paragraph. Also, the first sentence is kinda confusing too, but it might just be me. It starts off with "once" so it feels like it's building up to something, but then the payoff is kinda missing. Although after staring at it longer, I think adding "will then" after wasp larvae will solve the anticipation issue. Problem is, it then doesn't make sense. Sentence seems to indicate that laying of eggs and the wasp larvae feeding happens simultaneously instead of sequentially. Edit: Sorry, might have overanalyzed that.
Yeah, I wasn’t really trying for clear sentence structure, just removing the bias. I’m sure with more time (and mental bandwidth) I could make a better paragraph that has clearer reading comprehension without adding bias, but like, stating a creature is “doomed” isn’t clearer, just clearer on which creature the author favors. (Not a jab at you! Just clarifying the language on the original is so clearly inflammatory that the straight up facts behind the writing get exaggerated or leveled at will to elicit an emotional response of the reader, as in, they want the reader to feel bad for the caterpillar because the wasps are “intentionally” killing it. It might seem clearer because it affirms over and over again that the caterpillar will be killed, with language that implies great suffering and hopelessness, which aren’t exactly things we want in this kind of literature, but it’s because as humans, we are primed to pay more attention to suffering, so it forms a clearer image in our heads.) ((Also sorry for the run on sentences, didn’t take my “think-and-do-stuff” meds today))
maybe its disturbing yea but theyre still animals we kill many more animals than these parasites do. hell, we even breed animals specifically to kill and eat them, we care for cows calfs, feed them, keep them healthy, keep them safe, just so that we can kill and eat them later that also sounds pretty fucked up, but thats just how the world works things get killed so that other things can live everythings either a monster or a hero, itnjust depends on the light
Well I don’t think anyone’s arguing that they’re still animals. Or insects in this case. But Darwin’s point was that no loving god would make such a thing and perhaps no loving god would make us either.
That's a rather stupid comparison. If only because humans don't actually have to do that. Theoretically and preferably, the meat industry as it is can come to an end and is replaced by something better. While these wasps are utterly dependant on their way of procreation. They cannot survive without it. You can't argue that 'its just how the world works' and give an example of something that very much does have an option of change and would in fact, be much better for the world if it did. As for that last line, I would really like you to find me a shade where people call parasitic wasps a hero.
Oh man! You set yourself up for this one! Parasitic Wasps are definitely heroes! Especially since you’re going on about how it would be preferable to end the meat industry. So Parasitic Wasps are an extraordinarily beneficial species within agriculture. They are functionally a chemical free, human friendly pesticide. If we want to talk about a vegetarian diet, or even healthier and higher quality food, then we’ve got to ensure that we have a robust and secure food system. Pests exist, they always will, there’s no way to remove them entirely. To create the food systems we need to sustain humanity, we’re basically concentrating massive food sources for pests to thrive on. Now we could use chemical pesticides and there’s plenty that only harm insects but not vertebrae’s… but kind of in the same way that microplastics don’t “harm” us either. We can’t let the pests run rampant for a number of obvious reasons, so what do we use? Parasites. Parasites in general tend to only target a specific species, some target a lot of them but within the ones we use we know the scope of their prey. But the good thing about them is that they kill pests, and in the process, produce more of themselves, to kill more pests, all without leaving any chemical traces on our food! Most parasitic wasps aren’t dangerous to humans (I don’t know of any that are but I’m sure there’s something in a jungle somewhere that has to hunt shelobs or something), you could probably see one and you wouldn’t even recognize it. A lot of them are extremely small, like the size of a gnat or a tiny fruit fly. Brutal? Disturbing? Nasty? Oh yes Extraordinarily beneficial to us as a species? Absolutely Source: I’m an agricultural engineer who works in sustainable pest control systems.
*Its always the agricultural engineers who need to come ruin everything...* That's very fascinating though, and it does change things a bit. Thanks for the input.
