Gruesome parasitic wasps surprisingly diverse
The large number of wasps within the Central and South American forests indicates that they play a significant role in the breaking down of dead wood.
Feline Friends Are Dangerous For Your Health
Cats are known to be independent, low maintenance and calm creatures. However, in the United Kingdom cats are posing a severe health threat, infecting 350,000 individuals with the parasite Toxoplasma gondii.
Toxoplasma is a single-celled parasite. It causes a disease called toxoplasmosis, a common disease among 10 to 20 percent of the U.K.’s population. Many individuals who contract the parasite are not in any immediate threat, but the impact can be fatal to women who are pregnant and individuals who have immune deficiencies.
California’s Unspoken Health Problem: Brain Parasites
Sunnyvale, California is a town 40 miles outside of San Francisco, in the Bay Area. As in most of California, the weather is mild, and the winters are short, even sometimes warm. On December 20, Sara Alvarez took her youngest child for a walk in the park in town. As daylight faded, Alvarez lost feeling in her right leg, then her left foot. Her body became numb, and she became weak. At 10:15 pm, her husband drove her to a hospital in Redwood City, about 20 minutes away from their town. There, over the course of Christmas, doctors batted around diagnoses: tumor, cancer. Finally, Alvarez received a brain scan that revealed the truth: neurocysticercosis, a calcified tapeworm in her brain.
Majority of World’s Diseases Come From Animals, Report Says
The overwhelming majority of illnesses contracted by humans are “zoonotic,” which means that they come from animals, a new study reports.
Approximately 60 percent of all infectious diseases are zoonotic, and 75 percent of emerging diseases are zoonotic, accounting for about 2.4 billion human illnesses and 2.2 million human deaths worldwide annually. Even more surprisingly, it is a select 13 that currently cause the most harm.
Doctor pulls 5-inch live worm from man’s eye in India
The man was suffering for more than 2 weeks with redness and irritation before the doctor pin-pointed the threadlike creature under a microscope.
pain bodies, as Eckhart Tolle calls them
devils & demons, as most religions call them
the shadow self, as Carl Jung calls it
That’s a tarantula. It’s been colonized by cordyceps, a fungus that “invades and eventually replaces the host tissue.” I’m not sure what the temperature/climate effect will be on this fungus - hit me up if you know, here.
There’s an epic Reddit thread, here. In this gross video, David Attenborough explains how the fungus works (not for the squeamish).
Via BoingBoing. Follow Climate Adaptation.
Childhood obesity linked to poor performances in math
Along with affecting well-being and social skills, a new study reports that the rising obesity epidemic also has an impact on academics.
Hmm, now why oh why might obesity and academic ability be related hmm? Might there be reasons other than those presented in the article? I think so…
Turbo-charged parasitic mites spread bee-killer virus
This is interesting, the presence of a particular type of mite causing a dramatic increase in the presence of a particular type of virus… hmm..
I noticed this in the comments:
Research shows that the varroa mite might only be the external
feature of an imbalance in the life of a bee hive. The good news today is that
European and now North American, Californian- and Canadian beekeepers are experiencing surprising and encouraging results by using a holistic approach aimed at reintroducing a healthy ecological equilibrium in hives, so bees once again can find the conditions that are appropriate for them.
From a macrobiotic viewpoint, this sort of thinking is absolutely correct. The presence of any sort of invading entity is largely symptomatic of some level of imbalance within the organism. Humans (or any other creature) do not fall ill unless the conditions within their body(ies) contribute toward illness.
Think about it… the “world” within us functions the same as the world outside of us - what happens to an organism if you destroy it’s habitat? It dies… and what happens to organisms living in a beneficial habitat? They thrive.
So then, why are the incidences of all sorts of bacteria and viruses on the rise around the world hmm?
New study is a further testament to the hardiness of the water bear
The water bear is the cockroach of microbes; they nearly always pull through when researchers throw them into Armageddon-like conditions. Now it seems that even their unborn young have unprecedented endurance.
The microscopic animals called water bears already have quite a number of accomplishments under their belts. In experiments, they’ve survived the vacuum of space, large doses of radiation, extreme heat, extreme cold, and extreme pressure, giving scientists cause to believe that the little guys could potentially live on other planets and weather long journeys across space…
But to pull this off, they’d have to reproduce. Scientists have now exposed water bear eggs to three of these stressors—extreme temperature, vacuum, and a dose of radiation so strong that exposure to even a fraction of it would kill a human in days. They found that provided the eggs are given a chance to dehydrate themselves and go dormant, surprising numbers that survive: more than 70% of eggs for the temperature test, and more than 50% for the radiation test, while vacuum-exposed eggs hatched at similar rates as control eggs.
‘Getting naked’ helps water fleas ditch pesky parasites
Since the molting process can remove parasites, they’re under intense pressure to infect their host before the process begins.
