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Nature's Horrifying Parasites

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S

Sölf

Member
Ah, Toxoplasma gondii, we meet again. Zero Time Dilemma prepared me for you.

I find this stuff fascinating. Nature is scary.
 
T

TechnicPuppet

Nothing! I said nothing!
The Girl with all the Gifts (minor synopsis type spoiler)
is based on the something like the ant one mutating and affecting humans.
 
E

EstoyBlackWaldo

Member
HotHamBoy said:
I just found out what mangoworms are.

ccfcbe1485a8571dd28b171df1d06564.gif
Click to expand...

Memory said:
Whatever y0u do, do not google image search!!!!!!!!
Click to expand...

So I didn't listen, I googled it. That foot, my lord. As I continue eating breakfast...

giphy.gif
 
E

EstoyBlackWaldo

Member
TheJollyCorner said:
For those of us too chickenshit to image search the mangoworm, can some gleefully morbid GAFer explain what they do? :p :(
Click to expand...

Think equivalent of a botfly planting its larvae underneath the skin. The larvae penetrates the juciy skin and lives in the layer of skin that has fat and connective tissue filled with blood vessels and nerves. Then fatten up in there, after 8-12 days a boil will form, and it will painfully itch before it opens up as the worm burrows itself out. Basically once you get a mango worm up in you, you gotta wait for it to be ready to come up out of you.

Majority of pictures and videos I've now gotten to deep into to stop have multiple offenders invading animals
 
L

Lightning_Roller

Banned
KiteBlues said:
Think equivalent of a botfly planting its larvae underneath the skin. The larvae penetrates the juciy skin and lives in the layer of skin that has fat and connective tissue filled with blood vessels and nerves. Then fatten up in there, after 8-12 days a boil will form, and it will painfully itch before it opens up as the worm burrows itself out. Basically once you get a mango worm up in you, you gotta wait for it to be ready to come up out of you.

Majority of pictures and videos I've now gotten to deep into to stop have multiple offenders invading animals
Click to expand...

....

No. No, just no. Nope, nah. I'm done, I'm gone I'm ghost fam. I'm Audi 500. Bye.

*Curls up into a ball on his bed and prays the mental images go away.*
 
W

Wilsongt

Member
-KRS- said:
Regarding Toxoplasma gondii, I heard on the Stuff to blow your mind podcast that it's estimated that more than 50% of all human beings are infected by it. And this isn't just in undeveloped countries. It's also very common in developed ones as well.
Click to expand...

Toxo is always devestating to AIDS patients and the drug to treat it was the one that douchebag pharmabro jacked up the cost of.
 
I

IronRinn

Member
That frog one is crazy. Also, so many parasitic wasps. Also, no Cymothoa exigua?

They first mature into males, but then switch sexes to become females. The magic starts when more than one C. exigua lands in a given fish’s gills. When the first one infiltrates it begins to mature into a male, but when the second one appears, said Brusca, it “stimulates the first one to change sex and become a female and crawl from the gills up through the throat and attach to the tongue, and then this new second one is the male that will impregnate her.”

The female next anchors herself to the tongue with seven pairs of legs, each tipped with a highly muscularized spine that looks a bit like a scorpion’s stinger. It is here where she’ll mate and spend the rest of her life experiencing the world as the snapper does, only, you know, without the excruciating pain.

As she grows, she molts just like any other arthropod and feeds on the snapper’s tongue not by gnawing away, but by sucking the blood out of it. “They have five sets of jaws,” said Brusca, “and all five of them are modified into these stiletto-like devices, and a couple of them are like long lances, if you will, that slice open the tissue of the host fish. And then the others operate together kind of like a soda straw to draw the blood up out of the wound that they’ve created.”

In this way C. exigua will slowly drain the life out of the snapper’s tongue, which atrophies from the tip on back, bit by bit, until nothing but the muscular stub remains. This the isopod now grasps with her rearmost three or four pairs of legs, essentially becoming the fish’s new tongue. And the isopod has likely evolved like this to keep her host alive, according to Brusca, allowing her more time to rear her young.

