Source : http://www.cracked.com/article_17199_the-7-most-horrifying-parasites-planet.html
As soon as your doctor says you've got parasites in your body, you
don't need to hear any more details. They're all horrible, right? How
can it get worse than little tiny worms or something feeding on your
insides?
Actually, it can get way, way worse. As it turns out, there's nothing
in nature more creative than a parasite. And we don't mean that in a
good way. For instance...
#7.
The Guinea Worm Will Make You Do Its Bidding
Technically, your body is full of tiny creatures already. Bacteria,
viruses and so on. So really, should we get freaked out when we find out
that there's a specific kind of worm that lives under our skin? And
should it really bother us that said worm can grow to be longer than
your leg?
This brings us to the
guinea worm.
It starts small, really small. It begins life as a microscopic larva
tiny enough to fit inside of the common water flea. Like the elderly
residents of Florida, water fleas love to hang out in stagnant pools of
water, gossiping and doing water exercises until they are unknowingly
ingested by big, thirsty, humans.
So you go swimming and the flea makes its way down your throat. Now,
not being adequately equipped to survive the harsh environment of the
human stomach, the water flea is dissolved away, leaving the guinea worm
larva behind. It finds a soft, fleshy cavity to burrow into and starts
growing.
And growing.
About a year after infection, the full sized guinea worm is no longer
microscopic, but instead measures two to three goddamned feet long. As
long as a three year-old human child.
Being so large, a cramped human body is no longer adequate real
estate. So the worm wants to get out, and here's where it gets even
weirder. The worm burrows to the surface of the skin and creates a
blister, and causes a burning sensation. It does this on purpose,
because the worm has figured out that a burning feeling in a limb makes
humans want to dunk it in water.
This is exactly what the worm wants. It pokes its wriggling head out
of the blister, and releases its foul, milky brew into the water,
containing hundreds of thousands more larvae. They are promptly eaten by
water fleas and the whole thing starts all over again.
#6.
Is That Your Tongue, Or is it Cymothoa Exigua?
On one hand, you can relax because this one doesn't affect humans...
as far as we know. On the other hand, it's about the most fucked-up
thing you'll ever hear.
Cymothoa exigua
is a tiny crustacean that sneaks up on a fish (specifically, a red
snapper) and works its way in through the gills. Typical parasite
behavior so far.
Then it attaches itself to the base of the fish's tongue, the tongue evidently being the
tastiest
part of the fish (get it!?). The parasite uses its claws to dig into
the tongue and drink the fish's blood--and that's just the beginning.
As cymothoa exigua grows, less and less blood is able to get into the
fish's tongue which causes the tongue to slowly atrophy and ultimately
fall off--well, not so much "fall off" as pathetically float away, but
you know what we mean.
With the tongue dead and gone, the parasite settles in and replaces
the lost tongue with its own body. Somehow, cymothoa exigua is able to
attach itself to the fish's tongue muscles, allowing the snapper to use
it just like a normal tongue, the parasite flapping around as a
permanent fixture in the fish's mouth for the rest of its life.
Why does it do this? We don't know, but we're going to go with the
commonly held opinion that the cymothoa exigua simply thinks it's funny.
#5.
The Horsehair Worm's Side Effect? Suicide.
Imagine you're a happy grasshopper for a moment, joyfully kissing
your grasshopper wife and kids goodbye as you leave the house, tiny
briefcase in hand, ready to hop to work for the day.
Suddenly, on your way to the office, a sudden urge overtakes you, an
urge that cannot be ignored. You obediently follow the siren song to the
nearest body of water, and promptly fling yourself in. For weeks
afterward, your widowed wife and friends will wonder what could have
possibly made a perfectly happy and content grasshopper tragically
commit suicide, by drowning no less. Depression? An affair gone wrong?
Crushing gambling debts? No, it turns out it was just another strike
from the soulless and evil menace known as
the horsehair worm.
Resembling a coarse, thick horse hair (well, duh) the horsehair worm
infiltrates insects, and sometimes even crabs, as a larva when the
insect drinks tainted water. From inside the aforementioned grasshopper,
the worm goes to work.
It weasels its way into the body cavity, and nourishes itself on the
insect's tissues, sometimes growing up to a foot long. After a time,
when the worm has matured, it starts to get horny, as teenagers do, and
decides that the time has come to find himself a sexy mate. The problem
is, all of the sexiest female worms hang out at the swimming pool club,
and he's stuck inside of a prudish grasshopper.
