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NOTICE: Shrimp does not actually make gun sounds, but does cause concusions.

Link: http://discovermagazine.com/2007/feb/toxoplasma-gondii-culture-sex-ratio

As reported earlier Toxoplasma gondii is nothing to take lightly as it has now been determined to:

• Alter your DNA, passing along it's mind altering abilities to future generations.
• Doubles the odds of you getting into a traffic accident.
• Change entire cultures.

Oh and it's also increases the likelyhood that your baby will be male.

Link: http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=797

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I've said it before folks, these things are terrifying. Honestly I don't think you could pay me enough to go into non-chlorinated water.

Link: http://www.pinktentacle.com/2007/03/video-tremoctopus-defense-mechanism/

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This is a Tremoctopus, quite possibly the strangest cephalopod out there. It does't dispense a cloud of ink like other octopi but instead unfurls a cape-like membrane to fool predators into think it's much larger than it actually is. The membrane tears away like a lizard's tail as well and the tremoctopus just grows it back. Stranger yet is the size difference between the male and female of the species, the male being about the size of a walnut and the female being up to 6ft in length.

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Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cephalopod

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Some of you may recall a previous fear mongering post where I told you about a worm that infects crickets and upon reaching adulthood causes the cricket to head toward the nearest body of water and jump in drowning itself so the worm may emerge and breed.....

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......seriously folks I can't make this stuff up. This kind of shit is why there are people who are afraid to go outside.

I respect you and I think you're an excellent narrator, but you have got to stop scaring the shit out of me....

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Your Fan,
Raymond

Link: http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn10826

This is a species of moth that drinks the tear of sleeping birds with this....

It's not the only one either, it's the newest member of a larger family of tear drinking moths

Link: http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200606/s1658217.htm

Let me tell you how, that damn bird was the most delicious thing to walk the face of this planet. Think about it, there aren't any left. Mass graves have been found on the island of Mauritius, denoting that they certainly didn't die from natural causes. It was a flightless, dumb piece of mouth watering meat. Delicious personified. It was eaten to extinction.

A-C can be found here.

D-G can be found here.

Exhibit H: Assassin spiders, the giraffes of the spider world, at least as far as necks go. They don't spin webs like most other spiders, they actively hunt their prey. Thankfully their prey is other spiders and not us. They use their elongated fangs to reach out and stab other spiders, who would otherwise be able to bite back. This practice and it's appearance has earned this spider the title of most grotesque.

Exhibit I: See that tiny little blob on the bottom of the crab? Say hello to a female Sacculina, a type of barnacle. I know what you're saying, "but don't barnacles have shells?". Well you're looking at it's shell. That's right folks, it crawled onto the underside of this female crab, shed it's old shell, invaded crab through a joint in it's exoskelton, took over it's body, rendered the crab infertile, and made a nice little convenient hole on top of the crab to be used by a male Sacculina to use to impregnate her. Pretty grotesque puppet show isn't it? But here's the scariest part of the story, the crab is still alive and actually takes care of the body load of eggs once their laid. And if it happened to be a male crab it found instead of a female one, well that's no problem it just alters the chemistry of the crab turning the crab into a female so it can take better care of its eggs. Body snatching and gender bending, how's that for a bad day?

Exhibit J: OK so yeah, this thing creeps me right the fuck out. After seeing three videos, one of it eating a mouse, one of it eating a tarantula, and one of it eating a bat, I almost just skipped right over this one so I didn't have to deal with it anymore. Aptly called the Giant Centipede they can grow up to 10 inches in length. They're also venomous. Moving on *shutters*

Exhibit K: Female hyenas, which alone should be enough of a scary thing, but mother nature just had to mess with this animal. I mean seriously, making the birth canal in the clitoris?!? That's just wrong!!!

For exhibits A-C, see this post....

Exhibit D:

This is essa, a very nasty wasp that thankfully only hunts cockroaches. What's unique about this wasp is that when the female decides it's time to lay her eggs, she finds a roach to make her egg's host, and proceeds to deliver two precise stings. The first goes to the midsection paralyzing the front legs of the cockroach granting her time for the second one. For the second sting she slips her stinger through the cockroach's exoskeleton directly into the brain to a very precise point that controls the escape reflex and injects a second venom that erases the escape reflex all together. The roach, now able to move but not under it's own accord, is led back to the wasp's burrow by her grip on it's antenna, effectively a zombie roach now.

Exhibit E:

This is Toxoplasma gondii, a parasitic protozoa that exists in about 60 million people in the US at any given time. Why so many you ask? Simple, your cat has inadvertently doomed you to a behavoir altering parasite. This protozoa typically lives in cats, as they're the only species it can reproduce in, but can live in just about any warm blooded animal. In extreme cases this thing causes a condition known as toxoplasmosis, which usually ends in schizophrenia, but in most cases it just alters our extrovertive behaviors.

Exhibit F:

This is a Peacock Mantis Shrimp, primarily named because of the way it's front claws look. What's scary about this guy is that it's claws can move up to 50mph underwater, which is uses to crack snails open. That's faster than most US nuclear submarines can move underwater! That's so fast in fact that it generates cavitating bubbles at the leading edge of it when it moves. When the bubbles pop they produce a loud pop, heat, and light! Watch the video in the article.

Exhibit G:

Meet Human Adenovirus 36, AD-36 to it's friends, which chances are if you're overweight you've been it's host at least once. That's right folks, it's a virus that makes you fat. To be fair , it doesn't make you fat directly, the antibodies that you produce to fight it cause you to store more fat then you would normally. You can't see it and when you try and fight it, it gets the last laugh, ain't that just a son-of-a-bitch.