How did that fit inside that little cricket!? I used to have a chameleon so I've seen a lot of crickets... but none that had anything like that come
out of them.
Kind of makes me think of articles I've read about parasites in our intestines... and really really grosses me out.
Oooh. my favorite parasite. a genius (if absolutely disgusting) little creature commonly known as a horsehair worm.... they're freakin' fascinating.
they actually burrow into the cricket's brain and more or less 'take over control' to make it jump into the water (their natural habitat) after
they've consumed most of it's innards.
fortunately, they don't live in human hosts, and the parasites in our guts are nothing like these little creatures, even the wormier sorts...
wow, so that parasite made the cricket jump in the water? crazy. i thought it was some kind of cricket suicide. i was wondering why the person
would bother to film that. Thats super disturbing. gives me the chills just thinking about it.
Well, after watching that wonderful enlightening video, I'm thankful for 2 things at least....that I'm not a cricket and that Gordian worms don't
like humans. Yuck! That gave me the heebie jeebies.
EEWWWW!!! EW EW EW EW EW EWWW!! Gross, sick, ugh, wtf, i got the friggin reeps,..sick sick. How can that thiong actually fit in that small cricket, it
look so normal before, but then the worm started coming out,
and, it.....G-R-O-S-S!!!!!
Gordian worms start off very very small in their larval stage.. usually they infect some kind of aquatic-stage insect (like a larval mosquito) in
water, and then transfer to land when the thing grows... usually the smaller host gets eaten by something bigger, like a cricket or a spider (or they
parasitize the cricket or other largeish insect directly when they come to drink). then they basically grow to the size you see in the video by eating
their host from the inside out, before injecting the chemicals into the thing's brain to more or less 'take over' and make it jump into a body of
water so it can break out like we saw in the video.