I don't find blattidae any more disgusting than homo the sap. Nematomorpha, on the other hand, tests even my high tolerance. In my days as an animal tech I raised several dozen red-bellied piranha - on frozen liver and live cockroaches. When you throw a roach into a piranha tank it swims like a baby, its back legs treading frantically to keep its nose above the waterline. The lazy old piranha would typically take half-a minute to wake up to the intrusion, and another 30 seconds to swim towards the commotion (they're not nearly as vicious as rumour would have them. In years of cleaning their tanks by hand I was rarely alarmed and never bitten.) After a moment of thoughtful circumspection, one of the braver or hungrier fish would dart to the top of the tank and, with a brusque snap of its jaw, relieve the roach of the lower half of its body. Being a roach, or rather, half-a-roach, it would continue to swim for another 15 to 30 seconds, its front paws beating double-time at the surface of the water. Then it would lose power, dip to mid-tank, then rise (like Jesus) one final time, its guts streaming behind in cloudy billows and pasty grey threads, before sinking to the bottom of the tank, to be pulled apart and devoured in one or two more bites, continuing, till the end, to wave its little feelers with all the hereditary tenacity that typifies its kind. I would play this game at 2 or 3 in the morning, always stoned, usually with an incidental erection, generally while eating lunch.

Last edited by WCL (2012-04-30 08:09:10)