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Three Gross Parasites · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
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Speaker 1: from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
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Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Here is Charles w dr
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Speaker 1: kunk Eliasis Bryant How you doing drunk? That sounds like
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Speaker 1: my play a name? It is sort of player appreciate
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Speaker 1: dot Com. I wish I could remember what that name was.
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Speaker 1: Was so good? Oh it was we pastic Bryant Trump.
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Speaker 1: Is that it sugar tastic Bryant Trump. Sugar tastic? That's it,
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Speaker 1: Bryant Trump. Yeah, that means Chuck's put name is as
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Speaker 1: it's as its appears on player appreciate dot Com. I
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Speaker 1: love that you can generate a play a name. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: it is a pretty cool couples the Internet, Chuck, speaking
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Speaker 1: of the Internet. Yes, our parent company, Discoveries Channel Animal
1:00
Speaker 1: Planet UM has a cool website. Indeed that they launched
1:05
Speaker 1: for their show Monsters Inside of Me. Very cool, which
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Speaker 1: has inspired us to do a couple of parasite podcasts.
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Speaker 1: This is two of two. Yeah, number two. We just
1:13
Speaker 1: did um a toxoplasmosis. Yeah, and I gotta say we
1:17
Speaker 1: were excited about this stuff. It's actually we'll get requested
1:20
Speaker 1: to do things and we're like, oh, I don't know,
1:22
Speaker 1: should we do that. We'll turn them down and they'll
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Speaker 1: threaten to fire us, and then we'll march into the
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Speaker 1: office with a gas can and a lighter. It goes
1:31
Speaker 1: down like that. But this one is cool. Monsters inside Me,
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Speaker 1: cool show. Yeah No, everybody on staff pretty much threw
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Speaker 1: in for this thing, and happily actually because yeah, it
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Speaker 1: is a cool show. That's a cool graphics. It's just gross. Yeah,
1:43
Speaker 1: it is um. And if you're eating lunch or dinner
1:46
Speaker 1: right now, we might advise you to wait until later
1:49
Speaker 1: listen to this. I actually was eating a sub while
1:52
Speaker 1: I was researching Leashman is sis tape worm sub? No,
1:57
Speaker 1: that's the flesh eating I know, just was it a
1:59
Speaker 1: taper and stub? It was undercooked meat, so yeah, probably. Um. Anyway,
2:04
Speaker 1: we're talking about parasites and apparently pimp names and uh,
2:08
Speaker 1: let's get into it. We're talking about three really gross ones,
2:11
Speaker 1: and technically we should say four because I want to
2:13
Speaker 1: give a shout out to my favorite and Chuck. Also,
2:16
Speaker 1: I should probably say anytime we do a segmented um podcast.
2:21
Speaker 1: Chuck likes the timing because he's a big fat jerk.
2:23
Speaker 1: I don't like to time you. But if we want
2:25
Speaker 1: to get to all three, we need only have a
2:26
Speaker 1: certain amount of time. And so I'm gonna go ahead
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Speaker 1: and hit start on my new iPhone. Okay, well, dracunculish jerk,
2:34
Speaker 1: We're supposed to do a Leisha manisis. Oh yeah, Alisha maniasis. Sorry, man,
2:37
Speaker 1: that's what we're starting with. This is the flesh eating parasite.
2:40
Speaker 1: It is. It's affection affectionately known tropics subtropics in southern Europe.
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Speaker 1: So we're safe for now, well, unless we travel to
2:49
Speaker 1: one of these countries, which you were prone to do.
2:52
Speaker 1: I yes, I am wanting to go to certain places sometimes.
2:56
Speaker 1: But yeah, there's a lot of people who actually um
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Speaker 1: suffer from Alisha maniasis. Estimates are are about twelve million
3:02
Speaker 1: infective worldwide and three fifty million at risk. Yeah, and
3:08
Speaker 1: about two million new cases each year. And they're expecting
3:11
Speaker 1: this to go up, Chuck, thanks to our friend climate change,
3:13
Speaker 1: Thank you, al Gore. Um. Because as the temperatures increase,
3:19
Speaker 1: the area where the sand fly, which uh increases as well.
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Speaker 1: And yeah, it's the sand flight which I wasn't familiar.
3:28
Speaker 1: I think I had sand fly and black fly confused.
