Nightmarish Nature 2: Perilous Parenting
Returning to our new series on Nightmarish Nature, last time we looked at some Vampires Among Us. This time we will consider some Perilous Parenting…
Becoming Parents
I’m not going to go into reproductive habits among the natural world. Some of that is outright horrifying too, at least in terms of our human-normative perspective. Yeah, angler fish have attachment issues. Spiders & mantids are totally safe word averse, courting death as much as sex. And ducks are more than kind of rape-y. But rape is still NOT our sponsor and this isn’t intended to be an R- or X-rated segment. So instead we’re going to skip right to parenting perils…
Parenting is inherently scary for first-timers seeing as how there’s no instruction manual or anything that comes along with the new role. And now you’re responsible for a totally new little critter knowing that a lot of its mental & emotional baggage issues will start with you. It’s a huge responsibility, and some creatures have developed some fascinating strategies to deal with raising their young before sending them off in the world. (As opposed to those who just let the kids fend for themselves starting out completely on their own, that’s a different kind of horror.)
Parenting Perils
There are parents who die for their offspring, like octopus. There’s the sort of devotion that comes from sealing mom in a tree to sit on the eggs, relying solely on dad to feed her (hornbills) or from having all the dads huddle together for survival, holding their eggs on his feet to keep the babies alive during the harshest winter ever (Emporer penguins). And there’s the kind of cuteness that comes from having pouches, like kangaroos and sea horses, which are totally not the same for oh so many reasons, but both still kinda adorable in their own ways. (Remember, it’s not just moms but dads too.)
Where This Gets Horrific / Trypophobia Warning
But I think the most terrifying parenting horror stories for me are those things that trigger trypophobia or worse. Oh by the way, if you are afraid of or disgusted by clusters of slightly varied objects, you might want to sit the rest of this segment out. In fact don’t even keep reading, just go back to thinking about cute things with pouches, like good designer handbags (so hard to find these days).
Plants
So I’m going to look at this first from the plant world. A coworker once brought in a mother-of-millions plant to work to share around, which was the first time I encountered the species. Now these aren’t your spider plants which send off little offspring on stalks to start anew a ways off. Oh no. These succulents form little tiny baby plants along the edges of their leaves that fall off and start growing beside themselves. Some make it, some don’t (competition for resources when you’re all living literally on top of each other can be harsh, but you’re obviously in a great location so why not share the bounty?) That doesn’t sound so bad until you remember the “millions” part of this. These plants can be very very VERY prolific. Think rabbits on steroids but a couple orders of magnitude on steroids, so more like bugs or fish or something. The sheer quantity of it honestly kind of creeps me out, so needless to say I did NOT adopt one of my coworker’s plants.
Bugs and Aquatic Life and Baby Central
Moving on, as mentioned, lots of bugs and water critters breed like rabbits on steroids on steroids, so they are kind of naturally prone to the whole trypophobia thing, though a lot of them are also pretty hands off. There’s those jumpy fish who let the babies swim in their mouths for safety at the slightest sign of danger, which is both creepy and cute and so a little bit spoopy in my opinion. And spiders and scorpions will carry lots and lots of tiny babies on their backs. Tiny baby spiders are also known to balloon en masse on little strands of silk to drift on the wind to new homes where they can forge their own lives, hoping to land in primo locations and not someplace uninhabitable. (Please oh please let me drift to the penthouse suite and not the dump…)
Surinam Toads
But the one that really takes the cake in my book is the surinam toad. They’re kind of weirdly flat creepy looking creatures in all the good, bad, ugly categories to start with. You know, perfectly suited to being mistaken for leaves in the mud by both predators and food. But their parenting style gets even weirder than their physical appearance. So, the male toad will entice a female to mate with him and then shovel their fertilized eggs on to mom’s back to be absorbed into her skin when it grows around them, kind of like bubble wrap. And then, when the time is right, the true horror begins…
Surprise! They all pop out, with all of the babies literally erupting from little tiny holes in mom’s flesh. Let that sink in a minute. I’ll repeat in greater detail in case you weren’t listening. Mom develops the fertilized eggs under her skin in these little pockets on her back through all beginning life stages, from hatchlings to tadpoles to fully formed froglets, until it’s time two to three months later, when she births LOTS of little baby toads. The tiny toads literally erupt from beneath mom’s skin to swim to the surface and fend for themselves. She then molts and starts the cycle anew.
Just, no, I can’t even… So that’s it, I’m done for now. I’ll leave you with that image burned into your psyche as your last impression of this segment of Nightmarish Nature. Until next time…
They’re back… So, continuing where we left off, we’re still knuckle deep in finger spiders here at Haunted MTL! Because I made A LOT of unfulfilled requests for a spider out of fingers, I will continue this snarky little AI art series with NightCafe and Canva through the month of September…
Images: Overall design aesthetic of fashion / design advertising spread in muted tones with four AI art rendered images of spiders, built spiders, and spiders on hands, with any given number of legs on spiders and fingers on hands as you’d expect from AI interfacing at this time. Prompts used from top left to lower right include: finger spider; spider out of nothing but fingers; spider made out of only fingers; fingers as spider.
Text reads: Creepy Crawlies Finger Spiders Too Late! Well now that they’re in the house and you’re hunting them down, don’t let them crawl on you. Not only are they seriously creepy, but the AI art generation can warp time and space around itself and allow them to evolve to your biology.
