The 7 Most Horrifying Parasites on the Planet
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#3.
Sacculina Will Make You Her Bitch. Literally.
Sacculina has adopted the age-old parasite disguise of sounding like a really hot Italian chick. Well, we're not fooled. Sacculina is actually a not-at-all-hot female barnacle that is able to inject itself into various species of crab, grow inside them and eventually emerge from the carapace as a large sac. Right near his genitals.
There, sacculina goes to work. She manipulates the crab's hormones, sterilizing and basically emasculating him. Next, the parasite starts forcing changes in the crab's body to make it resemble a female, presumably by causing a couple of huge crab boobs to flop out. As the final insult, she forces her victim to perform humiliating female mating dances. Finally when it comes time for sacculina to release her fertilized eggs--after having had sex with another sacculina on top of the poor crab's genitalia, that is--the former male crab is compelled to release them into the ocean and stir the water with his claw, as if the eggs were his own.
Again, there are no known cases of this happening to a human, but, you know. If you see a huge egg sac growing near your junk we urge you to get it checked out right away. #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? For more unrelenting horror from the animal kingdom, check out The 5 Most Horrifying Bugs in the World and The 6 Deadliest Creatures (That Can Fit In Your Shoe). And visit Cracked.com's Top Picks because we have a jar full sacculina we use to keep Brockway in check, but we'll use it on you too. |
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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!