The other day, I was in Safeway—buying Diet Dr Pepper, naturally—when I heard the guy up ahead of me say something to his friends that I was positive I must have misheard. Specifically, what I heard him say was "and there's this really awesome parasitic wasp that drives its victims like cars." Now, I like parasitic wasps. I am, one might say, unduly fascinated by parasitic wasps. So I tend to assume that when I hear other people bring them up in conversation, I'm hearing them wrong.
I began shamelessly eavesdropping...and wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles, he was talking about insect parasitism! Yay! As the conversation swung toward blood flukes, I interjected to note that blood flukes were probably largely responsible for the evolution of gendered reproduction. He looked, in a word, delighted.
What followed was the largest, rowdiest, happiest discussion of parasite behavior I have ever been involved with outside of a group of my friends. All five of the people involved had read Parasite Rex, and parthenogentic reproduction came up, gleefully.
I think I may have met my male equivalent from a nearby parallel dimension.
Dude, I envy you. The the only kinds of conversations I ever get into at the grocery store are debates at the local Whole Foods where I end up trying not to throttle hyperactive yuppy moms who are convinced vaccines cause autism and lecture me on being selfish for not replicating yet.
"You don't understand because you're not a mommy! And you're not a mommy because you're SELFISH!!!!"
It's enough to make me want to attempt to drown myself or them in organic fruit juice.
Although I did recently learn something very nifty about parasites from my friend Amber (an evolutionary biologist) who sent me a totally neat article about parasites that need cats to reproduce (it doesn't harm the cat) but grow in mice (...it does harm the mouse). Since mice are afraid of cats, the parasite screws with the mouse's brain and makes it absolutely LOVE the scent of cats, which causes the mouse to be caught and eaten by a cat, which allows the parasite to reproduce in the cat's digestive tract or somesuch. Apparently there is a line of thought that this parasite might be responsible for crazy cat ladies and cat hording. Most parasite things freak me out but I thought that was pretty interesting.
There is also a parasite (I'm forgetting which one) that causes frogs to grow extra limbs, which makes them easier for storks and egrets to catch and eat (where the second stage of the parasites life happens in the birds's intestinal tracks.) The frogs catch it from coming in contact with the birds's poop.
geeky
June 30 2010, 17:32:23 UTC 7 years ago
"You don't understand because you're not a mommy! And you're not a mommy because you're SELFISH!!!!"
It's enough to make me want to attempt to drown myself or them in organic fruit juice.
Although I did recently learn something very nifty about parasites from my friend Amber (an evolutionary biologist) who sent me a totally neat article about parasites that need cats to reproduce (it doesn't harm the cat) but grow in mice (...it does harm the mouse). Since mice are afraid of cats, the parasite screws with the mouse's brain and makes it absolutely LOVE the scent of cats, which causes the mouse to be caught and eaten by a cat, which allows the parasite to reproduce in the cat's digestive tract or somesuch. Apparently there is a line of thought that this parasite might be responsible for crazy cat ladies and cat hording. Most parasite things freak me out but I thought that was pretty interesting.
June 30 2010, 18:34:31 UTC 7 years ago
There is also a parasite (I'm forgetting which one) that causes frogs to grow extra limbs, which makes them easier for storks and egrets to catch and eat (where the second stage of the parasites life happens in the birds's intestinal tracks.) The frogs catch it from coming in contact with the birds's poop.
June 30 2010, 21:16:10 UTC 7 years ago