Crazy Cat Lady: Why You Shouldn't Eat Cat Poo

Reilly Allen, a great friend of mine, came to visit me a few months ago. She promptly accused my cats of harboring a parasite that would make her go crazy. (as if anything could make her go more crazy…)

Toxoplasma gondii, or T. gondii, is a parasitic protozoan that can infect all warm blooded animals. T. gondii is primarily a feline parasite because only in the intestines of a cat, can the parasite sexually reproduce, and the parasite is transmitted through the cat’s feces.  Asexual reproduction is possible in all other mammals, but they will only be clones of the initial parasite. The parasite can also be sexually transmitted in some animals. If a human is infected with T. gondii, he or she can develop a potentially deadly disease called toxoplasmosis. Toxoplasmosis is only really harmful to infants and people with weakened immune systems. If a healthy human is infected with T. gondii, they will experience flu-like symptoms for a bit and then the parasite goes “dormant”…in their brain cells.

This is where it gets bizarre, it’s possible that a dormant T. gondii in humans is not so dormant. According to Czech scientist, Jaroslav Flegr, it’s possible that this “laten parasite quietly tweeks connections between neurons.” It changes our responses to trust, how outgoing we are, scent preference, and can even be the cause of car crashes, suicides, and schizophrenia. He claims that 1 million people die a year due to these tiny tweeks. Apparently about 1/3 of the world’s population carry the Toxoplasma infection.

He and other notable scientists have done extensive research on Toxoplasma gondii. Here’s a long, but very interesting article on the whole matter.

One might say that the main purpose for an organism’s life is to reproduce. Well, it seems as though the brain manipulation done by T. gondii is all executed so that it can return to a feline host and sexually reproduce.

Scientists have done a lot of research on T. gondii using lab rats. Rats infected with T. gondii were not only less cautious of the threat of a cat predator, but actually attracted and sexually aroused by the scent of the predator’s urine; which led the rats right into the mouth of a hungry feline!

Through these studies, scientists have also found that T. gondii jacks up dopamine levels in warm-blooded animals. Dopamine highly attributes to the feelings of fear, pleasure, and to attention.

I don’t believe that T. gondii has found a way to mind control a human into getting a cat to eat him or her, but there has been research done that T. gondii does affect the human brain and the way it works.

Flegr's tests on humans have shown that males who are infected with T. gondii were more “introverted, suspicious, oblivious to other people’s opinions of them, inclined to disregard rules, [and] had less friends.” On the other hand, women infected with T. gondii were more “outgoing, trusting, image-conscious, rule-abiding, [and] had more friends.”

“After consulting the psychological literature, [Flegr] started to suspect that heightened anxiety might be the common denominator underlying their responses. When under emotional strain, he read, women seek solace through social bonding and nurturing… Anxious men, on the other hand, typically respond by withdrawing and becoming hostile or antisocial.”

Lots of research has been done between the connection of T. gondii and schizophrenia as well. People who have schizophrenia and test positive for T. gondii have way less grey matter in their brain than other individuals. T. gondii is also thought to be a trigger for schizophrenia.

But, with all that, Squirrel and Harry ain’t goin’ nowhere! Apparently indoor cats don’t pose a threat, because they don’t carry the parasite. Outdoor cats only really have the parasite for 3 weeks while they are young and first hunting. It seems like most humans catch T. gondii through consumption of other contaminated mammals, vegetables, and water. So, if you keep your counters and table tops clean, scrub your veggies before you eat them, drink purified water, and either cook your meat fully or freeze it before it’s cooked, it’s alllll gravy. No parasite for you!

Ambush ye? Or Ambush ye not?

Assassin Bugs are terrestrial ambush predators. They are stealthy, hearty, True Bugs in the Order Hemiptera. There are many different species of assassin bug living all over the world. Most have a curved proboscis that some scientists like to call the ‘rostrum.’ But, I’m going to call it a proboscis, because I like that word better. They look a lot like Gonzo from Sesame Street…but a more maniacal version of Gonzo.

Anyway, assassin bugs use their long, curved, sharp proboscis to stab, inject, liquefy the insides of, and consume their prey. Their saliva contains enzymes that predigest the tissue of the prey for them, so that they always get to enjoy a nice gut-slushy for every meal. Some assassin bugs have long hairs on their legs which help them to hold their prey while they slurp away!

