Ask Me Everything2

WWb Landed yourself a human? After brushing on to some clothing, crawl to a safe, cozy place—just under the underwear elastic is perfect!

W ■ Now chew a hole in your victim’s skin. Chemicals in your spit tum the wound into a slurpable soup. Yum! Don’t worry about the Chemicals giving your host a rash.

Record-

breaking

scroungers

^ The giant Amazon w A leech, which is up to 18 in (46 cm) long, can suck in four times its body weight in blood!

The record jump w u for a flea (usually 0.1-0.3 in (2-8 mm) long) is 13 in (33 cm). You’d need to jump over a 50-story building to match that.

Ticks are excellent UO fasters—some can last for morę than one year without a meal.

Mass killers

Finished feeding? Drop to the ground. Here you can develop into an adult harvest mite.

Female mosquitoes // feed on human blood to provide protein for their eggs. Some species infect humans with the disease malaria. This kills up to 1.5 million people per year and affects another 300 million.

Bti

The candiru is only 1.5 in

(4 cm) long but it’s an

When an mfected tsetse fly bites its victim, it injects a tiny parasite into the bloodstream. This eventually invades the brain, causing drowsiness and fever known as “sleeping sickness,” which kills 40,000 people per year

alarming fish It s said

to track down urine in river water and force

its way into people s

Fleas on rats carried // the potentially fatal disease known as bubonic plague The Black Death was an epidemie of this plague that wiped out around 75 million people worldwide between 1347 and 1351.

Midges

Biting flies come in all shapes and sizes. Some are so smali that they are nicknamed “no-see-’ums!”

Fleas

These agile critters have super long legs. They leap great distances at lightning speed.

Lice

They can't hop, skip, or jump, but lice make skin (and hair) crawl! They cling on by the claws.

Ticks

Less mobile than lice, ticks nestle in warm, moist places, such as the crotch or armpit.

Scabies

mites

The females burrow under our skin to lay eggs, causing an itchy rash.

body passageways.

Name that sucker

Tapeworm

Gets its name from its long, segmented body which resembles a

■■■■i

Hookworm

Has distinctive curved hooks that it uses to cling on to the inside

Whipworm

Looks like a curled-up whip, with wider “handles” at

Crab louse

Is named for the outsize claws with which it clings to its

measuring tape!

of its host s intestine

the rear end

host s pubie hair

Castor bean tick

Is so-called because of its round, beanlike shape. Sometimes it has mottled patterning

1,000

The number of segments that make up the body of a tapeworm

26 ft

(8 m) The length that a tapeworm can grow

200

The number of times its original size a castor bean tick can swell to when fuli of blood

200,000

How many eggs a female ringworm produces in one day

30

The number of different mite species that one Mexican parrot carries just on its feathers—the bird is a walking zoo!

Parasites 1110| 111