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.
That's toxoplasmosis, and it sometimes does harm cats, just more often the other animals that catch it. It's the one that's bad news for pregnant women (and why you should never house marsupials near cats). It at least makes mice less cautious, and reduces their desire to seek cover; I hadn't heard about active cat-seeking, but it wouldn't surprise me.
Don't get me started about vaccines. You know the guy responsible for the original autism-vaccine connection research grossly violated laws regarding use of human subjects, and lost his medical license, right?
geeky
June 30 2010, 18:31:02 UTC 7 years ago
Don't get me started about vaccines. You know the guy responsible for the original autism-vaccine connection research grossly violated laws regarding use of human subjects, and lost his medical license, right?
July 1 2010, 05:08:30 UTC 7 years ago