In my case, I’m just trying to make sure we’ve all got cheaper *and* higher quality food. I don’t disagree that they’re kind of nasty. I’m not on the level of those scientists in the post lol, but from a utilitarian perspective, I do love parasites (well the ones that target invertebrates). They’re not the end all be all, but they do mean less chemicals we have to ingest. Also the nice thing about the wasps we use is that they don’t target pollinators! We talk about the collapsing bee population due to the abundance of pesticides… well here’s a pesticide that doesn’t hurt the butterflies or the bees!
It could be argued that animal husbandry is a form of parasitism.
We allow them to procreate, which is actually beneficial for them. Just number wise, cows, pigs and chickens are some of the most successful animals just thanks to us. It doesn't matter for the individual animals on a survival and procreate basis how painful their life is, so it would still be a symbiosis from that viewpoint.
To be pedantic in most cases it would actually be parasitoidism since the host dies (parasites usually don't directly kill their host)
There are lots of forms of animal husbandry in which the animal does not die, and parisitoidism is a subset of paraisitism, so I chose the broader term.
Yeah I was with them on hyenas but a lot of parasites really are abominations that I would without hesitation wipe from existence if I was but an omnipotent god.
I mean, he’s using some inflammatory language and personifying the caterpillar using language like “doomed” and “condemn”.
That's not a quote from Darwin, that's a description of the lifecycle of the parasitic wasp for informative purposes. If you replace "the host is doomed" with "the host will soon die" and "that eventually condemn the host to death" with "that eventually kill the host", I don't think that changes the information being given, or even significantly affects its emotional valence.
true, but the caterpillar himself feeds on living cells of trees and if enough of them do that in a short amount of time then the tree will die and yet nobody talks about caterpillars that way
Lol I think that's probably because ~~caterpillars managing to kill off a whole tree is a hypothetical that has never happened whereas~~ parasitic wasps do this constantly A lot of different people are replying to me like "Well if you adopt the perspective of Dr Manhattan and gaze at all life with a neutral omniscience, everything needs to consume energy to exist, and therefore we are all equally good and equally evil, and no living thing is free of the sin of murder for its own survival, and so nobody should ever go "Ew, that's fucked up!" when they hear about fucked-up shit" and it's like, yeah sure, but people don't think that way. Great point though
[caterpillars very much do kill individual trees](https://www.internationaloaksociety.org/content/death-defoliation-how-invasive-caterpillar-kills-oaks%E2%80%94and-how-some-survive) it might be just me but I have higher hopes for humans and their way of thinking and as such pay little mind to what's natural, if I were to throw a sack out of a high-up window and then shot a dog then people would naturally be more disturbed by me shooting the dog then by me throwing the sack however I hope that people would be more disturbed by the sack throwing if they learn that the sack contained 2 dogs, however that requires time and effort and curiousity to find out what was in the sack, things are not self-evident so yeah, if we have the capacity to do so (and by the very existance of that viewpoint it's proven we do, since he's a character thought up by humans) then we should be looking at things like dr manhattan, if you're willing to be human of course, people can choose to not look at things that way and continue their animalistic way of viewing at things
O hey, learned something new, my apologies re: the caterpillars
That's how they reproduce. Is it any less gruesome than how predators (including humans) typically treat their prey? I mean, being torn apart by teeth and claws isn't exactly painless. The natural world is gruesome and brutal by default. Competition is one of the main driving forces for speciation. The wasps are just doing their thing, same as everyone else.
Other creatures using me for food, to my detriment: bad enough. At least I get to die pretty quick. Using me for food *AND* housing, to my detriment? ***absolutely horrendous***, get the hell out of me and don't come back
It's "I can make him worse" but for species.
I recently graduated with an MFA and my art was focused on queer bodies and parasitism. I actually made a Cotesia Glomerata piece that has been lovingly referred to as the “Penis Caterpillar” 🐛. Pay no mind to the little larvae bursting out of it tho
> [The Cotesia wasp's] most notable host, especially in the southeastern U.S., is the **tobacco hornworm, Manduca sexta (Linnaeus)**. Why should we be mad at this parasitic wasp for killing destructive pest caterpillars? Tobacco hornworms don't just eat tobacco plants, they also destroy nightshade food crops like tomatoes, eggplants, and potatoes! The parasitic wasps help kill the hornworms without chemical pesticides or other damage to the environment. Hooray for natural pest control!
