Is Listverse.Com’s Ultimate Book of Bizarre Lists Fun? Let Me Count the Ways...
In the world of science, some things are serious, others are amusing, and then there’s the downright hysterical. Depending on your perspective, the following falls into one of those categories (if not, how about “disgusting”?): “Phorid flies reproduce by laying their eggs in the thorax of an ant. The larvae then migrate to the ant’s head and develop by consuming the muscle and nervous tissue there. In time, it consumes the entire brain of the ant, which then amazingly continues to walk aimlessly for about two weeks—until its head drops off. The phorid fly then pupates in the detached head.”
Circadian rhythms being what they are, I find myself reading late at night while FCE sleeps. One night I picked up Listverse.Com’s Ultimate Book of Bizarre Lists (subtitled “Fascinating Facts and Shocking Trivia on Movies, Music, Crime, Celebrities, History and More,” written by Jamie Frater). Books that can be browsed through are appealing; the reader opens to any page and has a few minutes reading and none of the mental work involved in following a story. Such books are satisfying reads for people who can’t commit to novels or chronological non-fiction (you know what I mean).
Reading about super-scary museums, odd wedding sites, and disgusting foods is entertaining, but when I browsed through the “Science and Nature” chapter and found “10 Bizarre Cases of Mind Control” (the ants and phorid flies being one of them), I was so entertained that three of the cases interrupted FCE’s sleep (which shows what my sense of humor is like). Laughing out loud while reading is a pleasure that I seldom have—I don’t seem to find books that are that funny. To counter the hilarity, I had to read “10 Creatures That Crawled Out of Your Nightmares.” Have you ever heard of a Lion’s Mane Jellyfish? I’m shuddering just thinking about it.
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