![]() ![]() This story was published by The Sun and reproduced with permission. ![]() They can turn their heads 180 degrees to scan surroundings and they have five eyes - two large with three smaller located in between. Their triangular heads rest upon on a long “neck,” or elongated thorax which gives them great accuracy. Different species of horsehair worms have different preferred hosts, such as crickets, katydids, grasshoppers, beetles, mantises, cockroaches, and aquatic insects. The fascinating bugs are formidable predators. They’re also sometimes known as “Gordian,” referring to the Gordian Knot as the hellish creatures often wind themselves into coils and tangles.īut praying mantis’s themselves are hardly bottom of the food chain either. They are called Horsehair Worms because they used to be found in horse watering troughs and they look like the hairs from a horses tail. They do not infest the pets, but the crickets or beetles may be eaten by a pet, and the worm puked up. Every year or two, a panicky client finds one of these in a toilet bowl, water dish, or a bit of pet vomit. They are a smallish phylum, with about 361 known species. The horsehair worm is a parasite that lives in water, and its larvae infect insects. The beasts are usually found in damp areas and grow between two to four inches long. The nematomorpha (Horsehair Worms) are relatively long, thin worms (1-3 mm diametre and 10-100 cm length). Larvae can also accumulate in the eyes of horses. ![]() They chow down on bugs’ brains - usually grasshoppers and crickets - which then causes the “host” to seek out water and drown itself, returning the slinky parasites to their watery lairs.īut with the bug now dead, the creepy crawlers were slithering elsewhere to find another poor soul to burrow into. Signs often include areas of scaling, crusts, ulcers, hair loss, and color loss. One wrote: “I hated every single second of that.”Īnother added: “There was a very distinct point for me when it switched from ‘oh, that’s kinda neat’ to ‘WHY IS IT NOT ON FIRE?!?!’”Īnd one more simply wrote: “I say we ****ing nuke that”.Īnd the truth behind the mystery is perhaps even more horrifying.Īccording to one brainy user, the mantis had been infected with horsehair worms - common parasites that choose an invertebrate “host” and feed on its fat stores. The life cycle of the freshwater horsehair worm typically includes a free-living phase (adult, egg, larva) and a multiple-host parasitic phase (aquatic. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |