There are so many reasons to be a biologist, and one of them is there are at least 150 different species of deep-sea carnivorous sponges that use microscopic hooks to capture their prey and then GROW A NEW STOMACH that MIGRATES to where the prey is hooked in order to digest it, which they do over the course of days until the animal’s (usually a crustacean) soft tissue is entirely broken down for nutrients and all that is left is the shell.
May I say one more time that they GROW AND MIGRATE A NEW STOMACH
Studying biology is an acid trip of WAIT IS THAT REAL and OMG IT IS REAL THAT IS SO FUCKING COOL
Friends. There were 7 confirmed cases of guinea worm disease in humans in 2024.
SEVEN.
It's... it's gonna happen. It will be eradicated in my lifetime. This fucking bug has plagued humanity since the beginning, and when I first learned about it as a kid in the 1980s, there were well over a million cases every year.
Wouldn't it be nice if we could erase disease with these happy organ erasers? Sadly the only two diseases to be eradicated worldwide are smallpox and rinderpest. We are still working to get rid of polio, yaws, dracunculiasis, malaria and so many more.
If you had magic powers, what disease or condition would you choose to wipe off the face of the Earth?
Scientists and health care workers are working to eradicate this parasite, which causes a painful condition called Guinea worm disease.
Guinea worm (noun, “GIH-knee worm”)
The Guinea worm (Dracunculus medinensis — “drah-CUN-cue-lus MED-in-EN- is) is a parasite — an animal that lives off a host, without giving anything in return. If this worm gets inside a person’s body, it causes a painful infection called Guinea worm disease, or Dracunculiasis (drah-CUN-due-LIE-ah-sis). In fact, Dracunculiasis means “infection with little dragons” in Latin, a sign of just how much it can hurt.
Guinea worms begin their lives as larvae in the bellies of tiny water fleas. When a person drinks water and swallows the water fleas, the fleas get digested in the person’s stomach. But the Guinea worm larvae survive. They take up residence inside the unfortunate person’s body.
Over the next 100 days, those larvae grow into long, thin, white worms. Then the males and females find each other and mate. The male dies, but the female, loaded with eggs, begins moving through the person’s muscles. This can be intensely painful. Usually, the female heads toward the person’s foot. Then, she pokes through the skin of the foot. This hurts so much that the infected person often sticks their foot in water to relieve the pain. When the worm senses water, she releases her eggs. Water fleas swallow those eggs, and the cycle begins again. The whole process takes between 10 and 14 months.
After releasing her eggs, the female worm remains dangling out of the person’s foot. Often, the worm needs to be pulled out by slowly winding it around a thin stick a few centimeters (inches) at a time. Because Guinea worms can be up to one meter (3.3 feet) long, this painful process can take weeks.
Most cases of Guinea worm disease are found in a handful of countries in Africa. Luckily, people can prevent Guinea worm disease by filtering their water. This removes the water fleas that are full of Guinea worm larvae.
Scientists and doctors have worked very hard to get rid of Guinea worm disease. In the 1980s, there were 3.5 million cases of the painful infection each year. But by 2018, there were only 28 worldwide. Now, most infections are in dogs and cats, but doctors hope to get rid of the worm entirely in a few more years.
In a sentence
Former president Jimmy Carter founded an organization to get rid of the Guinea worm.
been listening to the This Week In Parasitism podcast. Mostly case studies in humans, but I HAVE got to learn about how accidental steroid overdose can lead to hyperinfection by parasitic threadworms, and 'ground glass opacity' which is what your lungs look like on a CT scan, after the aforementioned hyperinfection.
Also, that otters in Alabama have the own species of Guinea Worm! (and so do raccoons). The one that infects humans is justly notorious, and a favourite with parasite fans, but now I don't have to feel so bad that such a supremely well-adapted creature of horror is nearly extinct, because it has relatives that will continue its legacy.
On the other hand that Guinea Worm has already started switching hosts from humans to dogs, so maybe the eradication program has hit a stumbling block anyway.
Eradicating dracunculiasis: human cases and animal infections decline as Angola becomes endemic Twenty human cases of dracunculiasis (Guinea-worm disease) have been reported to WHO from January to the end of July this year, compared with 33 human cases for the corresponding period in 2019.
