While science isn’t my chosen field of study, I’ve always been intrigued by certain gee-whiz aspects of biology and the natural world. Take, for instance, the starfish. While the whole arm-regeneration thing is cool, it’s the way the starfish eats that really catches my fancy.
The mouth of a starfish is ridiculously small in contrast to its prey. Since they are without teeth or other means of mastication, the creatures would probably starve to death if they didn’t have one extremely unusual dining habit. When preparing to feed, starfish shoot their stomachs out of their mouths, wrap the organ around their prey, digest the food down to syrupy goodness, and then slurp the whole thing back in. On a gross-but-cool scale, that one ranks at least a solid eight.
Because my mind works in strange ways, I used to wonder what the world would be like if people ate the way starfish did. “Oh, I’d love to chat, Mildred, but I’m about to digest something and you know how hard it is for me to talk with my mouth full.” More to the point, what would it feel like to literally turn one’s stomach inside out?
I don’t wonder that anymore. This week I’ve become convinced that my body is not, in fact, turning into a finely tune baby-making machine. Instead, I’m devolving into a sucker-footed invertebrate with attention seeking internal organs. Why else would my abdominal muscles seem so hell-bent on forcing my stomach up through my esophagus? What once were dry heaves have morphed into a full-body attempt to give my digestive system a thorough airing out. Suffice it to say I am not a fan of this turn of events and Ruyman’s encouragements of “Well, it’s only four more months of this, hopefully,” are not very consoling.
Too bad I didn’t get the mutant skin regeneration instead. I could have really used an extra toe.
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