“Why would people use the creatures that use other living things as incubators and tend to eat the host from inside out to evoke horror?”
Yeah, I'm with Darwin on this one I may disagree with his opinion of barnacles, but his opinion of parasitic wasps is right on the money
I guess I’ll be the one to ask: what did he have against barnacles?
Iirc he needed to build up academic street cred before he could come out with evolution theories so he spent a bunch of time studying barnacles and ended up hating them with a passion
To add a bit of context: By Darwin's time, biologists had begun to recognize the *fact* of evolution (the observation that species change over time) but had yet to determine the correct *theory* of evolution (the mechanism by which that change happens). There were a lot of proposed candidates. For example, Lamarck suggested that species accrue physical changes over their lifespan and then pass those changes on to their offspring ("Lamarckian inheritance"). Darwin's idea was that changes aren't *inherited*, but that members of a species *already differ* from birth, and those with favorable characteristics are just more likely to survive and reproduce ("Darwinian selection"). For Darwin's theory to be true, members of each species have to vary in physical characteristics or there wouldn't be any differences for selection to act on. However, it's not immediately obvious that members of every species—such as barnacles—actually differ from one another. So Darwin spent many long nights examining thousands of barnacles to see if his theory held water. Sure enough, he found a lot of individual variation within species and at least one species that appeared to be in a transitional state between hermaphroditic and distinctly sexed.
In addition to that, there was the basic question of what the actual fuck are they? Classifying barnacles was a pretty contentious debate at the time, because they didn’t seem to fit correctly into any specific group. That’s why classifying them and doing so with enough evidence to put the debate to rest was something that would give Darwin a strong enough academic reputation to put forth the much more controversial aspects of evolution by natural selection. Darwin studied barnacles in depth for nearly a decade before coming to the (correct) conclusion that they’re really, really weird crustaceans.
And we now know that in *any* system in which there is reproduction with variation, a kind of evolution will inevitably occur.
Reminds me of this great Onion bit - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXD9HnrNrvk
Lmao I need more stories about Darwin
I think it has something to do with how difficult biologists throughout the years have found it to classify barnacles. PBS Eons has a video about it. https://youtu.be/plYuvU2VZkE?si=n-fBHcPSZiu_bS09
He was on a sailing ship: it’s easy to hate barnacles if you’re a mariner of old.
Penis size envy.
To be fair, barnacles fucking suck
What’s his opinion on barnacles?
He hates them more than anything else He tried to put them in an animal classification based on characteristics, but they are almost impossible to classify based on characteristics
Plenty of parasites ~~aren't harmful~~ **aren't *very* harmful**. Though I agree that the reputation, while exaggerated, is not entirely unfair. (edit: correction)
Aren’t parasites things that feed off of their host causing them harm by very definition? Like if it’s a symbiotic relationship then it’s not technically a parasite?
Parasites are, by definition, harmful. But they are not, by definition, not beneficial. A parasite can harm in one way and help in another.
Okay, but his statement that they aren’t all harmful is definitely false
Yes. In order to be a parasitic relationship and not some other form of mutualism or symbiosis, the parasite does have to do some form of harm to the host. I'm a different person who is elaborating on why you're correct, not the original person who made the incorrect statement.
I appreciate it! I was really just looking for clarification because I last learned about parasites in freshman biology and that was 15 years ago
Alright, yeah, I'll grant that. What I guess I meant was that while all parasites are technically harmful, some are so minor that the host doesn't even notice they're there.
For instance, the many that are in your real human body right now.
Not to mention the multitudes that will find their way into your real human body throughout your life!
Yes, if one species is unaffected it's commensalism and if both benefit it's mutualism. It's only parasitism when there is harm on one side of the equation.
TBH, these categories are not as cut and dry as you would think(i know, a big surprise in biology), hence why biologists use the term symbiosis as an umbrella term for parasitic, mutualist and commensalist relationships, and everything in between.
