There’s nothing disgusting about any of this. It’s all part of a very beautiful and awe-inspiringly complex system that created itself through evolution.
You want to hear something disgusting. That burger you’re eating contains, get this, ground up cow! And that white stuff is cow breast milk. :rolleyes:
scr4: I’ve heard of the parasite museum, and I’ll go if I’m ever there.
But the 29-foot tapeworm is just scary. Did the doctor use a hand-over-hand pull to get the damn thing out, or did he just use a winch? Not to mention the poor person CARRYING the thing.
Oh, and the url for the parasite Max Torque was describing is http://www.subgenius.com/bigfist/hallscience/X0089_WeirdCritters.html . No pictures, unfortunately, or even a name.
Thank you Twisty for the bizarre images that just went galivanting through my mind. You owe me a new monitor and a new cup of chamomile tea.
Let’s not talk about mushrooms, ok?
I still like them. 
Pets can get any number of kinds of worms. Hookworms, roundworms and tapeworms are all extremely common. They can all be gotten rid of with simple medications, either oral or injections. You may not even see the worms come out in the feces sometimes. I’ve seen very small puppies vomit up or defecate more worms (any kind, including whole tapes) than you would think possible for the pup to contain. I also checked several human medical websites, all said worms were easily taken care of with meds, not one mentioned a more invasive approach. I’m open to more information on this subject.
It’s kind of cool that humans are the only species I can think of (though there are probably others) which consistently nurses off of a different species.
Oh yeah, and that honey you put in your tea? Bee vomit. And did you ever stop to think where eggs come from?
If we really think that nature is disgusting, that’s a sad statement regarding how far removed from nature we have become.
Yes, Nature can offend our sense of aesthetics or our sense of justice. But she’s been around a lot longer than we have, and knows what she’s doing. Have some respect for her, 'coz she’ll be here long after we’re wormfood.
Actually, I never thought of honey as “bee vomit”…
until now.
scratches “honey” off the shopping list
Imuststopreadingthisthread
Imuststopreadingthisthread
I skipped a bit on the tapeworm one. The tapeworm I was talking about has two hosts: humans and pigs. I suppose pigs get the eggs from human faeces, they then get eaten by you.
I forgot to mention the old favourite: the Preying Mantis. These things are so nice. When they mate, the female, which is bigger, rips the male’s head off, and the male keeps copulating while the female eats the male piece by piece.
Yes,nature documentaries are nasty. I heard about some footage that was shot but never shown where a hyaena (or something) had its back legs and body bitten off, and it was crawling around with its intestines hanging out.
Hmm. mushrooms. you know those really expensive dried mushrooms that cost about £80 each in shops? Some of those have all these insects living in them which only come out when forced - ie if the mushroom is heated.
Errr…
Ummmm…
Wonko–Thank you. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to say anything.
And they say nature is disgusting…
the fig thing is why i stopped eating fig newtons. i found out the fig newton excedes the fda’s “bug part” quota. it is allowed to excede by the fda due to the (get ready for this) nature of the fig. apparently removing the bug parts from the fig would result in hardly any fig, so the fda gave it an exemption.
Hamburger! MMMMMMMM! Good. 26 different forms of parasites in the meat alone, benign to humans, much of the very protein made up from around 100 forms of insects the cow consumes while browsing, not to mention around 1500 different forms of bacteria in the warm, raw meat along with the minute germs in the blood. * Delicious!*
Same with rich, scrumptious pork! Only more so because basic pigs eat virtually anything which will not eat them first, even some types of poisonous snakes.
Chicken! Even better. Now enriched with ecoli and staph due to not only being fed their own feces, which is gathered and a portion recycled into their food, but due to sloppy processing at the meat plants. At least 4 different forms of potentially dangerous fungus and bacteria resides in and on raw chicken. Deep fry mine please! I like my fungus crispy.
Humans are the top predators of the Earth, meaning we are omnivores. We eat anything which will not eat us first, including certain forms of dirt. We consume readily various insects, assorted forms of fungus, mold, bacteria and organic poisons with little harm.
Chitosin – the new fat absorber is insect exoskeletons, but we also consume insect parts in all prepared foods. We consume mushrooms, use certain forms of mold to make wine, beer, yogurt and buttermilk with. Mold makes sourdough, and a form is used to breakdown and flavorise expensive meats. Bacteria and mold age and flavor cheeses – though I’m surprised anyone even tried to eat the first limburger. Any alcohol product is an organic poison. We consume gallons of milk and that phlegm buildup afterwards is a very mild allergic reaction to the stuff.
