Apologies to BK. You were right about gay marriages.

[loinburger]

God intended for this botfly larva to eat the skin and muscle on this poor sap's scalp (or wherever the larva happened to have hatched), but the stupid thing got greedy and ate the guy's brain instead. Hey botfly larva, God designed you to eat your host's muscle and skin, not your host's brains!!!

[SlowwHand]

Well, although I don't condemn sexual preference, it does say Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.

[loinburger]

This hookworm is taking a bite out of somebody's intestine. Unlike tapeworms which passively sit in your guts absorbing nutrients (occasionally swimming upstream so they won't be crapped out), hookworms instead chomp right into the intestinal lining. This is dangerous for them because if your blood clots in their mouths then they'll starve to death, so they come equipped with a local anti-coagulant (they don't want to thin all of your blood, otherwise you'd bleed to death and then they'd be out of a meal).

[Imran Siddiqui]

Not every Christian considers the Genesis creation story to be literally true (including the Catholic Church *cough* Ben). Heck, Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 contradict each other!

And the Gospels only contain a small record of what Jesus said. I think its dangerous and presumptuous to expand too far from His words as to what we think He would say. He said love your neighbor as he was yourself and I think that applies to homosexuals as well.

[loinburger]

The guinea worm has a very specific infection vector - it lays its eggs in a pond, and when the eggs hatch the larva infect water fleas. Humans drink the tainted water, and when the flea is dissolved by your stomach acid the larva will burrow out of your digestive tract and into your muscles, growing up to 3 feet long. When its eggs are ready it will burrow to the surface of your skin, shedding eggs as it goes; the eggs irritate your immune system, causing an extremely painful burning sensation. To relieve the burning people will bathe the infected limb in a pond, and then the guinea worm releases the rest of its eggs out of its mouth, allowing the cycle to continue. The cure is to slowly pull the guinea worm out over the course of a few days (often wrapping it around a stick, causing some to suspect that this is the source of the caduceus) - if you pull out the worm too quickly then it will break off, and the resulting infection will probably be fatal. The Gates foundation among others are fighting the guinea worms by such means as filtered straws - if you filter out the water fleas from drinking water then you can't become infected by a guinea worm.

[loinburger]

If you want to see a fifty-pound scrotum, then do a google image search for "elephantiasis." This disease is the result of a parasitic worm scarring the lymphatic system.

[Ben Kenobi]

Not every Christian considers the Genesis creation story to be literally true (including the Catholic Church *cough* Ben). Heck, Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 contradict each other!

So you don't believe the part where Genesis says, "he made them male and female" is to be interpreted literally?

Okay. Good luck with that.

Oh, and why is Loin spamming pictures of his porn? TMI dude.

[Theben]

Too bad it only affects the lymphatic system... just imagine the potential profits if someone could make affect penises.

[loinburger]

Oh, and why is Loin spamming pictures of his porn? TMI dude.

You're the one who brought up the need for humans to reproduce sexually rather than asexually, you sick ****

[Theben]

Just pretend BK isn't between loin's and my posts.

[Imran Siddiqui]

He made male and female humans (most likely through theistic evolution)... doesn't necessarily mean homosexuality was declared out of bounds. Or that a particular Adam and Eve really existed.

[loinburger]

There are several species of wasp that parasitize caterpillars - they'll lay their eggs in the caterpillar, the eggs hatch and the larvae eat the caterpillar from the inside out, then the larvae spin their cocoons and abandon the almost-dead caterpillar. Many times they will also alter the caterpillar's physiology, causing them to grow larger (to provide more food for the larvae) and to generate more sugars than fats (easier for the larvae to eat) - usually the caterpillar would be storing fat to pupate, but there won't be any need for that since it will be eaten first.



One species in particular takes a long time for its larvae to mature (about a month), and if another wasp lays its eggs on the caterpillar during this time then the larvae already present will be stunted or won't survive due to resource depletion. The wasp therefore lays two eggs on the caterpillar, one male and one female. After only a few days the eggs will split into several thousand clones, and some of these will immediately hatch to form infertile soldier larvae whose job it is to kill any other wasp's larvae on the caterpillar; when the reproductive larvae hatch they are bloated mostly-immobile (they can only ride the caterpillar's blood stream) food absorption devices, but the soldiers protect them - until enough time passes that the soldiers decide that it is time to cull the herd, killing and eating almost all of the male larvae (biologists found one caterpillar with two thousand female larvae and one male larvae), because you don't need very many males to impregnate a whole lot of females and the presence of too many males will deplete the resources for the female. The reproductives will then burrow to the surface, spin cocoons, and fly off when the caterpillar dies. The soldier larvae die with the caterpillar.

[SlowwHand]

Imran, according to the edition you have in your sig line:

[17] And to Adam he said, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife,
and have eaten of the tree
of which I commanded you,
`You shall not eat of it,'
cursed is the ground because of you;
in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
[18] thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you;
and you shall eat the plants of the field.
[19] In the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread
till you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken;
you are dust,
and to dust you shall return."
[20] The man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.

[loinburger]

Speaking of gay sex, blood flukes have been known to engage in homosexual behavior. And they're monogamous, too! If the scientists separate a blood fluke from its mate (whether of the same or opposite gender) then the separated blood flukes will quickly reform their original pair bond, and will never form a pair bond with another prospective mate.

[Theben]

I'm surprised you haven't posted about the wasp whose larvae mind controls its spider host yet.