More critters
November 21st, 2010 00:27![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mc776Flackworm
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.
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.