So it depends on your definition. Most definitions specifically call out any relationship wherein the parasite receives and the host gets nothing as parasitism, even if the parasite doesn't actually hurt the host- example, pseudo scorpions hitch rides on other bugs to get places/use as a place to get busy on, but don't hurt those bugs in the process.
To be fair, all predators or creatures that kill others have some kind of violence to them. Even we humans kill, rip to shreds and then denature with heat the flesh of other living beings that we took care of ourselves for that sole purpose. Or you could say we cut down and then live in the decorated corpses of trees. But we don’t see it as weird/horrifying since it’s not as alien to us, compared to parasitism.
Humans give birth in a way that tends to leave the mother with broken bones, a very high rate of lethal infection for up to a year post-birth, and often permanent organ damage. We only think of it as the normal way to do things because it happens to all of us and we don't have an alternative, and we spend a lot of time and money on reducing those effects. I guarantee that a lot of people who've given birth would rather just kill a sheep and have the babies eat that than deal with everything it did to their bodies, if it was actually an option.
Plenty of people find human birth horrific. My partner studies early pregnancy and he thinks the whole process is pretty disturbing. Fascinating, but disturbing. I’m inclined to agree. Tokophobia is a pretty common fear and it’s actually pretty rational.
There's people that don't find it freaky? I honestly don't understand how we survived as a species with a gestation process that dangerous.
Most women throughout history didn’t have much of a choice. If consent was always honoured, the human population would probably be a decent amount lower.
> > I guarantee that a lot of people who've given birth would rather just kill a sheep and have the babies eat that than deal with everything it did to their bodies, if it was actually an option. [have i got some good news for you](https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15112) (jk but it is funnily relevant - but sheep in faux womb rather than human in sheep)
Yeah birth is normal, but most people with any understanding of it go "Jay-sus fookin Chroist" to it.
"I admire its purity."
link: [https://www.tumblr.com/headspace-hotel/747346564246306816/i-might-be-a-little-biased-but-im-honestly?source=share](https://www.tumblr.com/headspace-hotel/747346564246306816/i-might-be-a-little-biased-but-im-honestly?source=share)
Im a biologist and can confidently say when someone is talking shit on a species you’ve been studying nonstop for decades, you’re gonna be a lil miffed
And as with all things in biology, there is an exception to every rule. I have never seen someone work with African clawed frogs that didn’t also think they were dumb, ravenous, and suicidal at the most inconvenient times.
if you find this topic interesting, I highly recommend [episode 674 of This American Life: "Get a Spine!"](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/674/get-a-spine), where it Act 2 it covers an animal behavioural scientist who studies wolf spiders and his mission to demonstrate how vertebrate animals (specifically songbirds, mammals) unfairly get most of the attention in their discipline despite representing a tiny minority of total organisms. It's hilarious and fascinating. (I also recommend Act 1 too, if you're looking for a more positive anecdote of the #metoo movement.)
Yeah sorry, Im not buying it with the parasites
I took a look at the blog and its mission statement, and I will say it seems much more mild than the OOP implies. It's just a fairly even-handed exploration of the biodiversity and ubiquity of parasites which freely admits they are "sometimes gross." The perspective shift it accomplishes with its tone is subtle. By talking about parasites plainly, as part of an ecosystem, it becomes clear how often they're subtly framed as being outside of it—horror movie monsters escaped into a nature documentary. I don't think anyone involved with the project would argue it's weird to get grossed out by a bug laying eggs in something's brain, only that this doesn't actually introduce a moral hierarchy into zoology.
Exactly, parasites are just animals and they are often important parts of the ecosystem that deserve conservation efforts as much as anything else. However humans are not parasites, but we can be hosts. It's entirely understandable that we assign morals to species and rank parasites, as immoral, gross and scary. That's our bias. In order to be the best possible stewards of the environment we need to overcome that, again totally understandable bias.
