More critters

[mc776]

Flackworm

Distantly related to the liver fluke, these flatworms have adapted to places with very high concentrations of lead. Old battlefields ooze with them. Usually harmless, their eggs and larvae can lie dormant in human bodies for years until the time is ripe to bloom - usually spectacularly, a few days after the host gets shot.


Inner head louse

You know what a tongue louse is, right? These guys have airborne eggs. The larvae drift quasi-dormant for years in the air currents and dust, then if they're lucky someone breathes them in and they can make it into the brain. There they latch on and grow, fed by the nutrients coming in through the fluids supporting the brain, slowly taking over and substituting its own biomass for the host cerebral cortex. To avoid premature host death, the louse keeps the various neural pathways connected using its own nervous system, which expands and builds itself up to grotesque proportions relative to the rest of the louse's body. By the time the louse is mature and is large enough - oh, let's say about the size of a very fat cockroach - to displace a decent amount of grey matter, it is so well incorporated into the host brain that the host may never notice. Often entire colonies of inner head lice can be found inside someone's skull.

The eggs disperse when you - as in you and they - think too hard about too many things, then come down with a cold and sneeze.

It's hard to think when they're wiggling, so please don't mind if I don't end post good.

Comments

[helarxe]

The Intelligent Designer is an asshole! 8D

[mc776]

Nah, asshole is this:

The eggs disperse when you - as in you and they - think too hard about too many things, then come down with a cold and sneeze.

The rationale for this is that the mental strain is how the lice know their host is suffering from some kind of stressful situation and may be starting to isolate itself or worse. This then becomes a signal for the lice to start mating and laying eggs (most inner head lice in a single host aren't genetically related but got there after being breathed in) so that a next generation can escape before the host does something bad to itself.

Sometimes the lice mature first, and they speed things up by thinking awful bad things and getting the host in trouble on their own.


Also: if all the lice in one head are male they won't be able to mate inside, but have to send out sperm packets to reach females in other heads. One strain just shoots these out in the host's sneezes like larvae. The other... makes the host do things.

[helarxe]

A head full of lousy wing-wang crossing your brain meats is rather business as usual for some people <_<

[helarxe]

Of course, once they are sensitive to the thinkings we think, the terrorists have won:

"And these critters, children, are why A) depleted uranium is mandatory and B) we have to watch Glenn Beck every day four hours per day to make the lice sickquit life."

[mc776]

I remain optimistic that they would be useful somehow - therapy, making sure we don't forget.

They as in the inner head lice, of course.

[steorra]

Speaking of parasites that infect brains:
"This stress response may be written into these parasites’ basic evolutionary strategy, since stressed hosts may be more likely to spread or contract infections."

[mc776]

my life is a shambles

all I have left is this leaf

beautiful leaf

I will never

let go

[steorra]

You again display your knack for poetic writing that is unintelligible to me :-) :-P

[mc776]

Ant head fungus reference. :V

[steorra]

Ah.

[mc776]

heh