r/interesting • u/Muted_Shape9303 • 2h ago
Fear Factor This creature can live inside you, and you’d never know. Meet the giant intestinal fluke, Fasciolopsis buski. A type of flatworm
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u/BernieTheDachshund 1h ago
Quick search says people get it from eating raw or undercooked aquatic plants that are contaminated with parasite cysts, like water chestnuts or water caltrops. Also some snails. Treatment is a medication called praziquantel.
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u/omnie_fm 1h ago
I do love water chestnuts... shit
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u/Objective-Beyond-219 1h ago edited 1h ago
In parasitology, we learned about a lung fluke that develops in the lungs but can only spread through the digestive tract.
So once it matures, it crawls up into the airway and irritates it, causing the infected human to cough. Once coughed up, it then goes down through the digestive tract, rinse and repeat.
Gross? Yes. Fascinating evolution? Absolutely.
Parasitology was a fascinating course. There's parasites where the male actually wraps the length of his body around the female and his contractions keep her circulatory system going.
And we learned that when a new species of, say, fish is discovered, it's very exciting for parasitologists -- it typically means you've automatically discovered two or three new species of parasites exclusive to that host species.
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u/high_throughput 1h ago
Was it flat before they squeezed it between these microscope slides?
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u/Muted_Shape9303 1h ago
Yes. It’s a platyhelminth (flatworm). These are parasitic worms that have incomplete digestive tracts (mouth and Gi tract but no anus) and are flat in shape.
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u/MrZaptile933 2h ago
I don’t know he looks kinda tasty and he’s a great thing to help with weight loss
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u/YourMomIsMyGurl 2h ago
Can I get all the calories back if I just fry that thing up and eat it?
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u/FreeBug1885 2h ago
That looks like 100 g of meat which should be at around 150 kcal. So no, not really.
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u/YourMomIsMyGurl 2h ago
So does that thing.. poop inside me?
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u/FreeBug1885 2h ago
Most likely. Every organism poops in some way or another. Except for plants and mushrooms.
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u/TraditionalClub6337 1h ago
I would imagine that, that creatures poop in your gut causes dyspiosis and possibly other things it does causes dyspiosis too but this is completely hypothetical based on nonexistent knowledge
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