MetaTalk

Warm salutations, Metafilterians! For today's chat, I want to ask you what is a basically ordinary thing (or things) that creeps you tf out, but that nobody else seems to mind. [more inside]
posted by taz on Jan 29, 2022 - 263 comments

While following a troop of sooty mangabeys, monkeys found in the forests of Ivory Coast, Boston University primatologist [and MeFi’s own] Erin Kane walked face-first into a tree. Almost instantly, her eye became red, itchy and watery, but she went on following her monkeys. After about half an hour more of discomfort, she got nervous and asked her field assistant to take a look.

He found a tick embedded on the inside of Kane's eyelid.

"Poor Richard," Kane said of the assistant on that 2012 expedition. "He was also the person who squeezed botflies out of my armpit for me because I couldn't get the leverage quite right."

This, ladies and gentlemen, is a day in the life of a wildlife biologist.

posted by Johnny Wallflower on Sep 22, 2017 - 54 comments

Followupfilter to this 2004 post about Guinea Worm disease, which mentioned the campaign of Georgia's best ex-governor and his foundation to eradicate it. They're almost there. Not that JC and friends are the only players, but they've certainly been major ones. "The few remaining cases exist in off-the-map places. In many sites, the Carter Center is the only outside presence — no other international or Sudanese organizations have set up shop. Even a government presence is rare." Yet another reason, if you needed another, to hope the Southern Sudan independence referendum (^) on Jan. 9 goes down without violence and does have the effect of preventing more north-south warfare in Sudan.
posted by jfuller on Dec 26, 2010 - 5 comments