The disgusting reality of being a bio major

Edit: My professor just showed us a picture of a gigantic spider eating a bat that was caught in its web. Remember, kids, do a STEM major!

So we're sitting in my bio study group and talking about the body plans of starfish--about how they show twofold symmetry in their larval stage. Then we google starfish larva.

You see this thing that looks like a squished fly/booger/Cthulhu hybrid? This is a baby starfish. 

But I'm not really creeped out. Because as a bio major, you see far, far worse. 

When I was in sixth grade, I was obsessed with weird medical disorders. Progeria (a weird disease causing premature aging)? Parasitic twins? Extreme multiple births? Whatever lead to Lindsay Lohan? We had the Discovery Health Channel, which meant I had a neverending supply of shows on weird, unexplained medical conditions, and I really didn't have a social life, so I spend all my time learning about just how weird the human body could be.

But the animal body is weirder. One of the first thing every prospective bio major has to do is learn to sex flies. The common fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, has a long and storied research history and has enabled many advances in the theories of genetics. However, it looks gross under a microscope and every research assistant's first job is to look very, very closely at them in hopes of telling them apart.

You see the obvious difference? See, see, see? Maybe looking at the disgusting real versions would help. 

The thing you have to look for are the male sex combs. The tiny hairs on the male flies arm are called sex combs. They are very short and are very hard to identify. To properly identify your flies, you have to look at their gigantically enlarged legs under a microscope for far much longer than anyone would. They are disgusting. To make matters worse, sometimes you need to examine and sex multiple flies. People, the reason bugs are small is so we can see one and not automatically throw up. If looking at an insect's magnified sex organs for six hours has no effect on you, you're either a serial killer or a biology major.

Another horrible thing about fruit flies: they are model organisms for the study of mutations. Their job, their duty to the world of science, is to devolve into progressively twisted and deranged forms. Some of the mutations are harmless, like the ones that change their eye color from blood red (I hate fruit flies) to a normal shade of brown. Some are pathetic, like the mutation that gives them tiny shrunken wings. C'mon, nobody wants to see a fly who can't fly! That's gotta be the one upside of being a fly, right? Flying!

But the absolute worst mutant fly is the one that occurred when one sadistic scientist decided to 

implant some tissue from a fly larvae's leg in its face. Surprise! You got a fly with legs growing out of its eyes. I could post a picture here, but won't, because even looking at it make me want to vomit. There is absolutely no greater good that can be served by creating such an abomination. It has legs growing out of its eyes! There's a reason I don't play zombie-themed video games, but zombie games are tame compared with the crime against nature that I know I'll see pictures of at least once a semester for the rest of my life. 

Even this makes me queasy.

But the horrible things humans do to animals are nothing compared to the horrible things animals do to other animals, the horrible things that, for some reason, it's vitally important your bio teacher show you colored pictures of. Goodness knows that I wouldn't be able to understand what a parasite was without seeing pictures of a fungus bursting out of an ant's brain, or a wasp's egg emerging from an unsuspecting beetle and devouring it. Any time your professor says, "and this next part is really cool", be warned, you're about to see a worm slither from a kitten's eyesocket. 

And tapeworms. Never get a biology professor started on tapeworms. The magical fun worms that live in your stomach, where every segment is a single hermaphroditic individual. Horroray! 

The worst part is when they make you help. Just the other week, we had to slice open small tumors on goldenrod plants and look for the beetle larvae on the inside. Oh, and some of the beetle larvae were being attacked by parasitoid wasps who'd laid their eggs in the larvae in the tumor, dooming the beetle larvae to being eaten alive. Because there's nothing like cracking open a husk of wood and finding a writhing parasite larvae to make you never want to eat rice ever again.

Or try exploring the bug collection in Comstock Hall. Thousands and thousands of dead bugs, preserved in  vaults that reek of formaldehyde. The butterfly collection is quite pretty, until you remember these beautiful animals were flapping harmlessly from flower to flower until some lunatic jabbed a pin through their abdomens. The beetle collection makes me think the pin jabbing isn't that bad, since some of the beetles are the size of my hand. 

And then there's the collection of mites, neatly displayed on the tips of cards attached to pins, since the mites are smaller than the pins themselves. What's the point of displaying something that looks exactly like a  black speck? Is there one? Maybe the specks look better under a microscope . . . 

No! I'm turning into one of them!