Could-be-worse.

zombie ant is *undead

Adding video to channels (Undead) - requested by ponceleon.

That's ridiculous! Suicidal Islamist would never climb on a leaf of grass, the human equal to that would be... sky... scrapers... nvrmnd.

I've often wondered if there are viruses that do similar things to humans.

>> ^Boise_Lib:

I've often wondered if there are viruses that do similar things to humans.


Not sure about viruses, but Toxoplasma gondii is a parasite that might alter human brain chemistry. In its natural life cycle, toxo induces suicidal behavior in rats in order to make it back to its feline host. Humans are not part of the original life cycle but can function as dead-end hosts if they're around infected cats. Obvious symptoms of toxo infection really only show up in babies, the elderly, and immunocompromised patients, but subtle symptoms (i.e. altered brain chemistry) may manifest in any infected person. I can't recall the title offhand, but there is an article out there where the author suggests that the aggressive behavior of the Egyptians and their deification of cats was due to being heavily infected with toxoplasma.

Scientists are still out on the question.

Searching religion and cats got me this sad piece of knowledge:

Beginning in the 11th century, tolerance for cats began to decrease in Europe for religious reasons, and “by the 13th century the church viewed witches as real and cats as instruments of the devil” (Lynnlee, p. 20). Dante (1265–1321), for example, mentioned cats only once in his work and compared them to demons. From the 14th century well into the 18th century, cats were regularly killed on specific religious holidays. “By the late 15th century the persecution of cats and witches was a mainstay of European society. . . . The 15th and 16th centuries are almost devoid of any cat literature and art. . . . During this period the cat still was used to control rodents, but it was rarely seen as a pet, for if so its existence and that of its owner were in jeopardy” (Lynnlee, p. 21). Cats became especially associated with heretical religious sects, such as the Waldensians and Manichaeans, and members of these sects were accused of worshiping the Devil in the form of a black cat.

On feast days all over Europe, as a symbolic means of driving out the Devil, they were captured and tortured, tossed onto bonfires, set alight and chased through the streets, impaled on spits and roasted alive, burned at the stake, plunged into boiling water, whipped to death, and hurled from the tops of tall buildings, all in an atmosphere of extreme festive merriment. (Serpell JA, The domestication and history of the cat, in Turner DC and Bateson P, eds, The Domestic Cat, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1988, p. 156).

"At Metz, for example, on “cat Wednesday” during Lent, 13 cats were placed in an iron cage and publicly burned; this ritual took place each year from 1344 to 1777" (Kete K, The Beast in the Boudoir, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994, p. 119).

(http://www.stanleyresearch.org/dnn/LaboratoryofDevelopmentalNeurovirology/ToxoplasmosisSchizophreniaResearch/IAllaboutCats/tabid/173/Default.aspx)


Great, as if we needed more reasons to hate religion...