In my work I’ve been around many things that can be considered gross. Cutting away dead flesh around a bed sore that’s a big rotting hole into the body, a woman eating her own feces like a mars bar, etc. One time I slipped and fell into a puddle that was a mix of edema fluids leaking through the skin, and urine. After a while you get desensitized, and it’s just… matter. Atoms. I saw this woman who fell and her head went into the ground hard and blood just pumped out of her head into her long hair, it was like one big lump of hair that soaked up the blood, she lived for a day after that and I held her hand when she died. It’s a strange thing to be around dying people all the time, I’m not sure if I’ve made peace with it or if I’m broken in some way.
I have not been able to find this again, but I swear that I once read a study where they had measured oxytocin levels while stimulating a badgers nipples. I just want to see the person who did this. Anyways, it worked as expected, and they had some data on which frequency worked best. Iirc it was one slow stroke every 1.5 seconds. Which is kind of the pace I pet cats to relax.