Animals Spread Disease Constantly

"Bitter at the ascendency of man, these scheming apes brewed this deadly virus in their jungle lairs." — David Attenborough^†.

^† The Onion.

⟿ Follow Rob Beschizza on Twitter.

MORE: the onion

More at Boing Boing

Ants and Stars: Bruce Sterling and Jasmina Tesanovic visit the Sardinia Radio Telescope in Italy

The Snowden Principle

http://www.matthewpetty.com/ Matthew Petty

Animals think they’re pretty smart.
- dculberson
  
  Shit on the ground, see in the dark
  - Preston Sturges
    
    Pay no taxes…
http://walkingwithshimmer.wordpress.com/ Werther deGoethe

Duck plague! Isn’t that what killed Huey, Dewey, and Louie?
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  That’s not even a duck in the video; it’s a pie-billed grebe.
  - MelSkunk
    
    I stopped the video at that point, whilst yelling “It’s a GREBE” at my monitor.
    
    I guess I caught the duck plague
  - SumAnon
    
    And the ‘otter’ in the beginning was cut in with a beaver.
    
    But we still <3 The Onion.
  - Preston Sturges
    
    You want a pie-billed grebe?
    
    WE GOT THAT B-ROLL!
  - http://www.facebook.com/sheri.l.williamson Sheri L. Williamson
    
    Pied-billed Grebe
Preston Sturges

“…..It started in Addis Ababa like the Jersey Bounce, but these are modern times, One World. Now the climactic buboes swell up in Shanghai and Esmeraldas, New Orleans and Helsinki, Seattle andCapetown. But the heart turns home and the disease shows a distinct predilection for Negroes, is in fact the whitehaired boy of white supremacists. But the Mau Mau voodoo men are said to be cooking up a really dilly of a VD for the white folks. Not that Caucasians are immune: five British sailors contracted the disease in Zanzibar…..”

WS Burroughs, Naked Lunch (1959)
- Rich Keller
  
  Burroughs wrote that? Damn, I read it in the voice of Abe Simpson.
  - Preston Sturges
    
    “But the Mau Mau voodoo men are said to be cooking up a really dilly of a VD for the white folks…..”
    
    I can’t read that without thinking of AIDS
    
    And I’m pretty sure nobody else ever said
    
    “…..It started in Addis Ababa like the Jersey Bounce,”
ldobe

I’d buy the “Horrifying Planet” Blu-ray box-set. If not to get a full 16 hours of horror, then to at least tell my other pretentious friends that it was amazing photography, but there really wasn’t anything to learn from it.
Aram Jahn

As I write this, comfortably ensconced in my impenetrable stainless steel tower on a secret mountain on my own fenced-off private island in the Indian Ocean, a can of Raid in one hand and a jug of bleach that can shoot a laser-like stream and hit a spot from 30 feet, I laff! Laff at you all! HAHAHAHAHA!!! Soon the planet shall be all mine! You will all fall victim to beastly…stuff…sloughed off from killer, filthy animals! And…wait a minute…what’s this growth on my lip? Dear God!
- I_of_Horus
  
  As I don’t have a stainless steel tower, I’m writing this from my backyard underground bunker. I was always prepared for the worst, I have my freeze dried food, tinned veggies, MREs etc. Everything to survive the coming armageddon, but I never thought animals would bring the human race down. How wrong I was. I am now unplugging my computer as my wife said it could get viruses over the Wi-Fi. Is there really no safe place anymore? Are we all really doomed? Does that mean I was right all along? Jay me?
  - ldobe
    
    Then come the earthworms, the moles, and the gophers.
  - https://launchpad.net/~googoleyes koanhead
    
    Having neither stainless steel tower nor underground bunker I have set myself on fire, since heat kills germs.
    It should also make me quite tender.
Scott Slemmons

Their segment on spiders was much better: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcR9af_akCw
Timothy Tankersley

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067197/ The Hellstrom Chronicle (1971). Insects will take over the world.
- jerwin
  
  The Frank Herbert novel wasn’t bad. Sometimes I think that those who adapt “Dune” should read Herbert’s lesser known works, lest they be tempted to make the space opera “less weird.”
  - Getefix
    
    Are you talking about _The Green Brain_? Felt like there was a really strong spike of that in the late 60′s and 70′s. The film _Phase IV_ comes to mind, too. Simon R. Green gives tribute/steals it for his “Red Brain” in the Deathstalker books. And of course there’s the _Deathworld_ books by the late Harry Harrison.
    - jerwin
      
      Herbert also wrote Hellstrom’s Hive. Thanks for the recommendations.
- Aram Jahn
  
  I remember around age 17, being tooo stoned, and stumbling upon Hellstrom Chronicles on late night TV, and it was so funny! The next day I told one of my friends about it and they asked, “What was the name of the movie?” And I couldn’t remember. It seemed like I researched for years (this was before Internet) before finding the title. Thanks for reminding me. The Hellstrom Chronicle is scary-funny and it looks good…as I recall.
fergus1948

Mm errr …why is this attributed to David Attenborough? That was not his voice.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  It’s called a ‘joke’.
- ocker3
  
  See that little funny symbol? They usually mean you’re supposed to look for a reference somewhere else on the page, in this case saying that The Onion says he said that
http://halfbakedmaker.org Robert Baruch

Surely other animals catch stuff from us all the time? It isn’t a one-way gift?

EDIT: I’m talking about microbiological stuff. Not, like, eat plastic and die, you fish.
JonCarter

Our closest relative, the chimpanzee, is itself the fountainhead of AIDS. Bitter at the ascendancy of man, these scheming apes brood this deadly virus in their jungle lairs
Dignan

Meh, sometimes I’ll watch Horrifying Planet only because it comes on after Sex House and I’m too lazy to change the channel.