3:32
Speaker 1: But luckily black flies don't spread um. Leashmanis the sand
3:37
Speaker 1: flies to and these are actually about a third of
3:39
Speaker 1: the size of mosquitoes. You know, your bits are relatively
3:41
Speaker 1: painless if they're if they're not pain free. Um. So yeah,
3:46
Speaker 1: you don't know that you're being bitten, and you certainly
3:48
Speaker 1: don't know that the the saliva from this fly has
3:52
Speaker 1: actually just transferred um some larva of this parasite into
3:56
Speaker 1: your blood stream. And you know I should point out
3:58
Speaker 1: to you said that global warming is one reason this
4:01
Speaker 1: is on the rise. Another reason is because of our
4:03
Speaker 1: shenanigans in the Middle East, because it is that place
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Speaker 1: is lousy with sand flies in Afghanistan and Iraq and
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Speaker 1: the like. So we think a lot of our personnel
4:13
Speaker 1: over there maybe getting infected in bringing it back. So
4:16
Speaker 1: leishmaniasis mission accomplished. Yeah, so, Chuck. Actually, the the concentration
4:23
Speaker 1: of where these cases are popping up is concentrated in
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Speaker 1: just a handful of countries, Old World and New World. Um.
4:31
Speaker 1: But there are places like Syria and Brazil have the
4:34
Speaker 1: vast majority of these cases because it's where the sand
4:36
Speaker 1: fly lives. But like you said, traveling conquering, these things
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Speaker 1: can can can transfer tourism and conquering. Yeah, leishmaniasis. Right,
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Speaker 1: So there's actually two kinds and a sub kind. The
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Speaker 1: sub kind is my favorite. The cutaneus is my favorite?
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Speaker 1: Is it because I want to describe the sore If
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Speaker 1: you had the cutaneus, uh, lee, maniasis, this is what's
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Speaker 1: gonna happen. You're getting get a sore in your skin.
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Speaker 1: What happens is as followed and uh, this is so gross.
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Speaker 1: They describe it. The sore is ending up looking like
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Speaker 1: a volcano. So it's got a raised edge and then
5:13
Speaker 1: a central crater, a little meaty central crater right in
5:17
Speaker 1: the middle. Do you at least maniasis on your breast?
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Speaker 1: That's gross? And some some of the sores are indeed
5:24
Speaker 1: covered by a scab and they can be painless or painful.
5:27
Speaker 1: Painful your breast is yeah. Yeah, So my favorite, chuck,
5:32
Speaker 1: if you'll allow me to take over for a moment,
5:35
Speaker 1: is mucosal or muco cut This is the stuff that
5:40
Speaker 1: like you see photos of when you type in flesh
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Speaker 1: eating parasite, right, Yeah. What happens is is you get
5:45
Speaker 1: a cutaneous parasitic infection, and uh, it can spread to
5:49
Speaker 1: your mucous membranes, eat your lips, your nostrils, that kind
5:53
Speaker 1: of thing. Basically, the prominent features on your face get
5:56
Speaker 1: eaten away. Did you google image any of these? Yeah? Yeah,
6:00
Speaker 1: so are you eating at the time? No, I was not.
6:02
Speaker 1: It's amazing like people missing their noses. I saw one
6:06
Speaker 1: where it was a close up of this guy's nose
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Speaker 1: and somebody had tweezers. It was just kind of pulling
6:12
Speaker 1: it and it was a still photo, but you could
6:14
Speaker 1: tell by the way it was being pulled. It was
6:16
Speaker 1: basically like jelly. It's gross stuff, but that's that They
6:21
Speaker 1: actually clear up on their own eventually. We read an
6:25
Speaker 1: article from the CDC describing leashmaniasis, and I was just
6:29
Speaker 1: considered to find you know, under the how do I
6:32
Speaker 1: treat leishmaniasis, they're basically like, well, it goes away on
6:35
Speaker 1: its own eventually, basically like there is no treatment, but
6:38
Speaker 1: it said it could take months or years. So do
6:40
Speaker 1: you want a volcano, uh, scab on your forearm for
6:43
Speaker 1: years or that thing on your breath gross? Uh. There's
6:49
Speaker 1: a really dangerous one though, called visceral. Yeah, so tell
6:53
Speaker 1: us about that, chuckers. Yes, Josh, this is the nasty one.
6:56
Speaker 1: This is the one that attacks your liver and spleen
6:59
Speaker 1: and I think it in large just them. Well, your
7:01
Speaker 1: spleen actually can become larger than your liver, which ain't
7:04
Speaker 1: supposed to happen. That ain't supposed to happen, and even
7:06
Speaker 1: your liver and uh it is liver shrinking and hardening.
7:10
Speaker 1: Oh is that what happens? Okay, so your liver's like
7:12
Speaker 1: a California raising pretty much. And then not the dancing
7:15
Speaker 1: kind of the dying kind. Yeah. Um yeah, it'll kill you.
