The 7 Most Horrifying Parasites on the Planet
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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.
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.
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bdadz, I was going to mention that fish. I'm amazed it's not on here.
I think that the kandiru (possibly misspelled) should have been on the list. Sure, it doesn't take control of the host organism, but it is bad ass in its own right. The kandiru is a small catfish that swims into the gills of where it scrapes the fish with small hook like appendages until it bleeds and can feed. What's more horrific than this is that the kandiru sometimes mistakes the urinary tract of human beings for fish. The thought of a fish swimming up and then mutilating my penis has left me with many a sleepless night.
Holy Crap, I remember finding a horsehair worm in a pond in our yard when I was a child, 25 years ago or so. I remember getting it in a jar and taking it to grade school with me. No one believed it was real, that it was some kind of trick or something. Finally, I know what it was and sort of wish I didn't.
Sorry - it was Cordyceps.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuKjBIBBAL8&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ecracked%2Ecom%2Ffunny%2D422%2Dparasites%2F&feature=player_embedded
I think the xeno-fungus thing was called Corticeps or something like that.
Sweet Jesus.
You know about how those e. coli bacteria evolved in just twenty years the ability to process citrate?
Thank God I'll be dead by the time something on this list turns into the Goa'uld.
You know, I think I want to go out and raise Emerald Jewel Wasps now. After finding out what they do to cockroaches I think they might have just topped my list for greatest insect of all time. I hate cockroaches, seriously. I hate them.
You guys are forgetting one thing: There's a fungus that lives in the Amazon rainforest that gets inside insects, controls their pathetic insectile minds so that they climb to the top of grass stalks, then explodes out of the back of their head xenomorph style and releases a cloud of spores for other poor innocent insects to ingest. Unfortunately, I don't remember what it's called.
Damn I thought that people on welfare would have been ranked number 1.
i think earth is getting revenge for all the little things we have done to it by scaring us to death...
As revolting as these images are, New Zealand TV show hosts make them all look like Carmen Electra. Most of them appear to be under the control of the brain parasite wasps, also. That tongue bug is clearly rampant here, too, as it appears to be a job requirement for NZ TV hosting that you have a truly lens-spattering lisp. There are about six great horror films in waiting here just from those bugs alone...oh, what? OK, we'll just remake REC again, fine.
i don't like this...not one bit...
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Why does #2 have a picture of a lamprey? Admittedly, they're horrifying with the whole drilling into other -live- fish with their sucker-mouth full of spikey teeth to slurp on blood and pulped organs...but they aren't a mind controlling s**t-worm by any means.
The last picture for #6 should be under "photos you won't believe arem't Photo Shopped".
Wow, just.......WOW!
Appalling article on parasites. Was really informative yet nauseating.
Cracked ... you disgustingly ROCK !!!
Cymothoa Exigua..the f*****g thing has a face for cripe's sake...!!
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Haha on a parasite article .... spambots are funny. xD
Oh my God, I wanted to scream when I saw the cockroach. Then again I'm, horribly afraid of them. Still, what a way to go. I wouldn't wish that on anyone or anything.
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Late in adding.... but.... step forward, the World Champion of Parasitic, dispicable, mind-controlling, limpet infestation ever to raom this unwitting earth... The Blafiour Anthonious. (For the sake of my ambivalence, let's call this creature.... 'Tony Blair'!)
This disease ridden, bloodsucking montrosity, a member of the Fuctilya Seathroughus clan, imitates a Human... and perfected that amazing feat, to the h**o Sapien off-shoot, h**o Erogenous(a fuckwitted zombie-like creature, who, when tickled under the scrotum, can be manipulated into believing that 'it doesn't matter that garbage sifting for food is uncouth, and insane, all is well in life and give us 5 more years to repair the horrors we've caused, you'll have toast... cos we love you'. This vampyrie controlled knuckle-dragger is then taught to 'recognise' pictures that form the word 'LABOUR', and 'TICK' a box next to it!)
Sapien's are then 'enslaved', by this NEW WORLD LABOUR(not to be mistaken by the ficticious and oft mentioned fairytale believe by the Erogenous Commune, the 'NEW WORLD ORDER', another example of the self proclaimed genii loci conspiracy theoristic enlightened hippie artschool, dropouts. (They refer to themselves as the Anti-Illuminati [aunty illumed minority arty types(sic])
Blair, plays a great part in this brown-eye fearing group, yet unconsciously, or plain dipshittedly, tick the box, nonetheless! He forms the 'ESTABLISHMENT' in their purile 'House of Cards' theory, and has hidden scaled reptilian, shape shifting abilities, blinks horizontally, and encourages, indeed... employs, the childbugger brigade (there are however, many facts, and some evidence, that at least one of their fears are true. It has yet to be ascertained 'which' yet, but the reptile belief is bullshit, so the reader must decide!
Blair then prances between continents, accepting a number of anal approaches from a whore induced unelected dictatorship(Europus Parliamentum), and Dub L Yew Bushlicker(a strange, and mentally challenged amoeba capable of the wonderous, yet curious, powergrabbing method of 'using its family influence' to throw the wool over the eyes of its friends and enemies'?!), and lets itself be fucked many times 'for the cause', and soul purpose of 'safe-harbour', when the 'Electorate', finally pisses it out! It does show one last unbelievable amount of strength to cling on to its host, by way of 'dropping its 'party' in the s**t' that inevitably follows... and has perfected the art of 'Passing the Buck', while 'Earning a Buck', via the aforementioned agenda and 'cause', and a 'Euro' from its pimplike 'Motherland'.
Hard to pin down, it seems to escape the wrath of the Sapien community, due to their inability to 'hold grudges'? A fine example being the ignorance of enemy.... getting only 'slightly perturbed' at the height of terrorist bombing, its alert, ranging from, "Oi, please refrain", to "Damn you I say!" when fully attacked, and engaged in a battle of nonchalence!
Blair is then left to 'lie low' in its highland retreats, having first managed to do unbelievable harm to the host, and managed to destroy a system of 'union' that leaves the left arm unknowing of the right arms activity, and inducing wearisome paranoia, suspicion, and allegations of bias(founded in many cases!) by tearing the body of that union apart via self-regulation(each extremity sucking from a singlular 'HEART', as much blood and life force as it can, before total breakaway.
BEWARE... Blair is COMING TO A TOWN NEAR YOU SOON!