• Question: Whats the most disgusting parasite you've ever seen

    Asked by f dog to Claire, Franco, Koi, Linda, Mark on 18 Jun 2016.
    • Photo: Franco Falcone

      Franco Falcone answered on 18 Jun 2016:


      @f dog

      I don’t find parasites disgusting, actually I find them quite beautiful in many ways, I admire the cleverness of their survival strategies and their ability to adapt to varying hosts and habitats. Shapeshifters and secret agents, that’s what they are. Having said this, I don’t think that what they can do to their host is beautiful in any way, so with my work, I am happy to make a contribution to their eradication. Should we eradicate all parasites, if this was possible? Probably not a good idea, because some parasites at low levels may provide actual benefits, which have been explained several times in other answers on this site.

      But f dog, hey, if I’m entirely honest with you, the sight of botfly maggots freshly extracted from human flesh still has the ability to cause shivers and, I confess, a certain sense of disgust , even as a Parasitologist.

      This may be due to some residual innate mechanism which our species has evolved to protect us against dangerous animals such as snakes and spiders, but I do find spiders particularly beautiful, clever and absolutely amazing! I hope that in one of my future incarnations, I will be an arachnologist (if that is how spider researchers call themselves).

    • Photo: Mark Booth

      Mark Booth answered on 18 Jun 2016:


      Hi F dog

      I don’t think you can become a parasitologist and be disgusted by the organisms you study. Personally I find all biology fascinating and although I have seen some sights that others might turn away from in disgust I find that my reactions are more towards wondering how it came to be like that.

      Some of my work has involved examining faecal samples for the presence of parasite eggs. That can get a bit yucky.

    • Photo: Arporn Wangwiwatsin

      Arporn Wangwiwatsin answered on 19 Jun 2016:


      Hi f dog,

      Some pictures of parasites might look a bit repulsive (or give a shiver) but…. never judge a book by its cover! There might be lots of fascinating things you can find out about them. I usually find it awe-inspiring particularly with the closed-up image of parasites. Seeing the symptoms it can give to people though, that I do feel bad for the people, but at the same time amazing by the parasites’ ways of living.
      (In a practical class during my undergrad, I had to dissect cockroaches and look for parasites in their gut, I actually found the cockroaches more disgusting than the parasites… ;))

    • Photo: Linda Anagu

      Linda Anagu answered on 20 Jun 2016:


      @f dog, i have never been disgusted with the parasite i have seen so far. They all look beautiful to me, it is the vector mosquito and cockroaches that disgust me. Some other person may find parasites disgusting but not me.

    • Photo: Claire Bourke

      Claire Bourke answered on 20 Jun 2016:


      Hi f dog,
      by now you are probably reolising that we parasite biologists have a slightly different definition of ‘disgusting’ to most people! When I talk to my non-biologist friends they sometimes wonder if there is anything I do that isn’t disgusting! I have worked with lots and lots of poo samples to count parasite eggs, I have sieved urine samples to identify and count infections, I once spotted some live hookworms wriggling about in a faecal sample, I work with blood most days and am trained to collect blood samples, I really enjoy dissecting organs from lymph nodes through to eyes…I guess those are all things that some people might find horrible. In a way I think that seeing something as ‘disgusting’ gets in the way of understanding it better as that instinct makes you look away rather than looking in closer, which is what we as scientists do to investigate parasites. I find that the closer I look the more interesting and fascinating things are; for example when you look at a schistosome larva under an electron microscope, you can see the scaley pattern of it’s outer coat all along its tail; or if you add fluorescent dyes to the same larvae and look at them with a powerful fluorescent microscope you can see all of the tubes inside its head where the enzymes that it uses to burrow through the skin are stored – it’s actually very beautiful and I would never get to see that if I thought ‘yuk, I don’t want to look at that’!

      One of the great things about getting to choose your own job is that you don’t have to do things that you find disgusting. Parasite biology isn’t for everyone, but I feel really lucky to work with beautiful parasites and don’t mind if people think what I do is a bit gross 😉

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