If you want to know why people have lost faith in capitalism, this might help

Daphne du Maurier, from The Parasites

Self-indulgent showtime sketches

IT'S FINALLY FUCKING DONE. I'M FINALLY FREE

UNTIL FRAUD COMES OUT

Tumblr shrinks it down pretty bad so please. please. I am begging you. look at the full sized image and zoom in. This art piece made my friends worried for my mental health I need someone to witness the amount of detail and effort I put into this

also the original sketch under the cut bc I think comparing them is really funny

Not A Cat

(Cuterebra buccata, a gorgeous botfly which apparently parasitizes bunnies? So large I thought she was a cicada when I first sighted her!)

One can see how I initially took her for a cicada:

As always, if you're thinking about dropping a comment here which is hating on bugs, move along or get blocked.

head chog

Do y’all know about Frédéric Thomas? He is a French parasitologist who heard a story about crickets in New Zealand leaping into the water even though they can’t swim, and immediately speculated this suicidal behavior was related to behavior manipulation from an internal parasite. This is before neuro-parasitology was a field at all, and before people really put much stock into parasite’s ability to control animal behavior.

Thomas was certain that studying these crickets would be a huge priority for the scientific world given the implications of a parasite controlling an animal’s actions in such an insidious way. Unfortunately, absolutely nobody would fund Thomas’ expedition to study the crickets, and his grants were all declined. In a wild move that showcases the balls to the wall, near- insanity level passion of a biologist, Thomas declared a hunger strike and wrote a letter to the president of France saying he would not eat until someone took the matter seriously and funded his study on the suicidal crickets. I feel like those of us in research can at least a little bit understand this impulse.

Well the French government actually got Thomas’ message and freaked out a bit at the negative publicity that could arise from a crazy worm scientist starving to death. So they send some government bigwigs to the university to pressure Thomas and his department heads into calling an end to the hunger strike. In the flurry of attention that resulted from this, a Swiss billionaire heard about Thomas’ plight and offered to partially fund the study. The French government was happy to get rid of Thomas and contributed funding as well so that Thomas could head to New Zealand to study his suicidal crickets. He was right about the parasites causing the behavior!

The hunger strike debacle is not even the wildest part of this story. I love biology so much

Mosquito on western rainbow boa

Photographed in Ecuador by Matthieu Berroneau

Shared with permission; do not remove credit or re-post!

(Negative comments about mosquitoes will get you blocked.)

hope 1/???

more angst!! i am actually building an au around this comic but I’ve never done aus before so like this is new to me!!!

There are now over 15 million empty homes in the US, and 650,000 homeless per the very bias official numbers, or 23 houses per person

alright, if I was an animal, what animal d’you think I would be. SERIOUS ANSWERS ONLY.

A rooster. A rat. A... a rat. A rat, a rat. You’d be a rat. Jerma, you’re a rat. you’d be a rat... I think you’d be a rat.

(Gayly) I think I’d be a wolf. I think so too... I would be a wolf-lion-hybrid-mix. King of the junjle- junjle but still social, and with it and ferocious

String identified:

agt, a a aa, at aa ’ t . A .

A t. A at. A… a at. A at, a at. ’ a at. a, ’ a at. ’ a at… t ’ a at.

(Ga) t ’ a . t t… a ---. g t - t t ca, a t t a c

Closest match: Schistosoma margrebowiei genome assembly, chromosome: 3 Common name: Blood-fluke

Daphne du Maurier, from The Parasites

Aya Brea of ‘Parasite Eve’ (1998) Art: Tetsuya Nomura

i adore my bloodthirsty lizard so much