But, what really caught my attention with these guys has to do with a specific species, the Acanthaspis petax assassin bug. These guys specifically eat ants, and are very resourceful with every meal, attempting to use all parts of their pray to their advantage. After a nice dinner, each ant victim is piled high onto the back of its predator, stuck there with a sticky secretion.  That’s right, the assassin bug wears a coat of dead ant carcasses. Not for fashion, but for protection, a very, very smart camouflage. You see, the number one predator of the Acanthaspis petax assassin bug is the jumping spider. The jumping spider knows very well not to attack a swarm of ants, because a swarm of ants will most definitely win; but, a jumping spider will most definitely attack a naked assassin bug! An assassin bug is like pizza. Everybody likes pizza. But a pizza piled with ants is not good pizza to the jumping spider. AND even if the jumping spider DID feel like having a slice of ant piled pizza, thanks to that impermanent sticky secretion, the assassin bug has a sweet get away opportunity while the jumping spider is still wondering what just happened!

Some species of assassin bug are no good for humans either. They will stab you and try to liquefy your guts too. Some may even transmit potentially fatal diseases to you. But, they’re not all bad on the home front. Some species are actually kept as pets in some countries because those species like to munch on household pests, like cockroaches and bedbugs. And even better, some species’ venom is being studied due to potentially positive effects against human pathogenic Gram-negative bacteria.

These guys are all over the place, literally and figuratively.    

It's A Good Thing Your Boogers Don't Eat Bones

The Osedax mucoflon literally means Bone Eating Snot Flower. It’s a small sea worm that only really survives and proliferates when there is a whale carcass for it to consume. They don’t actually have stomachs or mouths; but, instead they attach themselves to the bones and team up with symbiotic bacteria to help digest the nutrients released from the fats and oils. The males, however, don’t actually feed on the whale. The females are the larger visible snot flowers. The males actually are microscopic dwarfs that live INSIDE of the lumen of a gelatinous tube that surrounds the females. These male dwellings are actually called “harems,” and there are anywhere from 30 to 100 males living inside of a female at a time! They sustain themselves on the yolk left over from the egg that they hatched from. It is said that the sex of these bone eating worms is actually determined by their environment. Apparently when females reproduce they disperse “undifferentiated larvae” into the ocean on a quest for whale bones. The larvae that settle on the bone turn into females, and the larvae that settle on top of the females turn to males! Once the whale is consumed most of the Bone Eating Snot Flowers die with the hope that the larvae floating in the ocean will find a new carcass to colonize.

The Osedax mucoflon is only one of countless more species of bone eating worm. You can read more about them hhhhheeeerrrrreeeeee.

Not Just Wood: Tree Anatomy

I feel as though we are not properly taught about plants. But really, I don’t think we really know about plants like we think we do. We just think we know, but we have no idea; True Life, PLANTS.

What I mean by that is, I grew up and learned about trees as these green and brown things that existed in the world. They grew, shed their leaves, grew some more, and then we cut them down to build stuff. I never thought of them as MOVING, COMMUNICATING, and HAVING LIFE. Or maybe I just wasn’t a very sensitive child?

So, in this post I’m going to layout some of the anatomy of a tree, which may help you understand that it is a living thing, just like youuuu and meeeeee.  Respect.

First I’m going to start with the trunk.  The trunk is not just wood. It is an amalgamation of cells adapted to serve different purposes, like strength, resistance to decay and injury, transport of liquids and minerals, and for storage.

The first thing you see when you look at the trunk is the OUTER BARK. It serves as the tree's primary protection and is continually renewed, much like our skin. Then we have the inner bark, or PHLOEM. This is the pipeline that transports food and hormones throughout the tree. It soon dies and becomes cork which eventually becomes the outer bark. Next there is another thin layer called the CAMBIUM. The cambium is the growing part of the trunk. It responds to the hormones that are passed and annually produces new bark and new wood.

The XYLEM makes up the “wood” of the tree. Within the xylem you have the next layer, which is SAPWOOD. This is the pipeline for water to get from the roots to the leaves. This layer is able to form anti-microbial substances to respond to injury, much like antibodies! It is also the new wood of the tree. As newer rings of sapwood are laid out, the inner rings lose their vitality and eventually turn to the next layer, which is the HEARTWOOD. The heartwood is the central support. It is dead and discolored, but is very very strong and keeps the tree standing. And finally, at the most central point, you may (in some species) find the PITH. This is a Styrofoam-y material left over from the primary tissue that was the twig. In some species it goes away as the tree gets older.

If you go upwards from the trunk and through the branches you’ll reach the tips of the twigs. These form buds in the spring which is where those hormones I mentioned before come from. These hormones help the tree to go. (sound familiar?) These buds also produce leaves. The leaves are basically spongy cells that connect the air- to the tree- to the roots. Leaves create  food for the tree. They take carbon dioxide from the air and water from the roots and convert it to sugar, then send it down the phloem to the roots. In order for the roots to use that sugar to grow, they need oxygen. They search for oxygen in pockets between the soil. The roots then return the favor to the leaves by sucking up water and minerals and sending it back up to the leaves via the sapwood. The leaves use that water to create the food, and send it back down to the roots, and back and forth, back and forth.  