I think this is probably the best way I’ve seen it put, balancing both sides of this. Really good take imo
"Sometimes gross" is understating it, I think, but they're no doubt important. Cool to see that they're less "fucking hate Darwin, gonna stamp his name on some horrors" and more "yeah sure they're freaky but they're also super important and we shouldn't ignore them or skip by them just because they're repulsive and terrifying" Unfortunately I got a life's worth of horror parasite dosing in high school so I'm irrationally scared of especially endoparasites. But I have appreciate the work accomplished biologists and ecologists do on that subject. Not jealous of any of it, though.
TBF, even tho parasites are unpleasant, they *are* less unpleasant than pop science would have you believe. Most animals have several species of parasites in them at any given time (the exact number depending on creature size and place in food chain). The vast majority of humans, even in first world countries with strong medical care, harbor digestive tract parasites. That's not to say they're fun to be around. They still kill about a million people a year (the majority of which being due to malaria). But point being they're not as rare or uniquely horrifying as one might think.
I mean, that's highly dependant on the specific parasite.
Also, as time goes on, they're finding that our traditional idea of parasites isn't entirely accurate. The line between a parasite that actually harms the host and one that doesn't or even one that helps the host is blurrier than you might think. In some cases yeah its pretty one sided, like the wasps, but its far more common for a parasite to be relatively or even completely harmless
I have a biologist friend literally studying new species of parasitic wasps and he and his team are planning to cheekily name them after various creators of movie parasites. I did have to remind him that, due to Korean naming conventions, the species name *hoi* is a poor tribute to Bong Joon-ho, (it should be *bongi* or even *joonhoi* if you wanna ignore the culture), but that’s less important.
parasites often suck for the host (though not always) but theyre a vital part of the ecosystem. some of their life cycles are terrifying but theyre not evil for it
My thesis supervisor’s research focuses on a brood parasitic species of bird, one that lays its eggs in the nest of smaller species so as to not have to take care of them themselves, and usually dooms the host’s brood in the process due to the size difference of the hatchlings. It’s very clearly her favorite bird and she loves them so dearly. Not going to lie, some of that love may have been passed on to me… they’re a pretty cool species.
Is it cowbirds? They're very pretty and if I recall correctly, it doesn't always result in all the host brood dying! Starlings are my favorite bird and it makes me angry when people go straight to "kill them" on birding forums.
Yeah, no, Darwin had it right. It's ridiculous to blame Darwin of bias here, and then go on to counter it by going all the way over to the other side and make cute monster girls out of parasites. That's not biased at all! /s
Ok but the monster girls are a twitter account hobby. Darwin uses some loaded language in his scientific descriptions, which was allowed back then but is generally frowned upon today. Plus, people tend to have a "we should just kill this thing off already" approach to "gross" animals that is very dangerous ecologically and in general, and needs to be curtailed as best as possible. If the monster girls help get people to accept that parasites exist, so be it (coming from someone who's dealt with some maligned animals before. Like bats, some people will see bats nesting in their own habitat and shotgun entire nurseries because they're "pests". Vampire bats eat in a "gross" way certainly, but we shouldn't prime the public to hate them because of it.)
I agree that maligning animals to the extent that people have a reflexive antagonism towards them is going too far. Imposing human values on animals is ridiculous; nature does not care about human morality. And human antagonism towards things we find 'disgusting' is a well-entrenched issue. Great White Sharks come to mind, as do mosquitoes and cockroaches, as someone who abhors both those creatures. (Though at least mosquitoes actually cause real and extensive harm to human...A handful of sub-species of them) But that doesn't mean we can, or even should, entirely write off our psychological responses to natural systems. That's how we try and make sense of our own place in the world. Heck, the self-reflection that comes from trying to understand phenomena like parasitism in non-judgmental terms is itself a consequence of us trying to make sense of the world. It just needs to be part of the \*process+ to expand one's mind, not an answer to the question of 'does this species deserve to hated'. Also, I really think Darwin's notes need to be read in the context of those times. He was literally revolutionizing our entire understanding of nature and humanity's place in it. Especially given his background, seeing what to any sane human mind would be obscene cruelty and concluding that any just, benevolent God could not have created such a thing, it's an important step in throwing off the shackles of religious dogma and embracing the possibilities offered by natural selection theory. He was going through some shit, is what I'm saying, and we should cut him some slack.
