The rest of this "alien" form seems to be something man-made, Hanelt says, speculating it might be the magnetic tape used in video or audio cassettes.įor horsehair worms knots are not unheard of. Though the worm looks like a giant tangle of branches, the parasite itself is probably only the thick wiggly strand moving through the middle of the knot. "It's probably just thrashing around and trying to get back to some water before it dies," Hanelt says. But somehow it got stuck like a fish out of water. The worm depicted in the video, which Hanelt says appears to be female, is in this final stage of its life. Then the parasite will burrow out into the water and start looking for mates. The worms control the minds of the insects, causing the hapless host to drown itself by jumping into water. From there, the larvae slowly grow into adult worms, leaching nutrients from their hosts but otherwise leaving them largely unharmed-until they're ready to break free.Īs it approaches its final stages of life, the parasite seizes control of their host's body, Hanelt explained to Matt Simon of Wired in 2014. Those eggs hatch into tiny larvae, which then make their way into the bodies of invertebrates, often insects like crickets. The creatures start out as eggs laid in freshwater, where most species of horsehair worm primarily live. They do not eat their only function is to breed. The worms have largely featureless bodies because they're essentially a single "gonad," as Hanelt puts it.
Horsehair worms, part of the taxonomic phylum Nematomorpha, are parasitic worms that resemble long thin strands of hair (hence their nickname). "In that video you are definitely seeing one horsehair worm," Ben Hanelt, a biologist at the University of New Mexico, says after reviewing the video sent by.
Some identified it as an "alien life form" or a mutant hybrid creature, but a more likely explanation is less otherworldly but equally creepy-a parasite. Captured in Hsinchu, Taiwan by Huang Meilan, the video inspired much speculation. A video floating around the internet late last month presented a creepy sight: A tangled mess of what appears to be rope flailing about on its own.
0 kommentar(er)