And that's only part of what we know! There's a great PBS documentary called "What Plants Talk About," that discusses communication between one plant to another, and plants to insects and animals. CRAY.

oooo that smell

Stink Bugs: look cool, smell gross, act real normal.

They are your typical bug, a True Bug, you might say. Stink Bugs are also known as Shield Bugs, and some shield bugs (the one’s we are talking about here) are in the family, Pentatomidae. But, most people know them as stink bugs because, when they feel threatened they secrete a smelly glandular substance from the pores of their thorax. Some secrete their smelly concoctions as they walk, leaving a trail behind. They do this even when they’re not scared, to keep from being scared, by always being on their smelly guard. Those guys ruin the fruit for all of us.

Actually, many of these guys ruin our fruit. Some species are huuuuuuge pests to human’s.They can create large populations of themselves and decimate crops. (In contrast, some are hugely beneficial, feasting on other crop decimators.)

But really, the coolest thing about stink bugs….

Catfacing.

Stink bugs will suck the sap out of young fruiting bodies. If the fruit doesn’t die and fall to the ground, the healthy tissue will continue to grow, leaving the punctured areas behind. This creates a deformed looking fruit. CATFACE.

Hey look, those tomatoes look familiar...

Dragonflies

When I was younger, I believed that however many times it took to pluck the head off of a dead dragonfly was the number of years it had lived.

This week’s post is about the Dragonfly. Instead of exploring the physical and biological aspects of the dragon fly, I’m going to write about human perceptions and myths relating to the dragonfly.

So maybe this post is more about humans than dragonflies?

Human’s like to tinker, especially in the brain. Everything, dead or alive, has a story or a reason for being. This is especially how it was before science happened.

It seems like most cultures had/have positive perceptions of dragonflies. Except for the Europeans, but old white cultures were scared of nature, so that makes sense.  In parts of Europe, dragonflies were called “devil’s darning needles,” “ear cutters,” and “eye snatchers.” They were perceived to bring the devil out and do harm, especially to horses. Damn those ‘horse stingers!!’ (Although, on a more biological note, dragonflies actually help horses (and humans), by eating tons of those pesky parasitic insects (mosquitoes) that actually DO harm the horses.)

In contrast, some Japanese myths tell of the dragonfly as a Holy creature that represents courage, strength, and happiness. And, in some Native American (sorry to be so non-specific about Tribes here) stories, dragonflies are seen as the souls of the dead, or symbols for activity, swiftness, and purity of water. Many modern day people view the dragonfly in a positive light as well. They are a symbol of power, transformation, adaptation, peace, and harmony.

It is the idea of the dragonfly representing transformation, adaptation, and harmony that I used while creating a stage installation for a music and art festival called the A-Town Get Down. The one-day festival is put on by the Alex Townsend Memorial Foundation, a foundation created in memory of Alex Townsend by his family to help support art and music development and appreciation all around the country. The installation is comprised of over a hundred dragonflies flying above a negative space which makes up Mount Kenya. Alex and his family were avid hikers, and Mount Kenya is one of the mountains they hiked.  My installation is linked to artist, Katherine Sandoz’s stage installation through our concept of linking Savannah, GA with a mountain the family hiked together by referencing the landscapes and ecosystems of each. 

You can see both of our installations, as well as many other talented artists and musicians at the A-Town Get Down Festival this Saturday the 21st. It will be held at the Charles H. Morris Center in Savannah, GA from 12pm-12am.

Don’t be square.

Poop

This week’s post is going to be short, but very very sweet. Not sweet in a delicious sugary kind of way, but sweet in a poop kind of way.

You’re right, poop isn’t very sweet...

But this post is, and it’s about poop!

Do you think that if you covered yourself in your own feces, that someone would try to get into a fist fight with you, or worse, try to eat you?

No. probably not.

Good job palmetto tortoise beetle larvae! These guys are terrific, and very smart. Or, at least, they have evolved in a very effective way. First off, we’re going to start with the adult palmetto tortoise beetle laying her eggs. She does so by cementing her eggs to a leaf, and then she conceals the eggs with a layer of dry poop. This is thought to be for defense purposes. Once the larvae hatch, they take careful notes from their mother, and start producing their own poop shields. Well, they’re more like hats, really. Large poopy straw-like body hats. They use their telescoping anus to poot out dried poop in coiled layers across their bodies. They are able to point their anus in different directions in order to build the most effective poop hat shield. They are then able to hold their poop hat shields in place with their very convenient anal fork!

THIS MAKES ME SO HAPPY.

poop

magic.

Pangolin

It’s always really refreshing when I learn about a new organism. The ones that are super new, those that I had no idea about, like pangolins. No, not penguins, Pangolins.

