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Originally Posted by Thrice
Tore, if you dont like this you can remove it.
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Are you crazy? Thanks for teaching me stuff about the remora fish .. I've always wondered about those little suckers!
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Originally Posted by Vanilla
by the way, is it true that parasites can get into your brain and cause you to slow down? My neighbour was telling me it is a big cause of people having car accidents. I thought he was crazy, he was getting blood tests to check for them.
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There are ways (like with the pork tapeworm), something that travels in your blood can end up in the brain. Your neighbour sounds paranoid though, I don't think there's a need to worry about that.
Thanks to Bulldog for the bot-fly post and also thanks to [paranoid.android] and Vanilla for icky pictures!
The little worm in the eye looks a bit like a nematode worm which is what the next parasite also is.
Wuchereria bancrofti is one of more parasites that has a life stage that can live in people's lymphatic system, the body's conduit network where lymph sloshes about. The other stage is in mosquitos, so mosquito bites is how you get them.
Wuchereria bancrofti looks perhaps relatively harmless and one probably wouldn't cause so much damage. However, when they become many, they clog up your lymphatic system which causes lymph to accumulate in those areas and your body starts swelling up (other factors such as immune responses might also add to the swelling). This swell condition (pun) is called elephantitis and the swelling usually takes place in the arms, legs or the scrotum.
As you can probably imagine, these swollen parts are full of little worms just enjoying life in the lymph. Having elephantitis might not kill you, but it can severly disable you or even make you really ugly.
I would not want to travel to a place where there's a chance of getting these little suckers!