Eyescream
The zombie fungus ants often go out to die at a fixed place. This place would be full of ants, and called "ant graveyard".
Zombie fungus millipede. Similar to zombie fungus ants.
A virus (!) that can manipulate caterpillars. The manipulation is very simple (climb up to the top then die), but still remarkable. The caterpillar dies and most of the inside turns into goo that rains down or gets carried by the wind.
X-ray photo of shrimps infected with parasitic barnacles.
Fish with parasite in the brain.
galaxias having a enlarged head, or a head full of "white balls".
Tylodelphys dwells in its host's eyes in the vitreous liquid between the lens and the retina. They do this to blind the fish, so that the fish can be eaten, and the parasites can sexually mature inside the final host: the bird.
Rat king cercaria.
Basically, cercaria are tadpole-shaped little swimmers. They burst out of an intermediate host (usually an aquatic snail), and start swimming, hoping to get eaten by the final host so they can mature and have sexual reproduction there.
For some species, the cercaria has the special ability to join their tail-tips together by some kind of glue, so that hundreds of cercaria can swim as one. It looks like a rat king, and to a fish, it looks like a struggling little zooplankton, and swallow it.
Instead, as the fish swallows the wriggling ball of cercariae, the parasites get tangled up in the fish's mouth and begin penetrating into the host tissue. Imagine what a nightmarish experience that must be! It would be like you eating a handful of popcorn only to find in mid-chew that the popcorns are drilling their way into your throat!
Source: deviantArt
Hairworms climbing out of a cricket.
DICKWORM
Mesocaria aggregates in snake tail, destroying its muscles, and weakening it. When a snake is being hunted, the predator can easily pull off the infested tip of the tail and eat it like a juice pack, full of delicious wriggling worms. Once inside, the mesocaria sexually matures and reproduces.
Myiasis is the parasitic infestation of the body of a live animal by fly larvae which grow inside the host while feeding on its tissue.
Botflies dig into the flesh and stays there, eating the meat from the walls as it grows and matures. In about 2 months, it climbs out and flies away, leaving behind a smooth, spherical hole.
after the botfly has made its exit, the hole they made in their host remains open for several days. That’s pretty like much waving a neon ‘vacancy’ sign in front of the primary screw worm fly (Cochliomyia hominivorax) - an even nastier parasite that lays its eggs in open flesh wounds. When the screwfly larvae hatch, they feast on anything and everything surrounding that wound. Some monkey cadavers were even found with hands eaten down to the bone from these nasty little maggot and at least half of the C. hominivorax infestations found on howler monkeys were the result of prior A. baeri infections.
 |
| Howling monkey with botflies |
Let me tell you, screwworms are nasty. From Myiasis caused by the New World screwworm fly Cochliomyia hominivorax (Diptera: Calliphoridae) in cats from Brazil: report of five cases (2010)
They are highly voracious and feed on living tissues by releasing proteolytic enzymes that cause tissue digestion thus increasing damage
 | |
| Stray cat presenting myiasis on the left region of the neck extending to the face. |
https://dailyparasite.blogspot.com/2016/02/briarosaccus-regalis.html
Cashew-shaped bug! Okay, it's actually a parasitic barnacle, like Sacculina.
 |
| Not a cashew. |
No comments:
Post a Comment