Among other activities, I have greatly appreciated her company for beer drinking, music listening, encasing wild mushrooms in clear resin (unsuccessfully), inadvertandltly inhaling resin fumes, introducing me to interesting zoo people, introducing me to people with beards in general, and fighting street thugs while in costume.

So long story short, let’s introduce Julia to some of you (not the creepy ones) or your friends (not the creepy ones) that live in Hawaii. If you have someone to recommend, please send me an email at ableiman at gmail.com. I will be screening suggestions for creepiness and forwarding along only those folks least likely to murder Julia.

In summary, if you A – Live in Hawaii or know someone who does, B – Don’t want to murder Julia or keep her in your basement (do they even have basements in Hawaii?), and C – Like long walks on the beach + beer… then please get in touch.

Parasites.

Need I even say more? We’ve posted and posted again and posted another time about zombies before this day of celebration. But in honor of the day, we have found a few more interesting parasite zombie stories to share with your children when they are misbehaving.

Pillbugs. Potato bugs. Rolly pollies. Don’t we all remember these little innocuous guys? But did you know they could be zombified?! The acanthocephalon (Plagiorhynchus cylindraceus) is a parasite that lives in the intestinal tract of starlings. That’s right- birds. They don’t cause any harm to the bird; they just use its gut as an SRO. A self-cleaning SRO that flushes the parasite eggs out with the bird’s feces.

Pillbugs love them some feces. When they happen upon a pile of steaming yumminess, they strap on their bibs and feast. Now inside the pillbug, the parasite egg hatches and quickly takes control. While all its natural instincts would be to stay in dark shelter, the zombified pillbug sets out on a suicidal journey, making itself easily visible to predators. Predators such as starlings. Zombifying parasites are wicked smart!

Let’s take another example. The sweet little snail. Who wants to victimize a snail besides small boys with canisters of salt? How about the flatworm, Leucochloridium paradoxum? This flatworm, like P. cylindraceus, needs a bird to complete its life cycle. The larvae of the worm are excreted in bird feces, which are a delicacy to pillbugs and snails alike. Inside the snail, the larvae develop into sporocysts, which grow into long structures called broodsacs. These broodsacs then invade the antennae of the snail, transforming the once thin eye-stalks into swollen, colorful, pulsating grub-like appendages. To add insult to injury (or salt to the wound, I suppose), this transformation results in a reduced sensitivity to light, causing the snail to wonder about in plain view of avian predators. (On a side note, the meth test on these snails produced entirely different results.)

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you exhibit A….

Would you like one more? Wasps of the genus Glyptapanteles enslave caterpillars to not only be a host for their growing eggs, but to be a body guard for them while they are in cocoon! The wasp injects the unsuspecting caterpillar with its eggs, which then hatch and dine on caterpillar guts. Once they have fully developed, they eat their way through the caterpillar’s skin, attach to a nearby branch, and spin themselves a cocoon.

You’d think it’d be lights out for the poor caterpillar, now missing some guts and skin. But the wasp isn’t done using it, yet. Once the larvae have exited and formed cocoons, the caterpillar sticks around, standing guard over the vulnerable larvae. It forgoes any semblance of regular activity, even giving up eating, in order to ensure would-be predators are not able to get to the cocoons. Eventually, the larvae hatch and the caterpillar finally gives up the ghost. Scientists aren’t entirely sure how the wasp manages this mind control, but zombifiers across the globe could learn a lesson or two from it. Check out this video…

And with that, Zooillogix wraps up our participation in Zombie Day. Keep the challenges coming, ScienceBlogs! We love it!

Post your scores for bragging rights.

In case you need some cheering up after being squashed by this test of your mental acumen, check out these cuties at ZooBorns…

Thanks to our Asian friend Kangatron for sharing.

When great pond snails (Lymnaea stagnalis) venture into low oxygen water, they extend a breathing tube above the water’s surface. Researchers seperated a bunch of these party snails into two groups and put one sober group in normal water and another in meth-laced water. Then when the snails went to extend their breathing tubes, the researchers poked the top of the tube, and the snail quickly retracted its molluskular snorkel. Two days later, the researchers took the same two groups of snails and returned them to their respective pools (normal water and the one with pure Monster Energy Drink) and watched the results. The snails in regular water once again extended their breathing tubes. However, the meth snails took off their shells and started grinding together on the dance floor to C&C Music Factory. Also, they didn’t re-extend their breathing tubes.

This snail passed out in the wrong neighborhood

Researchers say this demonstrates a longer memory due to meth, but maybe it just means that when someone stabs you in the throat on meth, the sheer terror of the experience is multiplied ten fold and it leaves more of an impression on your simple three-neuron snail brain.

Thanks to Chris Cleveland of Dieselpoint Search and Navigation for bringing this to our attention.

The newly emerged butterfly will spend its first two hours pumping hemolymph into its wings. In this way, the soft, folded wings will straighten out and become more solid, more flight-ready.

Here are a few shots from DAY 11 and DAY 13:

If you click on the picture from DAY 11, you may be able to see the white stripe running down the side of the caterpillar. Along this stripe are small holes called spiracles. These are the breathing organs of the caterpillar (and the pupa and butterfly). They open into a series of tubes called tracheae, which exchange oxygen for carbon dioxide on their surface. Though arthropods don’t have blood, they do have an analogous substance called hemolymph. When it’s oxygenated, it’s blue!

These guys are pretty vulnerable when they are in chrysalis. Some insects have chemical defense systems, but painted ladies use a different scare tactic to ward off predators, as I found out when I transferred the pupae to their butterfly habitat…

* Chinese man gets drunk with friends and passes out

* Friends think it would be hilarious to insert a large living swamp eel into the man’s butt while he is unconscious

* Hilarity does not ensue. In fact, the man dies. Chinese doctor says the eel “consumed the man’s bowels”

The article was widely reported in major news outlets like CNN and the Times, but I am linking instead to the UK edition of Practical Fishkeeping. Like the other articles, it is a cautionary tale about the dangers of combining booze, Chinese people and eels. However, also like the other articles, it is suspiciously short on detail.

Well I, for one, was skeptical. #1 Wouldn’t there be a near total lack of dissolved oxygen in aqueous solution in your intestines? #2 Wouldn’t it be challenging for an eel to open its jaws in there? Realizing that I was a bit out of my depth, I shared these concerns with two doctors who know a thing or two about a man’s bowels. I would like to share the thoughts of one in particular who we will call “Saylor Tchreiber” to protect his reputation:

First of all, thank you for adding a solid dose of hilarity to what has otherwise been, a fairly mundane Monday.

On the other hand, a search for medical case studies describing any medical case involving (eel AND intestine) does not bring up any hits whatsoever….I’ll make sure to write it up should I ever be given the opportunity…

So there you have it. Sometimes death by anal swamp eel is really just what it sounds like.