Sunday Sesh: Nature is Beautiful (Vol. I)
As strange as human behavior can get (eating Tide Pods, yodeling, enjoying DSBM, etc.), there’s always a weirder species out there, and that’s beautiful. I see your Florida Man and raise you the glowworm larvae, which hangs upside down from the ceiling, dangling a rope made of its own proteins and urine to catch prey. No amount of bath salts will help us accomplish this.
All too often, nature is presented as some scenic, sanitized postcard, where every animal is as dignified as the lion. The real beauty is in the teeming undergrowth, in the evolutionary arms race, in the bizarre adaptations that stretch bodies to the limit. Join me below for an exploration of these remarkable critters, along with some thematically appropriate tunes.
Black Vulture – Urohidrosis
You must think you’re pretty gnarly—you haven’t showered in three weeks, you’ve done all drugs at once and your favorite album can be streamed through in the time it takes to empty your bladder. Black Vultures (and several other bird species) are not impressed. Turns out not having central air (or sweat glands) makes staying cool a difficult task. The solution? Shit yourself, obviously. Urohidrosis is the strategy of defecating on one’s own body in order to decrease body temperature through evaporative cooling. Outside of GG allinii, this behavior has not been observed in humans.
You missed a spot.
There was really only one choice of song here. Squash Bowels -“Shit Oneself.”
Common Cuckoo – Brood Parasitism
So you’ve read up on your medical journals and have seven shades of camo in your wardrobe. The Common Cuckoo doesn’t have time for your weak slams. Your riffs are positively enlightened compared to the act of brood parasitism (take that Coprocrancial Disgorgementing! No, this isn’t a real band…I think). When a Eurasian Reed Warbler parent leaves the nest alone, the cuckoo swoops in and deposits its own offspring which hatches and quickly defenestrates the host’s babies. The warbler parent returns to care for the young cuckoo, while the cuckoo parents are free to spend their energy on surviving and not paying childcare.
Hello yes it is I your child who is bigger than our entire house Mindy and Robert are just at summer camp they’ll be back soon I promise please regurgitate in my mouth.
Slams featuring the word “parasite” or “parasitic” are a dime a dozen, but Devourment‘s “Parasitic Eruption” hits the spot for ignorant riffs and gutturals that don’t quit.
Mites of the Adactylidium genus – Literally Everything They Do in the Four Days They’re Alive
These arachnids are an absolute nightmare of sex and violence that would make Freud feel like a kid in a candy store. It all starts with a bunch of female offspring and (always one) male offspring. The male incestuously impregnates all of the females while still inside their own mother. Upon impregnation, they eat their way out of mom, killing her in the process. The lone male wanders off to die while the females have only four days to live before they’re eaten alive from inside by their own young. I don’t really have anything else to say about that besides maybe GO HOME EVOLUTION, YOU’RE DRUNK.
*Vomits profusely*
Vastum‘s “Empty Breast” is the perfect, sexually-charged companion to this remarkably depraved (from a human perspective, anyways) life cycle.