7:20
Speaker 1: It will. And like you said, it is nasty in
7:22
Speaker 1: that it is dangerous. It's not as nasty as um
7:26
Speaker 1: muco cutaneous leashmaniasis, but it's still pretty dangerous stuff. So
7:31
Speaker 1: you want to know how how this uh, this parasite, Uh,
7:35
Speaker 1: this parasite's life cycle occurs. It's pretty interesting actually. So
7:40
Speaker 1: you get bit by a sand fly, right, and the
7:43
Speaker 1: parasite actually is taken up. It enters the bloodstream and
7:47
Speaker 1: it's taken up by macro phages, which are a type
7:51
Speaker 1: of white blood cell. So they're living happily and protective
7:54
Speaker 1: within the macrophages where they're reproducing, and eventually they cause
7:59
Speaker 1: the cell to lice. Dat erupts and they're all of
8:04
Speaker 1: a sudden, all these new um parasites are released into
8:07
Speaker 1: your bloodstream and then they're taken up by more white
8:10
Speaker 1: blood cells and so on and so on, so the
8:11
Speaker 1: process keeps continuing and they start multiplying exponentially. Yeah, which
8:17
Speaker 1: is also how it's flesh eating. When when it's attacking
8:20
Speaker 1: these cells, it's it's liz ing the cells in your
8:24
Speaker 1: mucous membrane or around your like on your forearm or
8:27
Speaker 1: something like that or uh, in the case of visceral leashmaniasis,
8:31
Speaker 1: your internal organs. But like we said, don't worry about
8:34
Speaker 1: It'll just go ahead and according to the c d C.
8:37
Speaker 1: All right, change your press the timer. Man, we're dumb
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Speaker 1: in this one. Okay, So that's leashmaniasis. Yes to number two,
8:45
Speaker 1: dracunculiass that's a good one. Yeah, this one's pretty awful too.
8:49
Speaker 1: It's all this is really sad. As the guinea worm. Yeah,
8:51
Speaker 1: this is really sad because it affects the poorest of
8:53
Speaker 1: the poor in the world. That's the bad news, because
8:57
Speaker 1: it comes from drinking un clean water. The good news
9:00
Speaker 1: is they have largely eradicated it. Well, the five countries
9:04
Speaker 1: that are stubbornly hanging on your guinea worm infection. But dude,
9:07
Speaker 1: we're talking. Um, let's go back in time to nineteen six.
9:11
Speaker 1: I'm in the tenth grade. You're an elementary school. If
9:16
Speaker 1: you're drinking behind the elementary I was in the baseball cards.
9:21
Speaker 1: I was into drinking behind the element I was into
9:25
Speaker 1: Defender in van Halen Um. So three point five million
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Speaker 1: people were infected every year back then. And now let's
9:33
Speaker 1: go back a couple of years to two thousand seven
9:35
Speaker 1: when I was into Defender and Van Halen and I
9:38
Speaker 1: was drinking behind the elementary school. Yeah, that's scary. Only
9:42
Speaker 1: nine thousand five cases were reported, so that's awesome, and
9:45
Speaker 1: most of those were in the Sudan and Ghana, so
9:50
Speaker 1: clearly some work to be done there. Sure, So now
9:52
Speaker 1: we should talk about how the gross this is. This
9:54
Speaker 1: is a very very gross gross. Paris is the worst one.
9:57
Speaker 1: I think what happens is U it's generally taken up
10:02
Speaker 1: through at tainted water supply a year later. Yeah, that's
10:06
Speaker 1: what was so frightening is you drink bad water on
10:08
Speaker 1: vacation and Ghana. A year later, all of a sudden,
10:12
Speaker 1: you say, what's that blister on my foot? Well, the
10:15
Speaker 1: tour Ghana Tourism board is gonna be really mad at you.
10:18
Speaker 1: The Greater Ghanese um Chamber of Commerce is going to
10:22
Speaker 1: be after you chuck to go ahead, all right? So basically,
10:26
Speaker 1: what is it? Water fleas are easily infected with these parasites,
10:31
Speaker 1: and they show up in unsanitary water. You drink this water,
10:36
Speaker 1: you get a couple of water fleas in, or you
10:38
Speaker 1: can considerably just drink the larva. Right. Uh, the larva
10:42
Speaker 1: travel down to your intestine where they lodge. They can
10:45
Speaker 1: pass through the intestine, which most parasites can um and
10:48
Speaker 1: then they grow right. Well, the stomach acid what I
10:51
Speaker 1: thought was interesting is it does not kill. It killed
10:53
Speaker 1: the water, Thank you stomach acid. Right, So, yeah, the
10:58
Speaker 1: parasite sticks around. It grows and grows and grows um too,
11:02
Speaker 1: about two to three ft long or a hundred centimeters
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Speaker 1: long um over the course of ten to fourteen months.
