Blasphemy Week: Pustulated Carrion Beetle.

What could possibly be worse than the Irukandji? It's really hard to beat an invisible, tentacled blob of poison when it comes to blasphemy. I really hope none of you are eating anything while reading this. This is...icky.

Source.

The Pustulated Carrion Beetle (Nicrophorus pustulatus) is almost exactly what it sounds like: a beetle that mates and lays eggs on carrion, i.e. a corpse. The pustulated carrion beetle, however, ups the ante from mating on corpses to regular brood parasitism. It is native to North America, including much of the U.S. and Canada.

"Brood parasitism" does not involve any internal squick. No, this is parasitism done outside of the body, which actually opens itself up to more horror. Basically, "brood parasitism" is when an animal is forced to raise another animal's young - knowingly or not. Probably the most well-known example of this is the cuckoo bird, who has brood parasitism so down-pat that cuckoos will attack birds that refuse to raise their young. N. pustulatus is the pimp of brood parasitism, letting its young be reared by a number of insect species...oh, and snakes. 

Source.

Now, I realize not many people are sympathetic to snakes. A lot of you probably think that snakes are terrible parents, leaving their young as soon as they're out of the eggs. This is not necessarily true; quite a few snakes, most notably Burmese pythons, are very protective of their clutches and may even raise the temperature around their eggs with muscular contractions. King cobras build nests. (In species where the snakes give live birth, well, there's considerable parental investment already.) Point is, as creatures who do tend to young, we should be terrified.

N. pustulatus is the first known insect brood parasite of a vertebrate, in this case the Black Rat Snake (Elaphe obsoleta) and a few other species (including the Gray Rat Snake, which is becoming endangered). The beetle lays her eggs directly proportionately to the amount of eggs in momma rat snake's nest (so no, it never wipes out a nest). Unaware that her babies are literally being devoured from the inside-out, the rat snake guards her nest while the beetle tends her larvae alongside. Look on the bright side: the beetles don't have a mafia.

If the idea of finding beetle larvae in snake eggs is not unholy enough to warrant a spot in this week, the implications of it sure are. Imagine a brood parasite of, say, humans along the lines of what these beetles do to snakes. (Before you say anything about that being impossible, there are wasps that lay eggs inside caterpillars; human skin would be no issue, and this is all hypothetical anyways.) You're welcome.

Blasphemy Week: Golden Lanceheads.

Y'know how I keep saying "if you want to stop the exotic animal trade, stop humans from living there?" It turns out there is indeed a place where humans are not allowed, and that still doesn't stop people from taking venomous, hermaphroditic snakes off the island.

Wait, what?

Bothrops insularis, or the golden lancehead, is found on exactly one island in the entire world: Ilha da Queimada Grande, located off the coast of Sao Paulo, Brazil. It eats birds and lizards as an adult, and is occasionally cannibalistic. The island supposedly gets its name from a plotted banana plantation that did not go through thanks to one very obvious thing: There is at least one snake for every square meter of the place.

The golden lancehead is the only species of snake on this island. What it lacks in biodiversity it makes up for in sheer numbers. Locals say that there are 5 snakes per square meter on that island. Discovery Channel says there is really only one. The point is, everywhere you turn, there's a snake. It's amazing that good pics of this thing exist; most people would probably drop their cameras.

Think the brown tree snakes are more terrifying? Golden lanceheads are highly venomous. The snakes' closest relative is the jararaca, another lancehead whose venom's ACE inhibitors have recently been used in medicine to treat hypertension. The golden lancehead's venom is at least 5 times as potent as the jararaca's, and the fastest-acting of any lancehead. Luckily, no bites have been reported...yet.

Unless you have a deathwish or are a herpetologist, DO NOT GO HERE. (Source)

Oh, and no humans are allowed on the island. Period. The Brazilian Navy will arrest you if you are there without a waiver. The population is said to consist of exactly one human in a lighthouse and the occasional herpetologists that get waivers to go on the island. Even the natives avoid this place. There are no human settlements there except to warn people that they might land upon an island of venomous snakes. Lovely.

A lot of golden lanceheads are also intersexed. In not-so-polite terms, they're shemales, hermaphrodites, or chicks with dicks. They contain the sexual organs of both sexes, which usually results in infertility. Usually. Apparently some can breed, but regardless, this questionable sexuality is the result of extreme inbreeding.

In case you haven't guessed: Yes, these snakes are critically-endangered. The island is still farm potential, but as we all know, island ecosystems are fragile. That includes island ecosystems containing creatures of hermaphroditic, scaly death. They're terrifying, but goodness knows what'll happen if this one snake gets taken out of the great Jenga tower called nature.

And yet we somehow have photographs of these beautiful hellsnakes, as well as a few specimens in captivity. OK, fine- the reptile lover in me is showing her scales. I do, however, realize that an island full of poisonous snakes would be terrifying to most people, so there you have it. As for why it exists to begin with...either there's a holy relic there or God is a sadistic SOB.

Blasphemy Week: Ebola.

So I have to step it up. Although I usually rant on and on about how beautiful the world is, this is Halloween. I did just about the only thing I could think of that this blog has not done: Have a week full of things that disprove the existence of a loving God.

The keyword there is "loving." I'm OK with God or what have you being the bang-zoom that got the universe started. Nature, however, is a bloody, mangled, violent venture. One could argue that natural selection, which is pretty darn hard to disprove, ultimately makes a species 'better,' but that's still a lot of blood lost for one 'perfect' individual that will eventually die anyways - hardly 'loving' in any sense of the word. These are the things in nature that would make Saw sleep with his lights on asking "why?"

The squiggle that kills millions.

That said, onto our first monster of the week: Ebola haemorrhagic fever, AKA the Ebola virus. There are five species, each of which named more for its regional distribution than anything else.  All of them are rather nasty, although some are slightly nicer than others. The fatality rate can be up to 90% in an outbreak, and it is not a merciful death. The most common vectors are African fruit bats, but a fair amount of mammals, including humans, can pass it to people. If one person in an African village gets Ebola, that village is usually screwed.

This virus attacks everything. It starts as a general malaise, including fever, then escalates into a flu. Things quickly get worse with headaches, muscle and joint aches, diarrhea, sore throat, and stomach pain. Strangely enough, hiccups are also a symptom. Headaches indicate an attack on the central nervous system. Yeah, no part of the body is safe from this thing.

You must be at least THAT covered to approach Ebola.

The word "haemorrhagic" should be enough to tell you that the mild flulike symptoms get even worse. Someone with Ebola bleeds from everywhere. Any place with a mucous membrane (most notably nose and nether regions) starts gushing with blood. Their body gets covered in bleeding rashes, effectively making them sweat blood. On the plus side, this allows the virus to replicate itself further; contact with bodily fluid from anybody with Ebola is enough to spread it.  Small wonder Ebola is treated as a Class A Bio-weapon- it makes people suffer.

The good news is, Ebola happens mostly in underdeveloped countries in Africa. It rarely crosses over into places with proper sanitation.  The people really have enough to deal with, including starvation, military control, malaria, and vicious animals that are commonly shown on nature programs. There is an amazing amount of trouble there already. If the meek were really blessed, why create a disease that makes one bleed from all orifices? Not the work of a loving deity, there.