Professional Nose-Picking

“A Southern elephant seal bull has its nose picked by a bird of prey called a Striated Caracara on Sea Lion Island in the Falklands. The bird explored the elephant seal's nose for three minutes, feeding on parasites.” Via.

Let's meet...the Pork Tapeworm!

What's so gross about a worm? Well, when it's inside your guts, the worm can become a bit of a problem. According to the Nature Wants to Eat You tumblr:

The pork tapeworm (Taenia solium) doesn’t really have any jaws, or a mouth. Cool. It only latches onto your guts with the grappling hooks on its face. No biggie. And it can grow to several metres in length. 

Humans can become infected by the tapeworm after eating undercooked pork. Most have no symptoms. Yay! Some get seizures, blindness, and a mild case of death. Boo!

Say "Hello" to the Hookworm!

I write about the hookworm in The Big Book of Gross Stuff. But I just thought I'd remind you that they are HORRIBLE.

And if you're interested, here's an article about how hookworms affected the economy of a huge region of the U.S.!

(Photo by AJC1.)

You suck!

Why let a big mosquito land on your arm and then film it in high definition? To gross us out, of course! (Man, that bug gets big!)

Parasites: By the Numbers!

200 
Tick species in the United States

2 
Bird species that feed on blood—the vampire finch and the Galápagos mockingbird

20 
Minutes a vampire bat feeds on its prey

32 
“Brains,” or nerve endings, per leech

100 
Teeth in a lamprey’s mouth

  1 Botfly larvae that the person in the video below is going to pull out of her head. 

The human botfly, Dermatobia hominis, lives in Central and South America. It is an insect that plants its eggs into the skin of people. After the eggs, hatch, the larvae grow and feed IN THE SKIN of the person, and then they come out. It is gross.

WARNING: I told you, this is gross!

Top info from the Audubon Society.

Mosquitoes SUCK (and here's how!)

Or at least this one does. For the first part, the mosquito just gets comfortable and shoves its nose into its victim's skin, looking for a good vein.

Then: SUCKAGE!

I've got a lard worm in my eye!

From PSmicrographs.

Actually, almost EVERYONE has lard worms in their eyes. That's the common name for the eyelash mites also known as Demodex folliculorum.

The lard worms are only a hundredth-of-an-inch long, so you can't see them. And not seeing them is good because lard worms are gross! (In that photo, the lard worms are climbing out of a hair follicle.)

This website that takes a more alarmist view of the lard worm. I love the banner graphic:

"Not my SEBACEOUS gland!"

The Tyrant Leech King!

By PLoS ONE

Leeches are gross.

And so are mucus membranes. (After all, they make mucus!)

And this year, scientists discovered a leech that feeds on mucus membranes. Blech! What do you call a creature this horrible? Try the Tyrannobdella rex: “tyrant leech king”!

Full story here...but look out! This story has a picture of the leech sucking on a human eyeball. Yeah.
BONUS: See the National Geographic list of 2010's weirdest new animals here!

Boys Have Cooties!

Lice are nasty. And cooties are just as bad…after all, they’re the same thing!

Humans didn’t wash themselves or their clothes very much in the old days. As a result, most people had lice in their hair AND in their clothes! (A louse is a small, nasty insect that makes its living by hiding on your head and biting you.)

Since lice are nicknamed "cooties," boys AND girls had cooties! So a hundred years ago, it wouldn’t be that unusual for a boy to sit in class and see a white critter crawl out of his table-partner’s hair. Cooties! 

So when did people FIRST get cooties? It turns out that there's more than one kind! Head lice have been around for as long as humans have.

But body lice showed up for the first time 200,000 years ago. And by tracing the ways that lice have evolved, scientists believe that clothes were also invented about the same time!

That's because it was about 200,000 years ago that humans began settling in cold northern areas where they HAD to have clothes to survive. And after humans start wearing clothes, body lice start showing up for the first time. (These cooties are specially designed to hiding in the folds of clothing.)

What a rip-off: Right when humans get less gross and start wearing clothes, a disgusting parasite moves in on their wardrobe! Full story here.

Lousy Bonus: Click on "Read more" for an extra tale of cooties!

Great News!

I just discovered the greatest website on the planet: Parasite of the Day! What is it? Let's let them describe it:

In celebration of the enormous diversity of parasites and to highlight their importance, we have created this blog, which will showcase a species of parasite every day.

My favorite parasite so far is the Cymothoa exigua (above), a sort of water-louse which sneaks into a fish's head, then feeds on its tongue until the tongue disappears, and then the fish can actually USE the parasite as a replacement tongue, until... oh, blech.

Warning: This site can be WAY grosser than Ultra-Gross!; for example, whatever you do, don't look at the video of the human bot fly. Ick!

Don't Let the Worms Win!

Animal Planet had a show on last night called “Monsters Inside Me.” It tells real stories of parasites (like worms!) invading bodies. It’s definitely nasty.

And we at Ultra-Gross! loved it!

The show included this line from a wildlife biologist who was handling a raccoon: “I’m going to turn the animal over, and I’m going to slowly insert my finger into its rectum to get fecal material on my glove.” (He was checking to see if the animal had roundworm. It didn't.)

Next week’s episode is about a man who gets a lungworm. His quote: “I’m not going to be scared. That would be like letting the worms win.”

“Monsters Inside Me” is on Animal Planet, Wednesday 9 PM Eastern and Pacific times; 8 PM Central. See a sneak peek here!

Eyeball-Sucking Monsters

Some people think that earthworms are gross, but that’s silly. They’re harmless! However, a relative of the earthworm is definitely bad news. Yep, I’m talking about the leech. While earthworms don’t bite, a leech can bite you twice at the same time!

That’s because the leech has two mouths. Leeches find this handy, in that all they want to do is to suck your blood. But despite the two mouths, leech bites are painless. so you probably don’t notice if a leech has attached itself to you.

Leeches range in size from tiny to over two feet long. (Ulp!) Leeches may clamp onto your legs, but they also like to swim to a dark crevice where you won’t find them, like your armpit, your butt, or worse! (No, I did not make that up. Luckily, these types of leeches are usually found in Africa, Asia, and islands in the Pacific and Indian oceans.)

If you find a leech on you, don’t cut it off of you. You could cut it in half, and it would keep sucking! In the movies, adventurers often put the lit end of a cigarette on the leech to make it let go, but since you don’t smoke, this won’t work.

The worst leech story I’ve heard is this one: An Australian woman was gardening in Sydney when she accidentally got some soil in her eye… and a small leech was in there, too. The leech started feasting on the blood from her eyeball! Even though the gardener got medical attention, the leech quickly tripled in size. Nasty!

So how did they get rid of this eyeball-sucking monster? By giving her some eyedrops of saline solution! As the doctor reported, “The leech rolled straight off, it just fell on to her cheek so we put it in a pot and gave it to her.”

Thanks, doc! (Link to the full story here.)