http://www.nerdshit.com/2004/10/10/a-parasite-that-controls-your-mind/ Tue, 08 Dec 2009 20:03:35 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 http://www.nerdshit.com/2004/10/10/a-parasite-that-controls-your-mind/comment-page-1/#comment-142 jiva Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.nerdshit.com/wordpress/?p=789#comment-142 There's one called Dicrocoelium dendriticum, the Lancet Fluke, which has cows as one host, where it lays eggs in the gut. The eggs get eaten up by snails from the cow manure, and hatch in their intestines. The larvae drill through the wall of the snail's gut into the digestive gland, then produce a new generation of cercariae, little swimming flukes that make their way to the snail's surface. The snail tries to defend itself by blocking the cercariae with walls of slime, which bunch up around the flukes. The snails then leave these balls behind in the grass. Then along comes an ant, who eats up the slime ball along with a few hundred flukes, who wander around inside the ant for a while, eventually moving to the cluster of nerves that control the ant's mandibles. Then most of the flukes travel back to the abdomen where they form cysts, but one or two stay behind and travel through the nerves to the brain. There they do some parasitic voodoo, and the ants find themselves with an irrepressible urge to climb to the top of a blade of grass, where it stays until a cow comes along and eats the blade of grass and the cycle begins again. There’s one called Dicrocoelium dendriticum, the Lancet Fluke, which has cows as one host, where it lays eggs in the gut. The eggs get eaten up by snails from the cow manure, and hatch in their intestines. The larvae drill through the wall of the snail’s gut into the digestive gland, then produce a new generation of cercariae, little swimming flukes that make their way to the snail’s surface. The snail tries to defend itself by blocking the cercariae with walls of slime, which bunch up around the flukes. The snails then leave these balls behind in the grass. Then along comes an ant, who eats up the slime ball along with a few hundred flukes, who wander around inside the ant for a while, eventually moving to the cluster of nerves that control the ant’s mandibles. Then most of the flukes travel back to the abdomen where they form cysts, but one or two stay behind and travel through the nerves to the brain. There they do some parasitic voodoo, and the ants find themselves with an irrepressible urge to climb to the top of a blade of grass, where it stays until a cow comes along and eats the blade of grass and the cycle begins again.

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