/jp/ - Otaku Culture

>>4999139
Well, if you want huge parasite-induced tumors in humans, Echinococcus is an old favorite. It can go anywhere in the body (I have no clue how it handles the blood-brain barrier but they can even waltz into the brain) and form cysts, which are liquid-filled worm-producing factories. The larvae produced within can detect whether they're in a canid or not. If they're not, they keep becoming even more cysts, some growing up to soccer ball size, so unless you're a werewolf or taking antihelminthic drugs you're pretty screwed. Treatment is real easy once diagnosis is made, though, the real danger is if the cysts burst, where the immune system goes berserk finding all that worm juice in the body and you usually die from septic shock.

I wish I could say interesting instead of repeating previous posts, but serious helminth threats to humans are few and pity I know jack shit on microbial pathogens. I like that dysentry amoeba with the "hope you weren't using that liver because I just turned half of it into black muck" attitude and coccidioidomycosis though.

Sage for thread derailing.

>>4676188
>>4676189
I hope the OC fellows will not mind my intrusion, but I felt like typing up a bit about my favored worms.

Tapeworms are an entirely parasitic class of flatworms, related to another specialized group of parasites, flukes. Their body consists of a head ("scolex"), adorned with suckers and sometimes hooks (of which number and rows, if I recall, is important to determine the species) to hold the animal to the intestine, and a number of segments ("proglottids") varying in number from three (eg: in Echinococcus species) to thousands (eg: in dwarf tapeworm and fish tapeworm) that carry reproductive organs and little more. Their entire skin (or tegument) is a "single cell", with multiple nuclei unseperated by cell membranes. Such an arrangement is called a syncytium, and from this tapeworms can absorb nutrients from the environment. Tapeworms lack a digestive system and are obligate parasites.

Each proglottid comes complete with male and female parts and can mate with itself and any other proglottid. Once gravid with eggs, the proglottid is detached from the end of the tapeworm - the closer a segment is to the end of the worm, the older it is. New proglottids form from in between the scolex and the first proglottid, from the "neck" of the scolex. Once ingested (the worm may use a prior intermediate host, or rely the eggs getting eaten somehow) eggs make their way through the digestive tract. When there, they usually move elsewhere via the bloodstream, and make cysts in wherever they end up in. The size of those cysts depends on species, and may be up to a sphere of about 50cm. When those cysts are ingested by another animal, the now fully-fledged worms make themselves at home in the definitive host's intestines and keep producing eggs.

>>4528324
Likewise. Cyclophyllid tapeworms (that is to say, the ones you see most often) have four suckers that in certain photos look like eyes. I can see a tapeworm girl with the suckers as hair ornaments (or goggles) and the rostellum as either a crown or something similar to a kappa's dish.

And while I'm at it, I don't want pass up the chance to re-mention guinea worms, amongst the very few animals where the young are born by bursting through their mother's head and also famous for being one meter long fleshborers that irritate their points of exit so much that the sensation is described as akin to being on fire. And then there's Acanthocephala, thorny-headed worms (actually highly modified rotifers, of all things) of which "head" consists of a large, spiny proboscis that the animal can withdraw into its neck and uses to rip its way through the intestines.

Another favorite is Echinococcus, which forms liquid-filled "tumors" that can grow to a sphere of about 50cm diameter, full of hundreds of tiny, developing worms, some of which turn into even more tumors. Pictured is such a tumor in the eye.

Loa loa and Dioctophyma renale are more descriptive in their names, eyeworm and giant kidney worm respectively. The latter measures about a meter in length and resides almost exclusively in kidneys (though adults are known to break through the kidney and wander in the body cavities), rendering the organ an useless, thin shell once it is done growing. The eyeworm "swims" just under the skin, and is only mildly irritating unless it passes across sensitive areas like the genitals or eyes.