Tongue-eating crustacean The crustacean Cymothoa exigua has the dubious and unsettling honor of being the only parasite known to replace an organ. It enters through the gills of the spotted rose snapper, attaching to the base of the fish's tongue, where it drinks its blood.
Acanthocheilonemiasis is a rare tropical infectious disease caused by a parasite known as Acanthocheilonema perstans, which belongs to a group of parasitic diseases known as filarial diseases (nematode). This parasite is found, for the most part, in Africa.
Ascaris. A huge proportion of the world's population is infected with this large nematode worm. Some estimates place the number of infections—mostly in developing countries—at over a billion and the number of deaths each year in the tens of thousands.
Hundreds of fossilised animals seemingly covered in worm-like creatures are the oldest hard evidence of parasitism, dating from 512 million years ago when complex animals were still new.
Theileria parasites are considered as the smartest among the apicomplexan group for their ability to manipulate the host cells.
Of all parasitic diseases, malaria causes the most deaths globally. Malaria kills more than 400,000 people each year, most of them young children in sub-Saharan Africa.
Heartbeats: Worms don't have just one heart. They have FIVE! But their hearts and circulatory system aren't as complicated as ours -- maybe because their blood doesn't have to go to so many body parts. Moving around: Worms have two kinds of muscles beneath their skin.
Despite some of these names, jumping worms are native to regions from East Asia through Australia, but have been moved by humans all over the world, especially in soil and planting pots.
OSLO (Reuters) - Worms squirming on a fishhook feel no pain -- nor do lobsters and crabs cooked in boiling water, a scientific study funded by the Norwegian government has found.
The tongue-eating sea louse - Cymothoa exigua
The only known parasite that not only feeds on one of its host's body parts, but also entirely replaces the very thing it's eaten. This gruesome sea louse makes its home inside a fish's mouth. There it feeds on blood from the tongue until the organ withers away.
The World's Cutest Parasite is: (1) Euhaplorchis californiensis. (2) Botflies. (3) Giardia. (4) Transversotrema.
About half the world's population (over 3 billion people) are in infected with at least one of the three worms forming what Columbia University parasitologist Dickson Despommier calls the "unholy trinity"—large roundworm, hookworm and whipworm.
Named for the Greek word for gold (“chrȳsós”), worms in the family Chrysopetalidae really do glitter like the precious metal. Believe it or not, that 24-karat shine is the product of a lustrous mane that we humans could only hope for.
Superparasitism is a form of parasitism in which the host (typically an insect larva such as a caterpillar) is attacked more than once by a single species of parasitoid. Multiparasitism or coinfection, on the other hand, occurs when the host has been parasitized by more than one species.
Linguatula serrata.
The adult parasite is found throughout the nasal passages and sometimes can reach the sinuses and middle ear by moving through the exudate in the Eustachian tubes. In common with other nasal parasites, Linguatula serrata acts as an irritant, causing sneezing, catarrhal inflammation, and epistaxis.
But the title of the world's largest earthworm species goes to Australia's Giant Gippsland earthworm (Megascolides australis), which is about six feet long.
Worms don't bite. They also don't sting. 3. They are cold-blooded animals, which means they don't maintain their own body heat but instead assume the temperature of their surroundings.
No, not really. Instead, they have cells called receptors that can sense whether it's light or dark. This allows worms to tell if they're underground or above ground.
(Learn more about creating a worm composting bin.) Earthworms are hermaphrodites, meaning an individual worm has both male and female reproductive organs. Earthworm mating typically occurs after it has rained and the ground is wet. They emerge from the soil and jut out their anterior end.
To many, leeches are horrifying creatures. To a few, they're impressive and miraculous. They have 32 brains, 2 hearts, 300 teeth grouped in 3 jaws, five pairs of eyes...
Parasites - Cysticercosis. Cysticercosis is a parasitic tissue infection caused by larval cysts of the tapeworm Taenia solium. These larval cysts infect brain, muscle, or other tissue, and are a major cause of adult onset seizures in most low-income countries.
Parasite is an organism that lives on or in a host organism and gets its food from or at the expense of its host.