Something about this reminds me about Evangelion?
There it is
Man, me and the several billion gut bacteria I coexist with don’t like this at all!
Can someone explain please
The snail has been taken over by parasitic flatworms that control it to seek out exposed spots and pulsate inside of their eye stalks to get eaten by a bird and enter the next stage of their life cycle, which they spend by living in the birds cloaca and spreading their eggs via feces.
Are the birds negatively affected by the wormies?
Their eyes don’t pulse out of their heads, if that’s what you mean.
It’s a parasite that causes snails to get to higher places and get eaten by birds where it reproduces in their digestive system.
God damn, Nature. You scary.
nature is metal
Nature is everything
That is fucking gross!
Trust me. You don’t want to know. It’s fucked up parasite shit. On the same level as the fungus that takes over ants.
Your right, I looked it up and I wish I didn’t
His right or your right?
Yes.
image your best friend becomes a zombie…
Like Shaun of the Dead? That wasn’t too bad
Fungus takes over ants
That’ll be Ophiocordyceps unilateralis. It invades the ant’s brain and causes it to leave it’s nest and go somewhere better for the fungus then wait to die as the fungus errupts from its head.
If we’re talking about nightmare mind control horrors, we shouldn’t forget our old friend toxiplasmosis gondii, which infects rodents, then alters their behaviour so they’re not afraid of cats, in particular. This leads to the rodent getting eaten so the parasite can infect the cat, which is the only place it can reproduce, before spreading from the cat faeces back into the rodent population. It can also infect humans where there is evidence that it affects behavior too, particularly making males more careless of rules.
Sleep well.
This is a good place to leave this link to a nice folk song about parasites that has a verse on Toxoplasma of course
I hate you now!
Oh come now, there are so many more interesting parasites that mess with your brain for their own benefit; Trypanosoma which messes with your sleep before slowly killing you, Naegleria fowleri that just straight up eats your brain and a host of others that do weird and wonderful things.
Look at it this way; before you were surrounded by mind controlled ants, suicidal rodents and other such horrors without even knowing it. Now you do know about them. What’s that? I’m really not helping? Ok, I’ll stop.
😂
And don’t forget the slow and almost certain agonising death of rabies for which we have no cure
Ah rabies, a delightful little horror that makes it so painful to swallow that victims will flinch at the mere sight of water, then drives them into a frenzied rage in an attempt to spread through bite wounds. It looks like they’ve developed a couple of protocols (Milwaukee and Recife Protocols) that give the victim a chance, even if mot a good one. They both involve an induced coma so that you don’t attack anyone, so that’s fun.
Get your vaccinations folks, running around foaming at the mouth and attacking anyone near you isn’t a good way to go out.
That’s why momma always reminded us:
Be kind, they may harbor a latent Toxoplasma gondii infection that could subtly influence their behavior and personality.
so that’s why guys who like cats are generally friendly anarchists
based parasite makes dudes anarchists
And those little things might make you kinky. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1474704916659746 (One of my favorit papers because a friend of mine got them)
Wait they can effect humans now?!?! And they’re capable of understanding rules enough to get us to actively break them!?!?!?
I don’t think they understand ‘rules’, rather they mess with the brain structures that control self regulation. It’s believed that around 30-50% of the human population may have a T. gondii infection, with a corresponding link to other diseases. High levels may also go some way to explaining the prevalence of high risk behaviors in certain areas, although proving a correlation is challenging due to confounding factors.
It’s a thing that exists in real life that was essentially used as the base premise (but for humans) in The Last Of Us.
tl:dr; nightmare stuff
Oh Carl’s still there. In perpetual agony.
This shit creeps me out so much.
Looked it up, and I think I’ve had enough internet for today
I can already guess that it’s a parasite that takes control of the hosts body. truly is the worst type of parasite
It also crawls into the snail’s eyestalks and starts dancing in the snail’s eyes
parasitic stripper. it just strips its hosts control of its own body and starts dancing
Iirc is to attract birds so it can infect the bird and use it to reproduce. After the bird has eaten the parasite out of the snail’s eyeballs, the snail can often regenerate and keep living as usual. This is what I recall from a YouTube video at least ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
just a little dancin’. boogie woogie woogie.
No no no no no
Did someone say Boogie Woogie?
Guys am I the one not getting it or being insensitive toward the snails or is this just the classical “mildly alters behavior of intermediate host in order to spread to host more easily” again?
Jesus fuck the snails LIVE? What a wild article.
Beaten eaten is a mercy at that point.
The birds don’t even eat the snails, just the eyes. They grow back and the snail is just fine apparently.
“Ah jeeze I’m blind on a leaf again! That’s the last time I eat bird shit!” says the snail, actively meandering it’s way towards a particularly appetizing pile of parasite-laden bird shit.
Clearly I didn’t read it closely enough! You just know there are snails that have their eyes eaten regularly.
I may just have became desensitized to these things over the years, but if I could choose between having my eyes plucked out or dying I’d certainly choose the former, and that’s not even with my eyes being capable of regenerating.
Also the boogie-woogie they do is very grotesque but it’s not particularly scary either for me.
Oh oh oh oh no oh no
The GIF is interesting, fun and disturbing, and so is the article if you scroll further. Highly recommended read.
Its memorizing. Seconding the article recommendation.
*mesmerizing