The gills and heart in many (likely all) parasitic males remain unfused and unatrophied after fusion. Often there is also a hole in the attachment point which allows water to flow into the mouth.
Ah! Thank you for correcting me on that- I thought it got more extreme in some fringe cases! I do wonder whatâs going on with this fused Neoceratias, though. Unfortunately I canât remember where I got this figure fromâŚ
I remember finding an absolutely gorgeous beetle just before lunch and completely losing my appetite in the process of trying to ID it. I present to you the burying beetles, Nicrophorus:
The prospective parents begin to dig a hole below the carcass. While doing so, and after removing all hair from the carcass, the beetles cover the animal with antibacterial and antifungal oral and anal secretions, slowing the decay of the carcass and preventing the smell of rotting flesh from attracting competition. The carcass is formed into a ball and the fur or feathers stripped away and used to line and reinforce the crypt, where the carcass will remain until the flesh has been completely consumed. The burial process can take around 8 hours. Several pairs of beetles may cooperate to bury large carcasses and then raise their broods communally.
The female burying beetle lays eggs in the soil around the crypt. The larvae hatch after a few days and move into a pit in the carcass which the parents have created. Although the larvae are able to feed themselves, both parents also feed the larvae in response to begging: they digest the flesh and regurgitate liquid food for the larvae to feed on, a form of progressive provisioning. This probably speeds up larval development. It is also thought the parent beetles can produce secretions from head glands that have anti-microbial activity, inhibiting the growth of bacteria and fungi on the vertebrate corpse.)
At an early stage, the parents may cull their young. This infanticide functions to match the number of larvae to the size of the carcass so that there is enough food to go around.
(Copied from the Wikipedia page âBurying beetleâ)
Itâs a bit of a rollercoaster, from the gruesome burying process to the fascinating parental care to the infanticide. Still a good-looking beetle (the one I observed had some beautiful iridiscence) providing great environmental services but I mean the burrow is even called a cryptâŚ
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Sexual cannibalism is a boon for the males, honestly! For a lot of temperate mantids they have no future anyway at the end of the season when adults start to mate, so its better to die nourishing your mate and by proxy ensuring the success of your offspring than to die from the cold or a lack of prey and then just get eaten by scavenging isopods and springtails
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Decapitating flies:
https://www.wired.com/2013/12/absurd-creature-of-the-week-this-fly-burrows-into-an-ants-brain-then-pops-its-head-off/
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Parasitic wasps laying their eggs in the babies of other parasitic wasps which are already laid in the babies of other animals. Always reminds me of this album : Pregnant babies, pregnant with pregnant babies.
e.g. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/90943799
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Cetopsis coecutiens and Cetopsis candiru are Cetopsid catfish that specialize in carrion, and things that are just about to become carrion, ecologically important scavengers.
You know that pop-culture idea of piranhas in your head? Real piranhas are maybe some of the most timid, shy weenie fish out there, but Cetopsis are the real deal. Theyâll even go after large megafaunaâs corpses and have been recorded feeding on drowned humans
a video of C. coecutiens feeding on a tilapia fillet
C. candiru has no close relation to the bloodsucking trichomycterids (Vandellia sp.) of the same name though. Despite being famous for reportedly swimming up urethras all of that is entirely bs, though they ARE one of the most ecologically weird catfish out there, being blood-feeding ectoparasites that locate larger fish visually and probably through lateral line as well (rather than olfactorily) and feed on the gills
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I forget which nature show I was watching, but it had a piece about island populations of red deer biting the heads off of unfledged chicks for calcium.
âOn Foula, Shetland, sheep were observed biting off the legs, wings or head of unfledged young Arctic terns. Large numbers of tern chicks and a few Arctic skua chicks were found with amputations characteristic of these attacks by sheep. On Rhum, Inner Hebrides, red deer were watched biting the heads off manx shearwater chicks and occasionally also chewing the shearwatersâ legs and wings to excise bone. Killing of birds and the selective ingestion of bone-rich parts by ruminants has not previously been widely documented. It is presumably a response to mineral deficiencies in the vegetation, and it may only occur in rare situations where ruminants feed on mineral-deficient vegetation on which there are dense colonies of ground-nesting birds.â
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I find many phylogenetic trees to be visually gory.
Ha, you got me on the linguistics (I took several precautions to avoid mixing up slander w libel and yet somehow still ended up doing so).
Anyways.
Irrational reaction? Most certainly. It is definitely capable of inflicting Pain⢠but whenever itâs not attacking hosts itâs a huge coward. I literally failed to photograph one in Arizona because it was too scared of me to even land on a flower.
You might as well express more fear at a large strawberry for the unlikely choking hazard it poses (itâs bigger than any Pepsis, too!) The wasp doesnât even kill people, can you say the same for a fruit in your airway?
Thanks for the cetopsids! If you hadnât I was going to mention them myself.
Do note that even temperate Tenodera males are apparently subject to strong selection pressure not to be eaten. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5711982/
https://www.academia.edu/download/47808812/lelito2006mantidcanibalism.pdf
Oh, I take photos of local enormous wasps, but it does not mean inwardly I am not fighting fleeing with all my being. I am not sure why larger wasps elicit a flight urge in me but it is involuntary.
Wild coincidence that you mention fruit. Having had an extreme and widespread reaction to urushiol, I have been advised to strictly avoid mangoes (cannot explain the chemical similarity but I trust the autoimmunologist). Mangoes (why will it not accept the spelling âmangosâ?) are a favorite of others in the household and not known to jump, fly, or attack, but nonetheless I find myself guarded if anyone is eating one in a room with me. (That one I know the basis of, obviously.)
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See? Fruits are way more dangerous! Unlike parasitoids they donât even have the decency to run away before attacking their threats!
Cheesy nonsense aside itâs an even bigger coincidence that I had been half-expecting you to mention mango dermatitis for some reason.
âŚLest we go on too wide a tangent: and then there is Nepenthes ampullaria, which isnât very good at murder but loves to be defecated on.
Ooh yeah thats neat. Wonder how much other factors play into it though (will temperature make them less avoidant of hungry females? Correlating with the end of season and less prey availability, since Iâm assuming cannibalism avoidance is mostly so they have more of a chance to mate with multiple females. If its still the peak of the season figures that youâd wanna avoid starving females for multiple reasons beyond just not being able to mate anymore)
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I present to you Treponema pallidum ssp. pertenue. Also known as yaws. The bacteria that will literally eat your face:
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I was not.
Oceanic Anglerfishes (T. Pietsch) notes even fused neo has well-developed gills. It is suspected to continue respiring after fusion by pumping water in and out of the opercular opening, without needing to inhale through the mouth.
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Thatâs super cool! I have the entire thing saved on my computer- I really should give the section about fused males a closer readâŚ
Agreed. While it isnât the prettiest thing, it is much better than what would happen without it.
Werewolves.
Seriously. You figure, back in Medieval times, when wolves had not yet been eradicated, villagers knew that wolves didnât normally come into villages. But a rabid wolf would. So here is a creature that appears to be a wolf, but it isnât acting like a normal wolf. It comes into the village and ferociously attacks people at random. Maybe they drive it off; maybe they kill it and get rid of the body quickly. But the nightmare isnât over.
A few days later, the people who were bitten start behaving in the same way. It appears that they are becoming the same kind of monster. Probably they are killed, too, for the sake of public safety.
So, âA werewolfâs victims become werewolvesâ is just a Medieval way of saying that a rabid wolfâs victims become rabid.
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