Continuing the recent theme of horrifying parasites, here's an infectious little nematode that makes its host swell up into a plump, juicy, red berry so that birds will mistakenly eat its bloated ichorous abdomen and spread the eggs. (via)
posted on Jan 21, 2008 - View this thread

Brainwashed by a parasite A look at Cordyceps, a parasitic fungi that infects insects and other arthropods. Don't miss the videos, especially this one. They're the best part.
posted on Dec 26, 2007 - View this thread

Devil facial tumor disease has ravaged the population of Tasmanian Devils in the last decade. DFTD is a transmissible cancer, i.e. the tumor cells themselves (which differ genetically from their host animal) are the agent responsible. The disease is spread by biting and other contact, and the resulting grotesque tumors interfere with feeding and lead to starvation. Poor immune response may be partially responsible. This is actually not the only such disease: canine transmissible venereal tumor is an analogue that has been known to be contagious since the 19th century. (CTVT, however, gets a proper immune response.)
posted on Oct 29, 2007 - View this thread

A few weird and interesting insects
posted on Oct 8, 2007 - View this thread

The fascinating world of the tapeworm. Everyone has heard of these parasites, but what do you really know? Not much, if you get your medical information from House. They are a menace to pets as well as humans, but they may have some hidden benefits. They have even been discussed on MeFI before! Is there anything they can't do?
posted on Feb 20, 2007 - View this thread

Man pulls botfly larva from his own stomach. Previously, from head. From eye (Snopes, w/pictures). Wikipedia.
posted on Dec 15, 2006 - View this thread

The origins and evolution of human intelligence: parasitic insects? viruses? mushrooms? neural darwinism? foraging? machiavellian competition? emergence? or something else?
posted on Jul 24, 2006 - View this thread

Pram bugs invade Shetland. It's a strange wee sea beastie called a phronima. which cruises the oceans in its clear jelly barrel made from an unlucky sea squirt. More at the bottom of these Shetland nature notes here
posted on Mar 4, 2006 - View this thread

A worm that builds a home inside the human body, lives there happily until breeding time, then begins a journey to emerge from the skin and find a body of water to lay its eggs in. Although this may very well be a pleasant journey for the worm, for the human, it's an excrutiating one. And so we begin The Tale of the Guinea Worm.
posted on Jun 14, 2004 - View this thread

My very own parasite "I swear it had two beady eyes on it. And it came out two or three inches, looked around and then retracted. I thought it was a dream, a vision of some sort." The yuck factor of our 'little friends' vs. the yuck factor of Flushing PCB's into your nursing infant through breast feeding ("Study finds a cocktail of potentially harmful man-made chemicals in every person tested in UK...") On our day of public gnawing on bird chunks, I ask : which of the above is yuckier? And does anyone out there have a juicy parasite tale to share?
posted on Nov 27, 2003 - View this thread

They're ugly. I mean small and really ugly! And they don't do us any favors at all. We can hold each other's hands, and share support. Our fight against them may lead to knowledge in other battles, but I think its time to go on the offensive. Its time to defang the beastie. (Maybe I should have posted this at Warfilter instead?)
posted on May 20, 2003 - View this thread

Doing science by stealth Scientists have found a way of subverting the error checking mechanisms of web servers to allow them to perform calculations without the owners permission. This "Parasitic computing" could potentially use the internet as a single giant distributed computer.
posted on Aug 30, 2001 - View this thread

Malaria is one of the planet's deadliest diseases and one of the leading causes of sickness and death in the developing world. According to the World Health Organization there are 300 to 500 million clinical cases of malaria each year resulting in 1.5 to 2.7 million deaths. Malaria is a public health problem today in more than 90 countries, inhabited by a total of some 2 400 million people -- 40% of the world's population. It is also notoriously difficult to combat because of the parasite's ability to easily evade the body's immune system. Nature Update has an article on the possibilities of designing a malarial vaccine which stimulates the immune response and has the potential of protecting people from all strains of the disease.
posted on Nov 2, 2000 - View this thread