11:09
Speaker 1: And it's just the females that grow to this adult stage.
11:12
Speaker 1: And they said it's as wide as a cooked spaghetti
11:14
Speaker 1: noodle three ft long in your intestine. Yeah, and it's gross.
11:19
Speaker 1: That's not the worst part though. Our guest producer Lizzie
11:21
Speaker 1: is about the girl. I think we should make that
11:24
Speaker 1: our our mission today. Okay, So, um, you've got this
11:28
Speaker 1: three ft long live spaghetti noodle that you can clearly
11:30
Speaker 1: identify as a female, uh, detached from your intestine, and
11:36
Speaker 1: then it migrates to the skin. And here's where the
11:39
Speaker 1: beauty parts oil forms on the site where the worms
11:44
Speaker 1: about to emerge, and pop goes the weasel. The worms
11:48
Speaker 1: starts to poke its head out and uh. Basically you
11:52
Speaker 1: look down and you have a worm coming out of
11:54
Speaker 1: your body. And here's the tricky part, what getting it out? Okay,
11:58
Speaker 1: so if you have them picked up by now, parasites
12:01
Speaker 1: are arguably the most intelligent things on the planet, or
12:04
Speaker 1: at the very least the most tenacious. The boil or
12:07
Speaker 1: the blister where that's that occurs at the site where
12:11
Speaker 1: the worms about to emerge. Actually, the pain associated with
12:15
Speaker 1: it is alleviated simply by dropping it in water. Yeah,
12:18
Speaker 1: this is a contact with water triggers the guinea worm
12:23
Speaker 1: to release this milky white substance, which is actually millions
12:27
Speaker 1: of larva into the water supply. So the water supply
12:31
Speaker 1: is now tainted and the life cycle begins again. Right,
12:33
Speaker 1: So you're in the you're in Ghana, you're feeling bad,
12:36
Speaker 1: You get in the river because it makes it feel better,
12:39
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, everyone downstream is getting
12:41
Speaker 1: this milky secretion of eggs. They get infected. Just so
12:44
Speaker 1: g it is so okay again, c DC says, yeah, really,
12:49
Speaker 1: the best way to do this is to have a
12:51
Speaker 1: clean sanitary water supply. So the treatment for this is
12:55
Speaker 1: actually just preventive. You just make sure that population has
12:59
Speaker 1: a clean water supply, right, which is what the Carter
13:02
Speaker 1: Center has been working so hard for all these years.
13:05
Speaker 1: That's odd to mention the Carter Center out of nowhere. Well, no,
13:08
Speaker 1: the Carter Center they've been doing all this work. Oh
13:10
Speaker 1: they have. Yeah, since when trying to eradicate g W
13:13
Speaker 1: d Oh did they help with that drop from three
13:15
Speaker 1: point five million to less than ten thousand cases in
13:19
Speaker 1: about ten years? You got it, buddy, right, Well, way
13:21
Speaker 1: to go, Jimmy Carter. Okay, so the Carter Center is
13:26
Speaker 1: working on eradicating the guinea worm. Sure, among other groups,
13:29
Speaker 1: got you World Health Organization? Uh? Yeah, right, okay, so yes,
13:33
Speaker 1: so we've got we've got it down. But let's say
13:36
Speaker 1: that you do have a polluted water source and all
13:40
Speaker 1: of a sudden you have a three foot long cook
13:42
Speaker 1: spaghetti noodle coming out of your leg in a boil.
13:45
Speaker 1: What do you do, Chuck, what do you do? Well?
13:49
Speaker 1: One thing you can do, Josh, is you can pull
13:51
Speaker 1: it out, and you can only do this a few
13:53
Speaker 1: centimeters at a time on a daily basis. I'm glad
13:56
Speaker 1: I read this because if I ever had this, I
13:57
Speaker 1: would yank that thing and pull it out from my
14:00
Speaker 1: intestine in one long piece of spaghetti wolf. But apparently
14:04
Speaker 1: you can't do that. I imagine it would break off
14:06
Speaker 1: or something and causing infection, and you just make it mad.
