Parasitic Worm VIDEO Shows Huge Nematode Emerging From Dead Spider Host, Biologist Says
When YouTube user Brent Askwith saw a freakishly large worm slither out of a spider he had just killed, he recorded the ghoulish event and appropriately named the video "WTF IS THIS?!?"
"I was just editing my latest montage and this huge spider came out, so I sprayed it and killed it, then this fricken alien worm came out," Askwith wrote in the video's description.
That "alien worm" is actually a parasitic nematode, also known as a roundworm. While the nematode in the YouTube video is larger than most, Harvard University entomologist Dr. Brian Farrell told The Huffington Post that every human is infested with thousands of tiny nematodes.
"Most have no obvious effect on us, and we are mostly unaware of their presence," he wrote in an e-mail, "but a few are large enough to cause diseases such as trichinosis."
In addition to looking strange, nematode parasites can cause their hosts to do strange things. Dr. Farrell gave the example of some nematodes that prey on ants -- the parasite makes its host climb a tree and wave its butt in the air in order to catch the eye of a bird. The bird then nabs the ant, allowing the parasite to escape through the ant's abdomen and spread to other potential hosts.
"My personal favorite is Toxoplasma gondii," Dr. Farrell wrote, "the protozoan that infects cats (and is the reason pregnant women should not be around cats). Toxoplasma also infects rats and makes them unafraid of cats, so they get eaten and the parasites are able to then infect the cats they desire. Weird."
Good grief... first fat guys with guns now this... I'm beginning to worry about you AiA.
DOLT - A person who is stupid and entirely tedious at the same time, like bwian. Oblivious to their own mental incapacity. On IGNORE - Warrior, mellie, Nom De Plume, FLEKTARD
We always fear the large predators, but even for humans, its the small that does the worst damage. Hygiene is the only thing saving us given our current plague proportions.
Who would have thought mushrooms could be so formidable?
"But you will run your fluffy bunny mouth at me. And I will take it, to play poker."
AiA in Atlanta wrote:"My personal favorite is Toxoplasma gondii," Dr. Farrell wrote, "the protozoan that infects cats (and is the reason pregnant women should not be around cats). Toxoplasma also infects rats and makes them unafraid of cats, so they get eaten and the parasites are able to then infect the cats they desire. Weird."
Cat ladies, anyone? Hmmm...
"But you will run your fluffy bunny mouth at me. And I will take it, to play poker."
Every traveler's nightmare came true for Bryan Williams and Ally Vaag, two Australians vacationing in South America, when they made a gruesome discovery: Flesh-eating maggots were growing under their skin.
The couple had been touring the Amazon Basin when they were bit by mosquitoes, reports the New Zealand Herald. But by the time they had traveled to Bolivia, their bites had grown into oozing pustules that required medical attention to remove the small maggots living inside the wounds.
The maggots were the larvae of the human botfly (Dermatobia hominis), a large fly that resembles a bumblebee, according to the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. Despite the horror-story sound of the infection, it's relatively benign.
"There's a great mythology about the botfly, but really, you just pull them out
Super Nova wrote:Worms might be bad but I didn't enjoy catching these bastards years ago.
Waning infestations of the bloodsuckers have been linked by doctors to pubic depilation, especially a technique popularized in the 1990s by a Manhattan salon run by seven Brazilian sisters. More than 80 percent of college students in the U.S. remove all or some of their pubic hair -- part of a trend that’s increasing in western countries. In Australia, Sydney’s main sexual health clinic hasn’t seen a woman with pubic lice since 2008 and male cases have fallen 80 percent from about 100 a decade ago.
"But you will run your fluffy bunny mouth at me. And I will take it, to play poker."
