Creepy Wikipedia

3946 readers

5 users here now

A fediverse community for curating Wikipedia articles that are oddly fascinating, eerily unsettling, or make you shiver with fear and disgust

Guidelines:

Follow the Code of Conduct
Do NOT report posts YOU don't consider creepy
Strictly Wikipedia submissions only
Please follow the post naming convention: Wikipedia Article Title - Short Synopsis
Tick the NSFW box for submissions with inappropriate thumbnails.
Please refrain from any offensive language/profanities in the posts titles, unless necessary (e.g. it's in the original article's title).

Mandatory:

If you didn't find an article "creepy," you must announce it in the thread so everyone will know that you didn't find it creepy

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

decadentrebel

[email protected]

Leucochloridium paradoxum - Parasitic worm that infects snails, manipulating their eye stalks to resemble caterpillars which attracts birds to eat them (en.wikipedia.org)

submitted 1 month ago by decadentrebel to c/creepywikipedia

6 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

After the bird eat them, they live in the bird's ass, propagating by laying eggs in the bird's poop, and the cycle begin anew.

This is probably the most sophisticated parasite I've ever known.

[–] frankenswine 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

so you never heard of toxoplasma?

[–] decadentrebel 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I think you're just focusing on the pooping cycle. The part where the parasite possesses the snail and creates this elaborate display with the eyes to draw its real intended host/target is what's fascinating.

[–] frankenswine 1 points 1 month ago

i don't think so (: toxoplasma IIRC alters a host's behavior in favor of cats, so that it can infect those - since cats are the only ones it can reproduce in. not as colorful and funky as the exapmle here, but similarly clever/complex