Images: Overall design aesthetic of fashion / design advertising spread in muted tones with four AI art rendered images of spiders, built spiders, and spiders on hands, with any given number of legs on spiders and fingers on hands as you’d expect from AI interfacing at this time. Prompts used from top left to lower right include: spider out of only fingers; fingers into spider; finger spider; fingers as spider legs only.
Text reads: Creepy Crawlies Finger Spiders No You Didn’t! I can’t believe you let the AI art generated finger spiders crawl on you! What were you thinking?! Just try to wash it off as best you can… Like seriously, I can’t help you any more, you’re on your own.
All of the AI art images used in this series were generated on Thursday, June 13, 2024. If you want to see more freaky spiderness in art here on Haunted MTL, check out Bitten and Soul Catcher. More AI art graphic narratives from Jennifer Weigel have explored Little Red Riding Hood and Into the Deep Woods. Oh, and the Tiny Brain Computers exploration. To see more such devolutions into AI generated art, check out the Will the Real Jennifer Weigel Please Stand Up? blog.
So I tried to convince the AI to give me a spider made out of fingers, because there’s no way it could possibly mess that up right? Wink. After multiple unfulfilled requests for finger spiders, I bring you this snarky little AI art series with NightCafe and Canva for the month of September…
Images: Overall design aesthetic of fashion / design advertising spread in muted tones with four AI art rendered images of spiders, built spiders, and spiders on hands, with any given number of legs on spiders and fingers on hands as you’d expect from AI interfacing at this time. Prompts used from top left to lower right include: fingers as spider; spider made of fingers; a spider out of nothing but fingers; finger spider hand.
Text reads: Creepy Crawlies Finger Spiders Coming Soon! It’s just a matter of time before these horrifying AI art generated creations come crawling into your home to feast on your blood. For they are hungry and they are evolving…
Images: Overall design aesthetic of fashion / design advertising spread in muted tones with four AI art rendered images of spiders, built spiders, and spiders on hands, with any given number of legs on spiders and fingers on hands as you’d expect from AI interfacing at this time. Prompts used from top left to lower right include: fingers as spider; spider hand shadow puppetry; fingers in shape of spider; spider that is a hand.
Text reads: Creepy Crawlies Finger Spiders They’re Here! Too late, you let them into the house. You’d better be sure to find and squish them all before they breed and come after you. They are still hungry, and they are still evolving…
All of the AI art images used in this series were generated on Thursday, June 13, 2024. If you want to see more freaky spiderness in art here on Haunted MTL, check out Bitten and Soul Catcher. More AI art graphic narratives from Jennifer Weigel have explored Little Red Riding Hood and Into the Deep Woods. Oh, and the Tiny Brain Computers exploration. To see more such devolutions into AI generated art, check out the Will the Real Jennifer Weigel Please Stand Up? blog.
So most people don’t see orca whales as inherently horrific, but then again we don’t tend to see ourselves as humans that way either. That said, we are both apex predators, and the orca have earned the name killer whale for totally valid reasons. They’re kind of like giant sea wolves in their social structuring, and wolves are long thought to be terrifying.
And these aptly named killers have gotten a lot of press lately for sinking yachts and sailing vessels at the edge of the Mediterranean Sea. So we decided to explore these giant dolphin kin on this segment of Nightmarish Nature, because we focus a lot on the creepy crawlies but honestly a lot of bugs are just minding their own business (and minding it well, mind you).
On the Hunt
Killer whales have been known to terrorize other denizens of the deep and will often take advantage of spawning and reproductive grounds of other aquatic life, hunting down baby humpback whales migrating from their Caribbean birthing waters or attacking sea lion or seal pups en masse as they take to the sea for the first time (or the fifth or sixth or even as adults).
Some orca are even known to rush the shore and beach themselves to then shimmy back into the water, ideally with something to eat in tow. Or use their ability to make waves to wash their desired prey off of ice floes where they can nab it in the water. And they aren’t picky, when you’re that high up the food chain a grab ‘n go meal of any kind is all good: seals, polar bears, penguins, birds… because those big bodies need a lot of fuel… And killer whales will also toss living prey into the air in socialization, play, training, and just general sport whether they intend to eat the unfortunate creature(s) or not.
Culture Clashes
Each orca pod’s culture and habits differ, as some focus their attentions on nabbing fish and others on marine mammals. These two groups can often coexist in the same area, living very different lifestyles. Some will attack dolphin or porpoise pods (among their closest relatives), and others will clash with pilot whales competing for resources such as mackerel. Pods develop strong bonds and learning is passed down from mother whales; it is widely believed a female orca began the practice of attacking boats, possibly after being struck by one but possibly out of play or curiosity, and has taught it to others now doing so.
Attacking People
So why don’t orca attack and eat humans? Probably because of the missed opportunity, honestly. Killer whales learn about hunting from their mothers, and they simply haven’t been taught to prey on humans as such. In fairness, sharks don’t eat us either. Sure sharks might bite us occasionally, but the fact remains that they spit us out – likely because we aren’t the protein- and fat-rich injured seals they had hoped to be attacking. (We’re kind of scrawny and tough by comparison, probably not worth picking out of the teeth…)
Will orcas learn to attack and eat humans? Perhaps, if they keep attacking boats they may develop a taste for it. If they do, then that will likely seal their fate, because in the clash between apex predators, our engaging in a huge array of tool use is likely to force the issue. And, throughout our own history, we haven’t been known to tolerate animals that we come into conflict with very well at all. Just ask the Asiatic Lion.
If you’ve enjoyed this segment of Nightmarish Nature, feel free to check out some previous here:
