Parasites!

So I'm listening to This American Life right now, and it is an episode about enemies. Two of the segments is about parasites. I have always thought parasites are pretty cool, but this episode has taught me some other neat things. The first parasite segment is about how intense the life cycle of a parasite really is. There is this one parasite where it gets eaten by a snail as a larvae. Then it kinda bothers the snail's stomach, so it gets spit up. An Ant eats the snail puke and then the parasite is inside the ant. The parasite somehow gives the idea to the ant that it wants to crawl up somewhere high at around nighttime. It does this because right before dark is when animals like sheep like to graze. Now that the ant is on top of the grass, it is in a good spot to get eaten by a sheep. The parasite now lives in the sheep, where it likes to be best!

The second segment was about a guy who purposely infected himself with parasites because it was a way to cure his allergies and asthma. He goes to Africa and gets himself infected with hookworms! It was so crazy! It actually works too! I guess it is all based off of the idea that nowadays we are too hygenic and antibaterial crazy. Back in the day people didn't have problem like we do with allergies, because they were all wormy and stuff. It was a pretty neat story.

You know what else is pretty neat? That I just wrote an entire blog about parasites. Woo!!