We consume dirt in oysters, clams, some root vegetables and some leafy greens.
In hard times we have eaten sawdust. Our guts are teeming with nasty bacteria, without which we could not digest our foods. Our blood swarms with hundreds of pathogens, to which we have an immunity. A human bite is second only in filth to that of the Komodo Dragon. We excrete solid waste alive with more bacteria than any herbivore. We void liquid that is part water and part poison. Our mouths secrete a caustic organic solvent. Our blood is so rich that it makes an excellent fertilizer. We hold a quantity of major caustic acid in our stomach, designed to rip apart virtually anything organic that touches it.
Those hot peppers you ate in Mexico that seemed to light you up going in and coming out are not as dangerous as the acid in your stomach that you make yourself.
A gland on our liver squirts a concentrated, greasy solution of poisons into our waste products in our intestines, giving them the brown color. This stuff is pure, concentrated toxin! Our livers store up a great supply of a natural chemical, which if taken in a massive dose, will kill one quickly, but without which we die.
We eat quantities of a natural acid for our health. (Vitamin C.) The seeds of some of the fruits we eat have to protect themselves with a jell in order to pass through our systems, unharmed, but most do not make it.
We even eat that which will readily eat us.
Nature may be gross, but we are the ultimate product of nature. We are the Omnivores!
To a science fiction writer, we meet the specifications for a nearly invulnerable, hideous monster.
Damnit. Nukeman seems to have beat me to it.
And MoonGazer, that was awesome
Maria Callas, the opera singer, had one and lost a considerable amount of weight…though she did not get it intentionally. She was fond of steak tartare.
Disgusting parasite joke alert -
A man goes to the doctor, and the doc says he has a tapeworm. “No problem” the doc says, “come back tomorrow with an apple and a lemon cookie, and we’ll start treatment”
Next day the guy is back, and the doc shoves the apple up his ass, followed by the lemon cookie. The guy is a little perterbed by this, but the doc says “Trust me, and tomorrow, come back with another apple and a lemon cookie”.
Next day, the guy comes back, and gets the same treatment, an apple up the ass, followed by the cookie. “Doc,” the guy says, “I can’t take this any more.”
“I know what I’m doing.”, the doc says, “Tomorrow bring me an apple and a hammer.”
So the guy comes back the next day, really worried. The doc shoves the apple up his ass again. The guy yells “Doc! you ain’t going to put that hammer up there, are you!?”
“Be quiet, and don’t move!” the doc says, and he waits for about a minute.
The tapeworm pokes his head out and says “Hey, where’s my lemon cookie?”
WHAM!
More seriously, Discover magazine ran an article about disgusting parasites just a couple of months ago. In addition to the snail-infester that someone already described, was this one -
The pest spends part of it’s life cycle in the gut of a cow. After it gets pooped out, sooner or later an ant walks thru the cowpie. The bugger then takes up residence in the ant, and actually takes control of its brain, causing the ant to crawl to the top of a blade of grass and just sit there. Whereupon a cow might come along and eat it …
I read that article and was amazed and disgusted.
The thing that really got me in regards to the ant, was that the parasite would put the ant on top of the grass at night. During the day it would do all of it’s normal antly things, then go back up the grass stalk at night until it was eaten.
It seems that if the ant just sat at the top of the grass stalk all day, there was a good chance it would die (IIRC, it cited the ant getting cooked by the sun), thereby killing the parasite too.
Weird shit.
sorry orion, I didn’t mean to take all the glory
Moongazer - you seem to be obsessed with acids - Sulphuric acid is the only really bad acid (It burns through paper and stuff) and the acid in your stomach is Hydrochloric. The stuff is only really there because the enzymes in your stomach work best at a low pH. Alkalis (or bases) are worse. Conc. Sodium Hydroxide will melt glass.
rocking chair - whats a fig ‘newton’?
I’t ok And I know you asked rocking chair, but I’m gonna answer anyway: a Fig Newton is this cookie sort of thing, they kinda look like little Nutrigrain bars, except they have a fig filling. I’ve never had any before, but I’ve seen the pictures on the boxes.