Please identify one of the grossest things I have ever seen...(TMI)

Factual Questions
1

In lieu of photographs - as a photo of this thing would have made me even more vomitous than I already was - I will describe what happened this morning and what I saw in hopes that someone can tell me what exactly it was.

So I walk into our kitchen this morning to observe our siamese attack cat playing with something on the tile. It’s a beetle - methinks. I grab a paper towel and snatch the unsuspecting varmint from the floor and crush it. No big deal…

Well I do the unthinkable and open the paper towel and look at the heinous smush :eek:

It looks to me like a cockroach! F*ck! I don’t need these things getting into the house !I just had an exterminator here for ants not a month ago…

Anyway, as I am staring at the crushed roach which was a small one…maybe 1cm in length, I notice this thing starting to come out of the bug. It’s long, and squirming…about the thickness of a piece of thread, jet black, squirming…it’s getting bigger, and bigger right in front of my eyes. Squirming…

Did I mention it was squirming?

So what the hell was this 3 inch long, thread shapped, squirming, black, wormy thing coming out of the crushed roach? I pray it wasn’t anything…unearthly.
:puke:

2

WAG - Cockroaches act as an intermediate host for a number of parasitic organisms. One example:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-3395(199008)76%3A4<575%3AIHOMO(>2.0.CO%3B2-7&size=LARGE&origin=JSTOR-enlargePage

3

Why on earth did I read that? Nobody made me read that, nobody even stood over my shoulder and suggested I read that.

4

Why on earth did I open that Og Damn paper towel an look?

5

Indeed. I have seen cockroaches crawling around with larvae sticking out of their backs. The ones I saw were white, though.

6

People got freaked out by the concept in the movie Alien, but this kind of thing happens frequently in the insect world. Read sometime about the life cycle of the tarantula hawk wasp, or cicada killer wasps.

There’s even one I’ve read about where the larva makes its way to the insect host’s brain and takes over the motor control (although I can’t recall the details).

Yuck.

Edited to remove the extra apostrophe from “its.” Did I really type that?

7

I can only imagine what that would have tasted like.

8

L. paradoxum does this in snails. (This one’s particularly freakish.) S. tellinii (a type of Gordian worm) will take over grasshoppers, consume their innards while excreting a mind-controlling chemical, and force them to head to the nearest body of water and commit suicide by hopping in, where they (the worms) will then emerge and reproduce in the water. (These things are very long, too – as much as a meter in length) They’re whitish, though.

9

There’s another that controls the motion of ants to continue its lifetime in sheep. Here’s an informal account:

http://beingmrkenny.co.uk/blog/2006/05/the-story-of-a-parasite-mind-control-and-sheeps-poo/

10

Same reason you look at the tissue you sneezed in. Can’t help it, can you?

11

Other behavior-changing parasites:

12

The hell of it is, I’ll do it again next time this situation comes up. I never learn. :smack:

13

Crunchy and bitter.

Uh, I would imagine.

14

You sure you weren’t seeing them release an egg sac?

15

Yes, definitely. It was horrible.

16

From the description, it sounds to me most likely to be a horsehair worm. They parasitize various kinds of insects including roaches.

Here’s one that emerged from a cricket.

Fascinating creatures. :slight_smile:

17

That little nasty is exactly what I saw!

18

I am once more amazed at the creative ways that nature uses to propagate its the variety of life on this planet.

By focusing on that amazement, I may be able to keep my lunch down.

19

I think that would be the Emerald Cockroach Wasp. It’s not just the method by which the wasp controls the roach that’s interesting, but how the wasp larvae consume it.

20

There’s some sort of crab parasite that neuters its host and makes other behavioral changes, too–I believe I read about it in one of Stephen Jay Gould’s books.