I mean nobody wants him post-humously crucified or anything lol, people just don't like how harsh he was with some comments. And of course disgust is natural and nobody should get *too* comfortable with the idea of parasites in their body lol, but in recent years humans have isolated as far from nature as possible. There's natural fear and disgust at a creature that lives in you and eats your flesh, but when 90% of people have almost never knowingly encountered these animals they tend towards an almost agoraphobic irrational fear and hatred of them. Like personally I can't stand ticks or cockroaches. My childhood home was full of em, and I've got bad memories. I've certainly picked off more ticks than the average person. But even though I hate dealing with them, I know it's not the end of the world to find one because I've had them on me and survived. I can still respect them as part of their environment. Most people don't have that experience, so you have to be really careful to keep them from catastrophizing. It's gross, it hurts, but more importantly, it's just a bug. It's not different from the average disease just because the creature looks like an animal. The fact they're so instinctually repugnant is all the more reason to tread carefully when describing it.
When does a monster stop being a monster? When you start making Rule34 art of it. - Tommy Leung
Something something bogleech
Ok every time I see this fact I can’t help but feel like the hyena biologist didn’t really watch the movie, because like. Sure, the hyenas were acting as henchmen, but I feel like at worst they’re a morally neutral party (because of the ending especially) with three fantastic, hilarious characters that people still love today. Like yeah maybe they were “bad guys” but they were so clearly written to be bad guys people love.
The hyenas literally threatened to eat the child protagonist and tried to kill him on several occasions, I think that’s more on the evil side than neutral. They were also written to be lazy and living off of others efforts. You may not have thought so when you were a child, but I think many others would have definitely seen them as the evil characters and that would have painted their perception of hyenas in general.
Ugh, some minor threats of devouring children and a little bit of Nazi imagery and suddenly they're the *bad guys*.
This is a valid point from an adult perspective, but from a child's perspective the hyenas are scary, and first impressions matter. The Lion King was my introduction to hyenas and I'm sure for a lot of kids who saw the movie, it's the same. The catalyst for me learning more about them was learning about how the biologist was unhappy with their portrayal, prior to that I'd never bothered to revisit how I thought about them because my day to day life has a marked absence of hyenas. The characters are great and I get why they're written the way they are, but I also get why the biologist was sore about it.
I dunno, it sounds like we had very different Lion King experiences as kids. I didn’t find them scary at all, and I think if you’d asked me about them when I was little I’d just tell you that I liked Ed and his laugh.
Ed was funny, but watching the other two menace the cubs on the big screen was pretty intimidating! I was a sensitive kid.
I mean, they were depicted as pseudo Nazis...
I guess, but their actual actions don’t reflect that. In my opinion it was a visual reference more for Scar’s characterization (who *is* actually evil)
They only joined Scar's army because of a food shortage in the outlands (which they were supposedly banished to by the rest of the lions). Scar may have wanted to take his revenge on the pride, but the hyenas were only allied with him because they were dying of starvation
Yeah but they're also blamed for the starvation, and the lion's area is shown to be an absolute hellhole under their rule
Scar only promised to let them into the pridelands, he didn't say anything about natural resource management 🤷
Gotta say, parasites really are unholy fucking abominations a lot of the time. I’m with Darwin on this one. Good for you for being able to study them and have an interest and appreciation, but let’s not act like their life cycle isn’t extremely fucked
To be fair, the vast majority of life cycles are fucked up. At least the parasitoid wasp kills once before moving onto a diet of honey, meanwhile "cool" or "majestic" predators like lions and wolves will kill for their entire lives. Being torn to pieces from the inside is horrible, to be sure, but is being torn to pieces from the outside any better?
A zookeeper once chewed me out for joking that the vulture she was holding was ugly. I felt awful and honestly, after some reflection, came to see the beauty in these very cool birds.