But, with more pangolin research came the inevitable pang in my heart, when I read how exploited these guys are. It got me thinking about why any animal is sold on the black market. Not for hunger or for survival of the captor, but for show, so that those who purchase these animals can shake their fancy cock feathers.  Humans can be so self righteous and greedy. But that’s no new concept, so we shall move on. 

Pangolins are a manicurists’ dream! Almost their entire body is covered with scales made of keratin (the same stuff our fingernails are made out of). The scales grow throughout their lives, but they keep them trimmed by using rocks and the surrounding landscape to file them down. They don’t have teeth, but instead have a loooooong spaghetti-like tongue that exceeds the length of their bodies, which they use to extract ants and other insects from their hills and homes. The insects are swallowed whole and churned and crushed in the stomach with the aid of rocks, sand, and other consumed debris. Pangolins eat about 70 million insects a year. (Talk about biological pest control.) They don’t have to worry about an invading army of ants, if their feast goes awry, because pangolins have special muscles that enable them to seal their nostrils, ears, and eyes shut from invaders. And, when some other animal is ready to feast on a pangolin, his natural defense is to curl up into a keratin protected ball.  However, despite these defense mechanisms, these solo-living, nocturnal animals are on the decline. All 8 species of pangolins are somewhere on the verge of extinction. They are losing their habitat and are the most illegally traded mammal in the world.

I think the best form of prevention is education. So, now that you know a little bit about this scaly organism and his situation, maybe you’ll turn down the platter of pangolin at the next party. 

BOOM BOOM BOOM

I spent the winter of 2013 rolling through part of the last 1% of the American tall grass prairie....freezing....searching for the infamous Greater Prairie Chicken. And I mean freezing. Two pairs of wool socks + leather boots, in a van, numb toes, freezing.

We were looking for Prairie Chickens, specifically prairie chickens who were forming a "lek." Leks are breeding grounds, booming grounds, where the single chickens (all the single chickens) go to call out to the ladies and try to make them swoon. The male chickens pick a spot in the prairie and meet there every day. They stomp their feet, fluff their feathers, puff out their orange neck cheeks, and let out these, at first gergly and then very smooooth, vibrating boooooooms. Their songs can be heard for up to a mile, hoping to reach their lady loves' ears...and vaginas.

 A similar ritual is true for the Kakapo. But, unlike the prairie chicken, the kakapo must walk...up mountains, far from their normal territory, to form their leks. The male birds dig bowls within the perimeter of their lek and boom within them. The bowl forms a sort of natural amplifier. Their lady loves hear this and walk 500 miles to find the males, just to get their baby on. Kakapos have to walk because they are flightless parrots. Back before humans inhabited New Zealand (the islands in which the kakapo live) the kakapo had no natural predators, and no need to fly. They are also the heaviest and only nocturnal parrots in the world. Their booming can be heard for almost three miles.

Unfortunately, both birds aren't doing so hot in whole scheme of life. The whole living thing. Mammals got 'em down. Human's took the land from the prairie chickens and brought predators to the kakapos.

So, just a reminder for me and for you...we have to be careful about how treat and travel around this blueberry we live on. Everything we do effects everything around us.  What's good for us may not be good for another. We have to keep the balance. Make sure that boom boom booooooom is used for making babies, and not for decimating a species.

The Lion's Tooth

Kentucky bluegrass is the grass that America has slathered all over itself, deeming any other plant within it a weed. Personally, I am a fan of natural lawns, you know, lawns with an abundance of various kinds of plants. It makes more since to me, especially because many other plants have much more value to the soil they grow in and to the environment around them. Moderation is key, anyhow.

The wildly hated Taraxacum officinale, or the dandelion, is number one on many a lawn owner's list. But it's very unfortunate.

Dandelions are 100% edible. Not only are they edible, but they are extremely beneficial to a consumer's health. They contain vitamins A, C, & K, Calcium, more potassium and iron than spinach, manganese, and more beta-carotene than carrots. The dandelion has been used to help treat fungal infections, bile and liver problems, and is a natural diuretic (maybe that's why I grew up calling them "pee pee flowers?"). There's even research going on about using dandelions for natural rubber production!

And gardeners, listen up, dandelions are actually beneficial next to your plants. Their long taproots help to transfer nutrients to shallower rooted plants, fix nitrogen into the soil, and release ethylene gas, which helps to ripen fruit! I’ve also heard tales of dandelion roots being used as a natural dye...so what’s not to love? Oh, and you haven’t forgot about dandelion wine, have you?

So next time you want to uproot the dandelion in your yard, maybe instead give him a little brush through his mane and thank him, or maybe just toss him on your salad.

PS I recommend doing personal research on dandelions and their properties before consuming, in case of any allergies.