14:08
Speaker 1: And you don't want to make a guinea worm. No,
14:09
Speaker 1: you're tough. So what you do is you wrap it
14:11
Speaker 1: around a piece of gauze or a small stick, a
14:14
Speaker 1: little bit at a time, every day, every day, for
14:16
Speaker 1: several weeks, for several weeks, until it's out. That's one
14:18
Speaker 1: thing you can do. Or it can be surgically removed,
14:21
Speaker 1: clearly by a trained professional. But we're talking about the
14:24
Speaker 1: poorest of the poor in the world, and they can't
14:26
Speaker 1: they don't have access to this, or you can just
14:28
Speaker 1: blow your head off. Well that's another option. Sure. Um.
14:31
Speaker 1: The big problem with guinea worm disease, or when it
14:34
Speaker 1: was a real real problem, is that, um, it is
14:37
Speaker 1: a it's a disease of poverty, but it's also a
14:41
Speaker 1: cause of poverty because if you have a three foot
14:44
Speaker 1: log cooks spaghetti noodle coming out of your leg um,
14:48
Speaker 1: you're pretty much temporarily disabled until that thing comes out.
14:51
Speaker 1: You can't farm, No, you can't take care of your children. Right,
14:54
Speaker 1: it's very sad. So it does have an economic impact.
14:57
Speaker 1: That just it's a cycleman, it makes everything even worse.
15:00
Speaker 1: It's does. But luckily again we've largely eradicated it except
15:04
Speaker 1: for Ghana and Molly is completely clear of it now
15:07
Speaker 1: and they used to have a problem with it all right, Chuck, Well,
15:09
Speaker 1: then turn off your time or again, buddy, that was
15:12
Speaker 1: a good one, I thought, so as well, are we
15:15
Speaker 1: leaving this part in where you're actually manipulating the timer? Yes,
15:18
Speaker 1: we'll find out onto tape worms, tapeworms. This one is
15:22
Speaker 1: pretty common, the big finish. Everybody knows tapeworms. There's that
15:25
Speaker 1: tapeworm diet which actually is real, is it really? We're
15:30
Speaker 1: not endorsing that. By the way, I'm just big on
15:34
Speaker 1: calorie restricted diets and knowledge. Even Chuck won't let me
15:38
Speaker 1: endorse that one. But still, uh, this is We chose
15:42
Speaker 1: this one because it's actually really interesting. Um. The study
15:46
Speaker 1: of tapeworms has revealed a change and understanding of human evolution.
15:51
Speaker 1: Big deal, or at least pitology. Yeah, we always thought
15:55
Speaker 1: humans always thought that we get tapeworms from animals. Thanks
15:59
Speaker 1: a lot, cow and pig for getting us tapeworms. There's
16:02
Speaker 1: some research that's been done that actually turns the tables, Josh,
16:06
Speaker 1: and in a switcheroo. It looks like we may have
16:09
Speaker 1: started the whole thing and given it to the animals.
16:13
Speaker 1: So not only did we domesticate you for slaughter, we
16:16
Speaker 1: also gave you the tapeworm. So tapeworms uh known affectionately
16:22
Speaker 1: in the medical community as tania. Uh. There's uh tanias solium,
16:26
Speaker 1: which we'll talk about that's distinct from Tania sagenada and
16:31
Speaker 1: Tania asiatica. Thank you. I worked on pronunciations like all
16:36
Speaker 1: day uh sagonada and asiatica both actually for their lifestyle
16:42
Speaker 1: life cycle require an herbivore in there as an intermediate
16:45
Speaker 1: host to get to their definitive host us, the carnivores carnivores. Right,
16:50
Speaker 1: does this mean a vegetarian or vegan wouldn't be infected?
16:53
Speaker 1: You would think so, but look out for tanias solium,
16:56
Speaker 1: which will get anybody. Yeah, very broad range and including dogs.
17:00
Speaker 1: It said. That's very sad, right, Yeah, once we domesticated dogs, cows, pigs,
17:06
Speaker 1: you know again, we thought that that's when we started
17:08
Speaker 1: getting tapeworms. Actually, tapeworms go back as far as about
17:12
Speaker 1: two point seven million years. Humans or hominids have had
17:15
Speaker 1: some sort of trouble um with all of the wretching
17:18
Speaker 1: and the pooping and stuff like that, if you believe
17:20
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Yeah, we've been around for two
17:22
Speaker 1: point seven million years? Do you believe that? Hogwatch? Sorry, so,
17:28
Speaker 1: chuck um. Let's talk about tapeworms. What they do, how
17:31
Speaker 1: they do it, what they look like. All right, we're
17:37
Speaker 1: talking about intestinal tapeworm infections. A lot of times, uh,
17:41
Speaker 1: they're not detected because it's pretty mild symptom. Wize, I
17:45
Speaker 1: assume that one or both of us has a tapeworm
17:47
Speaker 1: right now? Can I tell you something? Boy? Yes, So
17:52
Speaker 1: I'm actually a big proponent of high colonics. Yeah, oh yeah,
17:56
Speaker 1: I learned so much. They are mood changing, really and
18:00
Speaker 1: you have to get to And also anyone who goes
18:03
Speaker 1: out and gets a high klonic make sure the place
18:06
Speaker 1: you go is ultra sanitized and insist on watching them
18:10
Speaker 1: sanitize the machine, especially in our producers. Jerry's House of Klonics.