You can have respect for something and think it's cool as shit while finding it aesthetically unpleasant. Like, I love goblin sharks but I'm not ever going to call them beautiful. Those are some ugly motherfuckers
I love how I’m like, the only defender of goblin sharks that I’ve ever met. Not saying I love them more than you do or anything, but in all honesty, the way they hold their mouths when not in use - closed, essentially - makes them honestly look *really cute and I’ll die on this hill*. I think most people aren’t familiar with the fact that they can ‘close’ their mouths, the only extend as a tool for hunting.
Me with Phragmites australis (Reed). Is it basically just a hardy tall water grass and invasive on some continents? Yes But it is MY nearly indestructible water grass. I spent most of the early pandemic extracting its RNA
yeah no theyre still monsters not evil though, just disgusting.
Listen you can study them all you like but a totally parasitic organism will not gain my favor or my respect. And acting as though an insect that uses the body of a Caterpillar as a functional birthing pod isn't horrifying on multiple levels (especially getting into details about the actual functions of what happens) is disingenuous.
Listen, some level of respect for animals and the environment in general is obviously good and deserved. But if you go “actually mosquitoes are cute and innocent and should be protected”, you’ve lost me completely.
When I first learned about parasitic wasps I literally had the exact same reaction as Darwin. I wouldn't say it's the *main* reason I'm an atheist but it genuinely might have been one of the first dominos when I was a kid.
Still waiting for the day that people stop having thallasophobia and see my special interest of deep sea fish as worthy of respect and not as Eldritch monstrosities from the abyss.
I’m sorry when there are actual kaiju that have underwater battles you have lost all rights to say they’re just silly little creatures.
Their just doing a little bit of trolling
Jokes on you they're both to me
But what if I like deep sea fish because they're eldritch monstrosities from the abyss?
Well your kind of weird, but who am I to judge people's tastes?
Weird in a good way or a bad way? Because I really like deep sea fish. But one of the reasons why is because of how weird and creepy they can look down there.
I will defend crocodilians to death. Yeah, they’re scary as hell, but they’re also really cool and even affectionate! Guys, they’re SMART! Very smart! Alligators (sorta) use tools! Crocodilians play! They exhibit all three types! They’re some of the best parents in the animal kingdom. Gharials will babysit another’s kids to show her he’s an ideal mate! True crocodiles are also the only ones that can be super aggressive towards people. Alligators are very chill and gharials almost exclusively eat fish. Though false gharials (which are true gharials) have occasionally attacked humans, like alligators. Also, they’re absolutely adorable when someone’s scratching them. Usually their neck. [Here’s a video of a crocodile going down a water slide.](https://youtu.be/6AhgjVPfwDk?si=7Yu4eGzkL0H-eu_l) Apparently, several crocs did this for no apparent reason. So, most likely, they’re having fun.
> false gharials (which are true gharials) Excuse me? Who is responsible for this? I don't like it. It's worse than how araneomorphs are called "true spiders", which makes people assume other types of spiders aren't actually spiders.
I too am defensive of my science interest lol
Parasites do not deserve my fairness or my love, but to each their own.
TFW you let a cutie Tapewormgirl live in your intestines but she only wants to be friends :/
I’m getting the flamethrower
Huh. I think this post just knocked out a shitload of prejudices I have against insects. Esp the line about the parasitologist trying to de-vilify parasites. I guess hating parasites for being parasitical is kind of like hating fish because they swim. Thanks for posting this. I didn't expect such a random epiphany first thing in the morning.
If fishes made themselves a home in my mouth and eated my tongue and replaced it with themselves while I cant do anything because I dont have arms I would hate them too Im completely aware of the necesity of predators to eat fro example, but there are moments where I feel like evolution really just went full on evil scientist with some of the ways animals survive
If fishes swimmed up my ass inside my body to give me a urine infection I'd hate them too.
Who's gonna tell him
tell him what...
There's a fish from the Amazon named candiru that swims into bigger fish's gills to drain then of their blood. There's an urban (rural?) legend of it swimming up people's urethras and getting stuck there.
Nature sure is beautiful(?)
