I took my second ADHD pill a little too late I guess because it was suddenly 4 am and I made this thing about why parasitic organisms are shaped like ways and how to consider that for your fiction settings. Raw text version below the cut for people with busted seeing:
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Oh this really blew up. Here are some real world ectoparasites Iโd like to share:
Here are Argulus fish lice, a large family found in both fresh and saltwater. Theyโre transparent, scale-shaped and almost invisible - even a friendly cleaner fish might miss a few! The black dots are their eyes and the large circles behind those are a pair of powerful suction cups! Their little legs can scoot them around the host surface without ever having to break their suction.
This is a species of โsuckingโ louse, a group that almost exclusively infests mammals, and it has a very long snout that most other lice donโt need, so if you only found the parasite, you could already deduce the existence of a very large or tough-skinned mammal in the area! Specifically, this type of louse affects only elephants and warthogs :)
This completely different louse on the other hand has an extremely compact, sturdy body with stumpy, exceptionally powerful gripping claws, so that tells you it lives on something that would easily shake off other lice: it lives on elephant seals that can dive thousands of feet deep. Even its antennae are stubby, so they donโt break off in a powerful current.
And hereโs a typical looking flea (this one is from a hedgehog!) with all its spines and bristles, all pointing backwards, which allow it to โswimโ at high speed through host fur, BUT WAIT!!!
This flea has mites! A parasiteโs parasites are known as โhyperparasites,โ though some mites simply use other insects as transportation, so Iโm not sure if these mites are feeding on the flea, or just also happen to feed on its host. Fleas groom themselves with their bristly legs like any other insect, but thereโs no way that can dislodge these smooth, flat mites, evolved to nestle perfectly under the fleaโs scales.
What in the parasite-ceptionโฆ
To this day Iโve not seen a positive ID on those mites, and I think I first saw that photo in the late 90s?
