I invision a garden filled with stinky plants that smell like sex, and featured at a botanical garden. Yuck. I know they would have visitors too, all looking for bragging rights.
Yeah, that was what creeps me out most about the snail trematode I linked to - apparently, it will make the snail head for the highest visible place so that it is more visible to the birds that will rip its pulsating wormy tentacle off.
Oh, and these guys are cuddly. I loved when the webcomic* indietits* had one as a guest star.
Confession: I have a vulgar garden. When it blooms this summer, I will enclose pics. It is full of calla lillies ,peter peppers., and clitoria. It is planted around my front door, and visitors take note, look perplexed, then choose to say nothing. Cracks me up.
On the subject of parasites exerting mind control, I recently came across a video of this charming fungus that makes ants crawl to high places and clamp on. The fungus then eats the ant’s brain and sends a fruting body out of its head.
I am glad I’m not an ant.
Note to self…view future Cervaise Links with a very skeptical eye.
(Hey…at least you warned me.)
I’ve clicked most of the links and have not been severely grossed out. I even looked up that video of the horse abcess and mostly thought it was cool (and felt bad for the horse). I think caterpillars and worms are cool. That potato bug is really cute. The surinam toad is fascinating. Silverfish are a little bit icky in the way they slither around, but it’s pretty neat how when you squish one with some toilet paper it just turns into dust.
I think I’d be freaked out if I saw some of these things in person (like the vinegaroon - which doesn’t look that much scarier than a scorpion, IMO), but they don’t gross me out. Freakiness and grossness are different. I’m freaked out by feeling bugs crawl on me, but I don’t really think they’re gross. I’m super freaked out by things that could bite or sting me, but I don’t think they’re gross - I think they’re mean.
Gross, to me, are dead/decaying animals. But clean skeletons aren’t gross. I don’t think I’d be grossed out if I saw a maggot hanging out on a leaf or something, but I’d definitely be grossed out if I saw a million of them munching on a dead animal. Or on a living person’s leg (even though I think the idea of using them for treatment is pretty nifty).
Dog puke is also pretty gross. So is dog poop, especially when you have to pick up a hundred piles of it after spring thaw. Maybe I’m just grossed out by things that smell nasty. But I think I’d be intrigued by those plants that smell like sex, so who knows.
I can ignore any indecent resemblance in all except the Peter Peppers. You can’t ignore that, but it’s phalic not gross. Here’s the phalic Dog Stinkhorn and the Clathrus. Fungus link
Chum you reminded me of something else gross.
Slime mold.
Well, at least two of those are actually sex organs. And I think calla lilies are shamelessly-beautiful. The peter peppers, though? snicker
Some of the other things in this thread though… :: shudder ::
The worst things I have encountered in person, though:
a) Taking stuff to the compost bin at a place where they composted meat. The smell was pretty bad, but then I opened the lid. “Hmm. I don’t remember having rice in the past couple of days. Wait a minute… it’s moving. That’s not rice!”
:: dump ::
:: slam ::
:: run ::
b) Scene: a rocky hill on a peninsula in the Pacific, just offshore of the beach in Long Beach Provincial Park on Vancouver Island. It’s joined to the beach by a sandy spit.
My best friend at the time and I are camping on the beach, and we decide to go exploring on this island. We start climbing the cliff. Then:
squish
I’d stepped on a banana slug. Banana slugs live in the rainforest, start at about the diameter of your thumb, and look like overripe bananas. I almost fell off the cliff because the slug guts lubricated my footing.
:: ick ::
:: ick ::
Then there are catalpa trees. My grandmother had one growing on her front lawn in Peterborough, Ontario. They have gorgeous flowers that look like chandeliers. Some time later, though, come the seed pods: long thin things the diameter of your little finger. They look like completely-overripe bananas, dangle down, catch in your hair.
(Inflatable Cow: band name! I would have thrown a rock at it as well. But dear Og, the poor guy.)
See, now that’s actually kind of cool. No disgusting slimy rotty stuff. And around 3:54, when you can see the mouse’s jawbone start to emerge, it’s clear that the centipede is really scarfing stuff down…
I think I ate something that looked like a slice of that at a Korean restaurant in Newmarket once.
I was expecting slimy, but it was actually crunchy and pretty tasty. If you got over the looks.
The catalpa pods are about 1.5 feet long on the trees I’ve seen, and dangerous. They have a super strong structure, and can fall from the great heights like a Jart. I can imagine them go through the soft spot in the skull of an adolesent easily. Also don’t look up or you’ll poke your eye out.
Being from Wisconsin I can’t let this go. Steers are male cattle with a schlong and not nuts. A cow is not and can’t be even if it loses it’s utters. I checked the spelling of schlong. I should have known it was derived from the Germanic word for snake.
But not udders. 
You want I should do both!
You were probably eating a slice of lotus root, which is popular in Asian cooking. You’re right, they are pretty tasty - kind of crunchy and starchy. And they have a pretty pattern of lacy holes running the length of the tuber.
The lotus seed pod upthread is another thing. They never bothered me before, but after reading this thread, now I’ll always associate them with the tadpole-holes on a Surinam Toad’s back. Thanks, guys!
Has this been mentioned yet? I just remembered Dioctophyma renale, the giant kidney worm. It’s the largest nematode parasite of domestic animals and in rare cases can infect humans. When it develops in its host it completely takes over one kidney (most often the right one) so that all that is left is the shell of the kidney with the giant worm curled up in it. We learned how to identify the parasite egg in urine but I’ve seen it only once in 24 years, it was a long time ago. Since the patient was seen on emergency and went elsewhere for follow-up I never heard if they removed the kidney or euthanized the animal.
Okay, now that’s digusting.
I can’t stand those things. They look gross and they taste like all the sugar in the world were compressed into it. Sugar = good, all the sugar in the world in one bite = bad. I normally wouldn’t have even tasted it but my mother kept getting them for me for Easter despite my complaints and wouldn’t stop until I actually tasted one. Blecch.
Regarding the peter peppers; so how do they taste?
Just what in Gods name is exactly HAPPENING in that picture??? I’m so confused!
And where there are slime molds, there may be slime mold beetles. Like Bushi, Cheneyi, and Rumsfeldi
Enjoy,
Steven
David Attenborough has an documentary on this slug and its mating ritual. I believe it was in the episode on silkspinners in the series on insects. Anyway, the slugs hang together on a thread they have made together. In an intricate dance that lasts hours, each one leaves a sperm packet somewhere in that silken/slimey pod that the other one takes in itself by crawling through it. Or something.
Slime moulds are fascinating.Slime moulds are truly the closest thing to aliens we have on Earth. They are neither bacteria nor fungus. The best way to describe them is like a fungus that can walk. Or a coral organism without its shell, walking on land. Did you know slime moulds can solve puzzels?