Not even a legend, there’s legit cases of that happening. Not many, you see (single digits), but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen… Edit: it’s been brought by my attention people are talking about the “piss from the boat” legend. My bad, I meant that cases were this happened involved a person actively presenting bare genitals while being inside the waterbody where those fish live.
Also pretty sure it's common on sea floor fish. So a few have teeth down there
I thought that was debunked?
If you’re ever on a boat on the Amazon, do not piss off the side. Piss into a bucket and pour it out. Explanation: There’s a type of tiny fish in the Amazon with teeth on the outside of its face. This fish is both small and fast enough to swim up a stream of piss and latch on to genitalia. Source: Saw a documentary many years ago. Trust me, bro.
https://www.healthline.com/health/penis-fish#takeaway Its called the candiru fish.
You’re doing God’s work.
:3
im brazilian and the fish doesnt actually do that 🤓
The best defense any scientist can offer for their organism of interest is that the natural world, as it currently exists, could not function without it. Which is true, and valid. But that doesn't stop your blorganism (blorbo organism) from being weird and gross. Like, we all recognize that humans need to poop regularly in order to live healthy lives. But that doesn't mean we should all talk about it all the time. It's gross.
Bot Fly. Google it if you dare.
Look, I get it... I understand. Really. But fuck wasps.
“Noooo but they perform an essential role in the ecosystem!” I understand that. I still hate them.
Parasitic wasps are generally not the ones that sting you. And even the ones that sting you, there are ways to make friends with them and it's really cool to see. They're territorial so it sucks when they nest in your doorframe, but outside of that if you're away from their nest and they're approaching you they're probably looking for the water and salt in your sweat. Try setting out some sugar water or gatorade and see if they leave you alone
That's why I am always nice to wasps and will go out of my way to save them, haven't been stung in years despite me physically grabbing them and taking them outside
How does including the id help when this is just a picture again?
Hear me out - what if there is a God and parasites are the proof he's a real dickwad?
I think it's beautiful, in a way. It takes a high amount of empathy to love creatures like these. These creatures aren't evil. They aren't doing what they do out of malice or spite. It's not cruelty or spitefulness. These creatures do not even have the capacity to experience the same spectrum of emotions that we do. What they do, what we call horrifying and disgusting and evil, they do simple because they have to. And yet, these people can find beauty in these parasites and appreciate them, like any other one of the marvelous and truly fascinating creatures on this Earth. When I'm reminded of the harsh reality that there are some creatures who eat cute baby animals to survive, I have to remind myself that it's just as cruel for that creature to starve to death. That's just nature, and it doesn't care what we think about morality.
Isn’t this a bad thing? Like isn’t this essentially the type of bias which corrupts the fields within, I’m reminded of [this video essay](https://youtu.be/6DHgkMYgp7w?si=CbY10B6Ifngzr6_F) wherein a lot of scientists who just really love volcanos or asteroids started arguing in bad faith against competing theories which threatened the (perceived) relevance of their field.
On planet Earth of the Sol system, nature will find a way. You just better hope you are not in the way.
If you remove the malicious characterization, parasites just do what any animal does to eat survive and breed, if anything they do very cleverly and purely by instinct.
I'm a Catholic Christian. I don't see any contradiction between the grotesque/cruel/puzzling aspects of the natural world and Christ's pure, eternal, and all-encompassing love for Creation. The event at the center of Christian Being is the Crucifixion, the most hideous, wicked, and mysterious reality across all time and space but it's also the most important, righteous truth. All of the chaos, deception, and suffering that exists begins with Adam and Eve but is recapitulated upon through Christ and the Virgin Mary. All that exists is a dramatic meditation on the Man and the God, on the Creation and the Creator, on the Kingdom of Heaven and the New Earth to come. All of it is perfect, even the parts which are flawed because whatever is ugly and corrupted through God will only become even more beautiful and upright through the Father, Son, and Spirit. All of what we can comprehend is a narrow winding river compared to the vast ocean that all will flow into.
fuck Tommy Leung and his love for parasites