18:17
Speaker 1: I mean, she's tidy, but I wouldn't accept the high
18:19
Speaker 1: klonic from her. Right, Um, I was. I got high
18:23
Speaker 1: klonic two of them. The second one it was like
18:25
Speaker 1: I was a brand new person. I literally felt reborn.
18:28
Speaker 1: But the guy who was running the place was telling
18:30
Speaker 1: me about a customer. They it's so perverse. They have
18:34
Speaker 1: this table set up and it's like a doctor's exam
18:36
Speaker 1: table um, and you have certain things sticking certain places, um,
18:40
Speaker 1: and then a tube. Dr Frankenstein going sure, you have
18:44
Speaker 1: a tube going out right, And then there's mirrors showing
18:48
Speaker 1: the whole thing, so you're seeing all the stuff. One
18:52
Speaker 1: guy had to call the owner in who was telling
18:55
Speaker 1: me the story, and he had stopped up the tube
18:58
Speaker 1: and they went and removed the tube on it out.
19:00
Speaker 1: You know what it was. It was a fist size
19:03
Speaker 1: ball of worms. You're kidding. The guy had had no symptoms,
19:08
Speaker 1: had no clue they were in there. Uh, and all
19:11
Speaker 1: of a sudden, the fist sized ball of worms coming out. Well,
19:14
Speaker 1: it's pretty clear why the Discovery show is called Monsters
19:16
Speaker 1: Inside Me. Yeah, fistful of monsters inside of you. Yeah,
19:21
Speaker 1: so high colonics equal getting rid of worms. Sometimes that's
19:24
Speaker 1: my that's my little ast side there, Chuck. I'm going
19:27
Speaker 1: to Jerry's House of clonics right after this. You should, so, Chuck,
19:31
Speaker 1: how do we get these tape worms that come out
19:34
Speaker 1: and fist size balls? Well, there's different ways, Josh. Um.
19:39
Speaker 1: It's usually you can get it through eating food. But
19:42
Speaker 1: there's uh, there's a little disturbing asset to all this
19:45
Speaker 1: is fecal matter has to be involved. Yeah. I saw
19:48
Speaker 1: in this article that you could get it through intimate contact.
19:51
Speaker 1: But if fecal matter has to be present, what is that?
19:55
Speaker 1: I don't know, And you out there in podcasts, I
19:57
Speaker 1: can't make your own call there. But if let's say
20:00
Speaker 1: you were preparing some food and um, you have poop
20:03
Speaker 1: on your hands and poop or something involved involved, yeah,
20:06
Speaker 1: then then you can get it. And I know, undercooked
20:08
Speaker 1: pork I think is one way that you can get
20:11
Speaker 1: the Uh the which one was it? The solum? No?
20:15
Speaker 1: Is it? I thought? So? No? Yeah, Solium is the
20:19
Speaker 1: only one that doesn't require a herbivore. It's the others.
20:23
Speaker 1: Solium is often found in raw or undercook pork, and
20:26
Speaker 1: it's therefore called the pork tape worm. Well that's pretty definitive.
20:30
Speaker 1: It sounds like it. Yeah, at least that's what Dr
20:32
Speaker 1: Hoburg says. It's so. One of the things I found
20:35
Speaker 1: disturbing was this. So you know how tapeworms are segmented.
20:39
Speaker 1: First of all, they can grow up to sixty twenty
20:42
Speaker 1: meters long. That's disturbing, And they're heavily segmented. Each segment
20:47
Speaker 1: can contain up to forty thousand eggs larva eggs um.
20:53
Speaker 1: These eggs can actually live twenty five years out in
20:57
Speaker 1: the open. So if you poop somewhere like in the
21:01
Speaker 1: desert at age, if you go back and visit your
21:05
Speaker 1: poop in the desert age fifty, if there were taper
21:09
Speaker 1: makes in there, you could consuerably eat them and start
21:12
Speaker 1: it over again. That's crazy, isn't that gross? That is
21:14
Speaker 1: and if you swallow these eggs, josh, uh, the larvae
21:19
Speaker 1: can actually penetrate your intestinal wall and lodge in an
21:23
Speaker 1: organ or form a cyst. Well, yeah, they can form
21:27
Speaker 1: brain cysts. They can also attach They can attach to
21:30
Speaker 1: any organ, including your eye and brain, which can cause.