But once the tongue is gone, the female is left without a food supply. So as her young continue to develop, she lives solely on stored energy supplies, according to Brusca. Scientists aren’t yet sure at what point the young are released, or how exactly they find fish of their own, but Brusca reckons that the female may wait until her host is schooling with other fish to cut her offspring loose from the brood pouch, giving the young plenty of targets.

What happens next is like that scene in Titanic where the band goes down with the ship, except that those guys probably hadn’t been randomly switching sexes and eating fish tongues. With her procreation complete, the female isopod, who lost her ability to swim as she matured, “probably lets go and leaves or gets swallowed, but she’s out of the picture,” said Brusca. “And now you’ve got a fish with no tongue, so it’s not going to survive either. So it’s really a case of true parasitism. In fact, the fish ends up getting sacrificed for the sake of the isopod.”
Click to expand...

Tongue-eating-Louse-Cymothoa-exigua-side-view.jpg
 
G

Gamepad

Member
Darkologia said:
Dead Ant Walking
If ants could speak, they would probably refer to Ophiocordyceps with abject fear. Small spores of the fungus enter an ant’s body by dissolving its cuticle (skin) with enzymes. Once inside, the fungus grows, filling the ant like a sausage. As it does, it also changes the ant’s brain chemistry and compels it to scale a tree. In its last dying moments, the swollen insect clamps its jaws down on a leaf. With the zombie's corpse securely anchored, fungal stalks burst from the body and sprinkle spores onto unsuspecting insects below. If a zombie apocalypse ever happens, this has to be how it’s going down.
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Firewalker (The X-Files episode).
 
A

Anoregon

The flight plan I just filed with the agency list me, my men, Dr. Pavel here. But only one of you!
Askherserenity said:
Are there...any nice parasites? There has to be right?
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Well, the beneficial analog to a parasitism is symbiosis. The organisms involved in symbiotic relationships aren't really like parasites, though.
 
A

Askherserenity

Member
Anoregon said:
Well, the beneficial analog to a parasitism is symbiosis. The organisms involved in symbiotic relationships aren't really like parasites, though.
Click to expand...

AbsolutBro said:
Pretty much by definition, no. A creature that has a mutually beneficial relationship with its host creature is generally referred to as a symbiote instead of a parasite.
Click to expand...

Well, I feel like an idiot because I knew this. Remoras that swim alongside sharks are pretty much a symbiote correct? They help clean the shark and stuff while taking advantage of the free meals?
 
R

RipperGrim

Member
Man it would be hilarious if the reason why cat videos are so popular on the Internet is because half the world is infected with a parasite.
 
A

Airan

Member
I just spent 10 minutes watching videos of Mangoworm removal. I gotta say, it probably feels very cathartic to squeeze down and see dozens of the maggots pop out.
 
G

Glix

Member
As she grows, she molts just like any other arthropod and feeds on the snapper’s tongue not by gnawing away, but by sucking the blood out of it. “They have five sets of jaws,” said Brusca, “and all five of them are modified into these stiletto-like devices, and a couple of them are like long lances, if you will, that slice open the tissue of the host fish. And then the others operate together kind of like a soda straw to draw the blood up out of the wound that they’ve created.”
Click to expand...

I can't deal with this.
 
mhayes86

mhayes86

Member
KiteBlues said:
Think equivalent of a botfly planting its larvae underneath the skin. The larvae penetrates the juciy skin and lives in the layer of skin that has fat and connective tissue filled with blood vessels and nerves. Then fatten up in there, after 8-12 days a boil will form, and it will painfully itch before it opens up as the worm burrows itself out. Basically once you get a mango worm up in you, you gotta wait for it to be ready to come up out of you.

Majority of pictures and videos I've now gotten to deep into to stop have multiple offenders invading animals
Click to expand...

Stopped at Botfly. I saw a video/documentary or something about those several years ago. Nope.
 
M

MrOogieBoogie

BioShock Infinite is like playing some homeless guy's vivid imagination
Lonewulfeus said:
Definitely thought this would be about kids
Click to expand...

So edgy.

Regarding toxoplasmosis: how cautious should I be around kittens when it comes to this shit? People let their cats run around the whole house, including on their beds and pillows. How much are you exposing yourself?
 
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