By Ferris Jabr

Ferris Jabr is a science writer and a graduate student in New York University's Science, Health, and Environmental Reporting Program (SHERP). He is currently interning with Scientific American MIND. He enjoys writing about brains, gadgets, and strange organisms, with a particular fondness for peculiar plants.

VENUS AND THE VEGAN

I was a vegan, you know. That was my choice. All the others—well, as soon my siblings wriggled free from the amber chambers of our pupal stage, they began to indulge their taste for the fetid and putrefying. They dove into the waxy mustard lakes of Aunt Peggy’s deviled eggs, lapping at stale currents of cayenne that dappled her discarded delights; they flew straight through tin-toothed mouths into hollow cans of cat food, kissing every centimeter of metal to sponge up flecks of flesh from what was once a fancy feast. And when Tiger graced the lawn with yet more…