Meet the pentastome

At the Thoughtomics blog, Lucas Brouwers has a really nifty post on a recent discovery about the biology of pentastomes. What's a pentastome? Oh, I am SO glad that you asked.

Every animal has its own parasites to worry about, but canivorous reptiles and amphibians have to deal with particularly gruesome ones. They can become infected with small, worm-like creatures called pentastomes that live inside their lungs, where they suck blood from ruptured blood vessels. Reptiles pick up the parasite when they eat infected prey.

Pentastomes are true escape artists. Once they realize they’ve entered a reptile stomach, they use their sharp hooks to claw themselves a way to the victim’s lungs. In an experiment where pentastomes were implanted in a gecko’s stomach, the parasites invaded the lungs in as little as four hours.

Fun!

BTW: The image above, of a pentastome called Kiricephalus coarctatus, comes from a student page on the life and pests of the Western Cottonmouth snake. It's worth poking around that site, too.

• [Guest]

  Goa’uld symbiote anyone?

• [Scott]

  This definitely calls for a unicorn chaser.

  • [zish]

    Dunno, the pic kinda looks a unicorn’s horn. Perhaps unicorns are just regular horses infected with magical pentastomes?

• [Ben Burger]

  poor gecko

• [Layne]

  *Yurk*
  Didn’t this thing come busting out of William Hurt’s chest?

  • [Aaron Swain]

    John Hurt. William is the one who evolved after a swim in the isolation tank.

  • [Guest]

    “Hello my baby, Hello my honey, Hello my ragtime gal…”

    CHECK, PLEASE!

• [habbi1974]

  now I know what those gorilla tripods are made of! xD

• [habbi1974]

  btw, do the name means “five mouths” ?

  • [Guest]

    maybe “can go in any of 5 holes”?

• [Aaron Swain]

  Yet another reason to be glad I’m not a lizard.

• [Lobster]

  “If the pentastome finds itself outside an organism, it attempts to get eaten again by disguising itself as a delicious cruller.”

• [Gareth Rees]

  The name does indeed derive from the Greek for “five mouths” but pentastomes only have the one—they got the name because in some species the mouth looks very similar to the four adjacent hook-like limbs.

• [wizardru]

  Good Grief, Maggie.  Do any of your posts NOT remind us that Nature is full of ungodly, Cthulu-esque horrors determined to destroy us all?

  I mean, GAH.

• [Mister44]

  Is it also a nematode?

  Why don’t we see these things in those Gieco commercials?

  • [chenille]

    It’s not a nematode. They were placed on their own for a while, but now seem to be peculiarly reduced crustaceans.

• [phisrow]

  If anybody needs me, I’ll be in my workshop building a HEV suit and a flamethrower…

• [salsaman]

  That would make a lovely bracelet!

• [OldBrownSquirrel]

  It gets better.  Some pentasomes infect humans.

• [kullervo]

  Suddenly I care not if it tastes like chicken…

• [HerkyDerky]

  I breed these in my back yard to protect us all from the Reptilian Illuminati.

• [Ian Wood]

  NEVER swallow the Dentic.

  • [Jamie Sue]

    I *heart* you.

• [David C. Oshel]

  The screw shaped ridge in combination with the o-shaped ridges suggest two different kinds of metameric evolution, which in turn suggests fantasy, which suggests Photoshop. 

• [Guillaume Dargaud]

  I looked at the pic before the title and I thought it would be about some porn accessory. Well, there goes the excitement…

  • [zish]

    Guillaume! Do not! DO NOT! place this thing into any orifice in your or anyone else’s body!

• [lewis_stoole]

  this is not a bracelet being sold on etsy?