That's a problem easily and dickishly solved by the horsehair worm,
however, by simply reprogramming the insect's brain to seek out the
nearest body of water and to hop right in, despite the sad fact that
grasshoppers, like many other insects, can't swim.
As his former host panics and gasps its last breaths of sweet life,
the worm casually slithers out of its anus, bids adieu to the drowning
grasshopper and swims in search of the orgies of knotted up worms he's
heard so much about.
#4.
The Filarial Worm Can Turn You into an Object of Horror
Fucking mosquitoes. As if there weren't enough reasons to hate these
living dirty needles, the bastards are responsible for yet more
horrifying diseases thanks to the multitude of parasites they
unwittingly inject into us every time they feed.
One such parasite is the almost too-weird-to-be-real
filarial worm and, yes, it does affect humans.
Nature's douchebag.
After a year spent bumming around in our bodies, the worms mature
into adults and finally take up the job they were born to do, by moving
into the lymphatic system. Doesn't sound so bad...
Well, here's the thing. The lymphatic system keep excess fluids
moving out of your body. It's one of those unnoticed bodily tasks that
you don't appreciate until it stop working. Like if, say, a bunch of
worms clogged it up. The filarial worm does just that, bunches of them
all working hard in the vessels near the lymph nodes, causing those
vessels to become obstructed and inflamed. Shit starts backing up, and
the tissue starts inflating like a freaking balloon.
Finally, you wind up with massive and debilitating enlargements of
the legs and genitals, a condition commonly known as Elephantitis.
Goddamn mosquitoes.
Despite his rampant case of filarial worms, this man is still too proud to use only one flip-flop.
#2.
Mind Control, Part I: Leocochloridium Paradoxum
Leucochloridium paradoxum
is a parasite that has an impossible dream. Luey, as it shall
henceforth be known, begins life literally in a puddle of shit. But Luey
dreams of flight, and the method by which it achieves it is both
complicated and fucked-up beyond comprehension.
First, knowing how much some animals love to eat shit, Luey lies in
wait in his fecal puddle until the vacuum cleaner of nature, more
commonly known as the snail, comes around to slurp it up.
Once inside the snail, Luey enacts the next part of his ingenious
plan. Knowing that birds aren't too fond of eating slimy snails, he
migrates to the snail's eyestalks and begins to stretch and change them
into something that looks much more appetizing to birds: caterpillars.
The eyestalks that are usually so well-guarded and often retracted by
the snail, are now pulsating, swollen and brightly-colored morsels of
imitation caterpillar meat. Wait, it's not done.
Now is when Luey hacks into the snail's brain. It takes complete
control, driving it like a little, slimy car out into the open so all of
the hungry birds in the sky can see and swoop down on the irresistible
caterpillar-like eyestalks.
Once inside the luxuriously spacious and soaring bird, Luey is free to
feed on its insides, grow into an adult and reproduce knowing that soon,
his babies will be shat out of the bird like he was, to start their own
rags-to-riches lives. Meanwhile, the poor and confused snail is less
one eyestalk, but has learned the hard way that eating shit is always a
bad idea.
#1.
Mind Control, Part II: The Emerald Jewel Wasp
The emerald jewel wasp is a marvel of evolution. And evil.
The female, not being content with just laying her eggs in a hole and
hoping the larvae find a way to survive like other insects, makes sure
that her larvae will hatch right on top of their preferred food source: a
cockroach. The problem with that is a typical cockroach is aggressive,
and two to three times larger and beefier than the female.
She has found a way around this. An inventive, terrifying way.
Like a surgeon, the wasp uses her long stinger to penetrate the
surprised cockroach, to paralyze and anesthetize the front section of
its body. Now, she can take her sweet time, to make sure the second
injection of her stinger is perfectly placed into a specific area of the
roach's brain. She injects more venom directly into it, precisely
blocking very specific receptors of neurotransmitters that essentially
destroy the roach's fight or flight responses and leave it zombified.
Yes, the wasp knows how to do this.
Now in control of her very own cockroach, the wasp leads it back to
her burrow. Once inside, she finally lays her egg on top of the
cooperative cockroach, bites off its antennae in order to drink the
roach's blood and replenish her energy, then exits the burrow, sealing
it off with rocks and pebbles.
After a few days, the eggs hatch and the larvae slowly consume the
insides of the roach until they form a cocoons and the roach is finally
allowed to embrace the sweet relief of death. Eventually the adult wasp
emerges from the cocoon/dead roach husk to begin its own life of
surgical zombification.
Seriously, did you ever think you'd find yourself taking the roach's side in a situation?
