THERE ARE LOTS OF SCARY ANIMALS OUT THERE. Bears, tigers, sharks, and cobras all can kill you. But the scariest creatures on Earth are not monstrous animals with lots of teeth or venom. Instead, they are tiny little things so hideous that just reading about them can give you the chills. For those of you who want to know just how gross nature can be, welcome to the toothpick fish and the guinea worm.
THE TOOTHPICK FISH
The scientific name for this tiny fish is the candiru, and it lives in the Amazon River. It is only a few inches long, needle thin, and has see-through skin so that it is almost invisible in water. The fish is attracted to swimmers and looks for an opening in the body. We’re talking about any opening in the body: your mouth, your ear, and even your … Well, you can guess where the other prime places might be.
The fish wriggles into the opening and as soon as it gets comfortable, it shoots a sharp spine into the unwilling victim. This spine locks the candiru into the opening so that there is no way it can be pulled out. Then the fish starts sucking blood out of the victim to use as food. The only way to remove the candiru once it finds its new “home” is through surgery. Unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of medical centers deep in the Amazon rain forest, so getting rid of the embedded fish can take a very, very long time.
THE GUINEA WORM
The guinea worm lives in small bodies of water in central Africa. The worm lays its eggs in ponds, where tiny fleas eat them. The fleas are so small that they make it unseen into drinking water. When they get inside your stomach, the fleas dissolve but the worm eggs that they’ve eaten do not. Instead, the eggs root in your intestines. While there, the worms gradually grow until they are about three feet long. The female worms at this size are filled with new eggs. They need to lay their eggs in water, so they start burrowing through your intestines and organs to get out through your skin.
Once they get just below the skin, and occasionally an eyeball, the worms release an acid that causes your skin to blister and bubble while creating an opening. These blisters are extremely painful, and when you try to wash them with water, the guinea worm bursts out of your body in a long, spaghetti-like strand. You must then grab it and hold on to it. Then, over the course of weeks, you must slowly pull the entire worm out of your flesh, inch by inch, making sure it doesn’t break. If it does, the remaining part of the worm could kill you. Since removing it takes so long, the part of the worm already out of the body is wrapped around a stick that you must carry with you until the entire worm wriggles the rest of the way out.