[rrrrrrrrrrrr2]

Don't Google search "parasitic ant fungus" then.

When I first learned how HIV (and retroviruses) worked, it was the same level of amazement. Like "it splices its own genes into your cells' DNA, and when your cells reproduce, they additionally make copies of the HIV virus" is just something that I would have never thought was real.

I think folks like myself, who became an "amateur epidemiologist" during covid (out of necessity, because of the information vacuum) were shocked to learn all these amazing things we weren't ever told. As an aside, the same is true for everyone who is now an "amateur diplomat" post-invasion and read about realism etc. and well-understood and reasonable explanations for "why the U.S. is always at war" that make it seem so logical. Crazy to think there are so many other fields keeping amazing secrets like this.

Nature is fucking terrifying. Every time I see some zoo program on the telly where "oh we're rehabilitating these endangered rabbits and then we'll release 'em back into the wild where they'll be free and happy". Not sure that's how the rabbits feel about it.

If I were a rabbit in one of these programs I'd feign a limp, hide in the corner, anything I could to avoid being cat or wolf fodder, or getting one of the dozens of tortuous diseases and parasites that infect rabbits in the wild.