21:33
Speaker 1: They've said they've linked it to blindness and epilepsy and
21:36
Speaker 1: insanity and um seizures. Yeah, what else is there? Um? Paralysis, UM,
21:44
Speaker 1: A lack of equilibrium, Yeah, like vertigo, dizziness, that kind
21:49
Speaker 1: of thing. It's bad stuff, it is, So stay away
21:53
Speaker 1: from dirty pigs and don't cook if you have poop
21:56
Speaker 1: on your hands, just get somebody else to cook an
22:00
Speaker 1: maybe go out to eat. Yeah, that's a good call.
22:03
Speaker 1: Does that it on tape worms? Yeah? We already covered
22:06
Speaker 1: the part about how it turns out we infected livestock, right,
22:09
Speaker 1: sorry pigs. So that's three uh three gross parasite Again.
22:13
Speaker 1: I want to say I want to give a shout
22:14
Speaker 1: out to my favorite which we didn't cover because there's
22:17
Speaker 1: actually a dearth of information out there on it. It's
22:20
Speaker 1: called the human bot fly, bot fly, the fly. Did
22:24
Speaker 1: you read my blog post on it? Did you watched
22:27
Speaker 1: the video? And that's awesome? So the bot fly actually
22:32
Speaker 1: doesn't sting or lay its eggs or spread its larva
22:35
Speaker 1: directly into humans. It uses um mosquitoes to do it
22:40
Speaker 1: for him. So these flies actually capture mosquito midflight, lay
22:44
Speaker 1: some eggs on it, and then the mosquito flies around
22:47
Speaker 1: with the eggs until they hatch into larva. Once the
22:50
Speaker 1: larva hatch, the mosquito um plunges its proposes into a
22:55
Speaker 1: human or any any mammal I believe in to me
22:59
Speaker 1: there in the so the larva are actually transferred. They
23:03
Speaker 1: go under the under the skin, so there and eat
23:05
Speaker 1: your fatty tissue for several weeks, and then finally a
23:10
Speaker 1: maggot emerges from your skin and falls off and goes
23:14
Speaker 1: into the soil where it burrows and until the pupa.
23:18
Speaker 1: Then that's the pupa stage, and then it emerges as
23:20
Speaker 1: an adult bot fly. That's the wrath of con Yeah,
23:23
Speaker 1: and there is no treatment for it. Also, people who
23:26
Speaker 1: have these things, they they as they grow they stay
23:28
Speaker 1: close to the surface. So if you there, it breathes
23:32
Speaker 1: through your skin, right through a hole in your skin
23:34
Speaker 1: um and if you cover it up, you can feel
23:37
Speaker 1: the maggot moving underneath your skin. People have reported was
23:41
Speaker 1: just not in the top three because there's not that
23:43
Speaker 1: much information on it, but we're still talking about it anyway, Bunny. Um.
23:47
Speaker 1: And then the the only way to get rid of
23:49
Speaker 1: it is to actually pop it out. So if you
23:53
Speaker 1: go to the blogs at how stuff works dot com
23:56
Speaker 1: you can, uh, I think you go through older posts
23:59
Speaker 1: and you find one on the bot Flight's probably a
24:01
Speaker 1: couple of weeks old by the time this this podcast
24:04
Speaker 1: comes out. And if you're into parasites or that kind
24:07
Speaker 1: of thing, well, definitely that's one thing. But while you're
24:11
Speaker 1: getting help, while you're filling out the requisite insurance forms,
24:15
Speaker 1: you should probably check out um Monsters Inside Me on
24:19
Speaker 1: Animal Planet on Wednesdays at nine and Chuck and I
24:22
Speaker 1: don't talk just anything like this is a cool show. Yeah,
24:25
Speaker 1: cool and gross and just you know, if you're into
24:27
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, and I know you are, and
24:29
Speaker 1: again that it's like you're abusing our listeners. Um. That
24:34
Speaker 1: website for Monsters Inside Me has one of the great
24:38
Speaker 1: writers on staff here at how stuffworks dot com, Robert
24:41
Speaker 1: Lamb to work by him, Robert's one of my favorite.
24:44
Speaker 1: Rocked it out. So yeah, so there you go, three
24:46
Speaker 1: gross parasites plus the bot fly, and that means it's
24:49
Speaker 1: time for listener mail. So, Josh, I'm just gonna call
24:55
Speaker 1: this listener mail from two dudes someone took you to
25:00
Speaker 1: ask on Superman, did you read those we only get
25:02
Speaker 1: too well. We had a few people right in, but
25:04
Speaker 1: I'm going I'm gonna read Thomas. It's really ultimately, Chuck,
25:07
Speaker 1: I don't. It's gotten to the point where I'm not
25:09
Speaker 1: sure why I opened my mouth unless I'm definitively sure
25:11
Speaker 1: I know what I'm talking about, because I tend to
25:13
Speaker 1: say the exact opposite of what's true. I know, but
25:15
Speaker 1: you know that's Uh, that's part of the show. You know.
25:18
Speaker 1: People like finding little tidbits that we get wrong. It's
25:20
Speaker 1: becoming the crux of the show. No, no, no, these
25:23
Speaker 1: are things, These are little tidbits. This is this is
25:25
Speaker 1: not high science here, It's about Superman for godsakes. Um, Hi, guys,
25:29
Speaker 1: have been listening to your great podcast for a while
25:31
Speaker 1: and I love them. I've never seen an email, but
25:33
Speaker 1: I felt I needed to correct something in the Earthquake podcast.
25:36
Speaker 1: You said Superman lied to Lex Luthor's girlfriend. I believe
25:40
Speaker 1: was he's test marker. Uh not true, Superman did not lie.
25:44
Speaker 1: She made him a promise. She made him promise to
25:47
Speaker 1: save her mother before stopping the missile headed for California.
25:50
Speaker 1: He reluctantly agreed, and she removed his Kryptonite necklace and
25:54
Speaker 1: flew to Hackensack, New Jersey to say, miss test Marker's mom.
25:58
Speaker 1: After he pushed the missile to space, you turned around
26:01
Speaker 1: to see the second missile hit the San Andrea's fault.
26:03
Speaker 1: So sorry, Superman did not lie, and he even says
26:07
Speaker 1: uh in his own words, lois, I never lie. It
26:11
Speaker 1: comes from Thomas from Harvard, Illinois. He's a dogmatic and inflexible.
26:15
Speaker 1: He may have toxic plasms. I think he does. And
26:18
Speaker 1: this is from Anthony. Hey, Chuckers, listen to the new
26:21
Speaker 1: podcast on twinkies. He didn't address you. I thought that
26:23
Speaker 1: was weird. Does well because they think that you don't
26:25
Speaker 1: read the listener meal when in fact you too. Yeah.
26:27
Speaker 1: I get the listener emails too, you just don't respond
26:30
Speaker 1: and read them on the air. To clear that up,
26:32
Speaker 1: Josh treats everything. Yeah, so hey Chuckers and Josh, oh,
26:36
Speaker 1: he did say that, I just missed it. Uh. Bell
26:38
Speaker 1: is a whole lot of unnecessary twinkies reminded me of
26:41
Speaker 1: a time in the early nineties when I worked at
26:43
Speaker 1: The State News, Michigan States University's independent student newspaper, Start,
26:49
Speaker 1: we had a weekly junk food cookie day when we
26:50
Speaker 1: would all chip in a buck or two, multiplied by
26:53
Speaker 1: a staff of fixed fifty or sixty, and get heaps
26:56
Speaker 1: of sugary and salty snacks. While gorging ourselves on Twinkies.
27:00
Speaker 1: We had a debate about their shelf life. We took
27:02
Speaker 1: some gaffer tape one of your favorite things. I love that,
27:06
Speaker 1: and uh stuck at two pack up on the inside
27:08
Speaker 1: of a locker, intending to leave it for as long
27:10
Speaker 1: as possible. For over three years. We watched the twinkies
27:13
Speaker 1: disintegrate into heaps of powder, but never during our experiment
27:17
Speaker 1: during did we see any mold visible. We eventually threw
27:21
Speaker 1: away the package, and I have not even from sins
27:23
Speaker 1: how it comes from Anthony? Well, Anthony, Yeah, what year
27:29
Speaker 1: did he say? He didn't Well, he said early nineties,
27:31
Speaker 1: so he was he was, he's my age. Yeah, we're
27:34
Speaker 1: grunging it out. You cried when krit Cobain died. Dues. Now, well,
27:40
Speaker 1: if like Chuck you cried when Kurt Cobain died, you
27:42
Speaker 1: can send us an email about that too. Stuff podcast
27:46
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. For more on this
27:55
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff works
27:57
Speaker 1: dot com. Want more House stuff Works, check out our
28:01
Speaker 1: blogs on the House of works dot com home page.
28:06
Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
28:09
Speaker 1: It's ready, are you