Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
Speaker 1: from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Here is Charles w dr
Speaker 1: kunk Eliasis Bryant How you doing drunk? That sounds like
Speaker 1: my play a name? It is sort of player appreciate
Speaker 1: dot Com. I wish I could remember what that name was.
Speaker 1: Was so good? Oh it was we pastic Bryant Trump.
Speaker 1: Is that it sugar tastic Bryant Trump. Sugar tastic? That's it,
Speaker 1: Bryant Trump. Yeah, that means Chuck's put name is as
Speaker 1: it's as its appears on player appreciate dot Com. I
Speaker 1: love that you can generate a play a name. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is a pretty cool couples the Internet, Chuck, speaking
Speaker 1: of the Internet. Yes, our parent company, Discoveries Channel Animal
Speaker 1: Planet UM has a cool website. Indeed that they launched
Speaker 1: for their show Monsters Inside of Me. Very cool, which
Speaker 1: has inspired us to do a couple of parasite podcasts.
Speaker 1: This is two of two. Yeah, number two. We just
Speaker 1: did um a toxoplasmosis. Yeah, and I gotta say we
Speaker 1: were excited about this stuff. It's actually we'll get requested
Speaker 1: to do things and we're like, oh, I don't know,
Speaker 1: should we do that. We'll turn them down and they'll
Speaker 1: threaten to fire us, and then we'll march into the
Speaker 1: office with a gas can and a lighter. It goes
Speaker 1: down like that. But this one is cool. Monsters inside Me,
Speaker 1: cool show. Yeah No, everybody on staff pretty much threw
Speaker 1: in for this thing, and happily actually because yeah, it
Speaker 1: is a cool show. That's a cool graphics. It's just gross. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is um. And if you're eating lunch or dinner
Speaker 1: right now, we might advise you to wait until later
Speaker 1: listen to this. I actually was eating a sub while
Speaker 1: I was researching Leashman is sis tape worm sub? No,
Speaker 1: that's the flesh eating I know, just was it a
Speaker 1: taper and stub? It was undercooked meat, so yeah, probably. Um. Anyway,
Speaker 1: we're talking about parasites and apparently pimp names and uh,
Speaker 1: let's get into it. We're talking about three really gross ones,
Speaker 1: and technically we should say four because I want to
Speaker 1: give a shout out to my favorite and Chuck. Also,
Speaker 1: I should probably say anytime we do a segmented um podcast.
Speaker 1: Chuck likes the timing because he's a big fat jerk.
Speaker 1: I don't like to time you. But if we want
Speaker 1: to get to all three, we need only have a
Speaker 1: certain amount of time. And so I'm gonna go ahead
Speaker 1: and hit start on my new iPhone. Okay, well, dracunculish jerk,
Speaker 1: We're supposed to do a Leisha manisis. Oh yeah, Alisha maniasis. Sorry, man,
Speaker 1: that's what we're starting with. This is the flesh eating parasite.
Speaker 1: It is. It's affection affectionately known tropics subtropics in southern Europe.
Speaker 1: So we're safe for now, well, unless we travel to
Speaker 1: one of these countries, which you were prone to do.
Speaker 1: I yes, I am wanting to go to certain places sometimes.
Speaker 1: But yeah, there's a lot of people who actually um
Speaker 1: suffer from Alisha maniasis. Estimates are are about twelve million
Speaker 1: infective worldwide and three fifty million at risk. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: about two million new cases each year. And they're expecting
Speaker 1: this to go up, Chuck, thanks to our friend climate change,
Speaker 1: Thank you, al Gore. Um. Because as the temperatures increase,
Speaker 1: the area where the sand fly, which uh increases as well.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's the sand flight which I wasn't familiar.
Speaker 1: I think I had sand fly and black fly confused.
Speaker 1: But luckily black flies don't spread um. Leashmanis the sand
Speaker 1: flies to and these are actually about a third of
Speaker 1: the size of mosquitoes. You know, your bits are relatively
Speaker 1: painless if they're if they're not pain free. Um. So yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't know that you're being bitten, and you certainly
Speaker 1: don't know that the the saliva from this fly has
Speaker 1: actually just transferred um some larva of this parasite into
Speaker 1: your blood stream. And you know I should point out
Speaker 1: to you said that global warming is one reason this
Speaker 1: is on the rise. Another reason is because of our
Speaker 1: shenanigans in the Middle East, because it is that place
Speaker 1: is lousy with sand flies in Afghanistan and Iraq and
Speaker 1: the like. So we think a lot of our personnel
Speaker 1: over there maybe getting infected in bringing it back. So
Speaker 1: leishmaniasis mission accomplished. Yeah, so, Chuck. Actually, the the concentration
Speaker 1: of where these cases are popping up is concentrated in
Speaker 1: just a handful of countries, Old World and New World. Um.
Speaker 1: But there are places like Syria and Brazil have the
Speaker 1: vast majority of these cases because it's where the sand
Speaker 1: fly lives. But like you said, traveling conquering, these things
Speaker 1: can can can transfer tourism and conquering. Yeah, leishmaniasis. Right,
Speaker 1: So there's actually two kinds and a sub kind. The
Speaker 1: sub kind is my favorite. The cutaneus is my favorite?
Speaker 1: Is it because I want to describe the sore If
Speaker 1: you had the cutaneus, uh, lee, maniasis, this is what's
Speaker 1: gonna happen. You're getting get a sore in your skin.
Speaker 1: What happens is as followed and uh, this is so gross.
Speaker 1: They describe it. The sore is ending up looking like
Speaker 1: a volcano. So it's got a raised edge and then
Speaker 1: a central crater, a little meaty central crater right in
Speaker 1: the middle. Do you at least maniasis on your breast?
Speaker 1: That's gross? And some some of the sores are indeed
Speaker 1: covered by a scab and they can be painless or painful.
Speaker 1: Painful your breast is yeah. Yeah, So my favorite, chuck,
Speaker 1: if you'll allow me to take over for a moment,
Speaker 1: is mucosal or muco cut This is the stuff that
Speaker 1: like you see photos of when you type in flesh
Speaker 1: eating parasite, right, Yeah. What happens is is you get
Speaker 1: a cutaneous parasitic infection, and uh, it can spread to
Speaker 1: your mucous membranes, eat your lips, your nostrils, that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Basically, the prominent features on your face get
Speaker 1: eaten away. Did you google image any of these? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so are you eating at the time? No, I was not.
Speaker 1: It's amazing like people missing their noses. I saw one
Speaker 1: where it was a close up of this guy's nose
Speaker 1: and somebody had tweezers. It was just kind of pulling
Speaker 1: it and it was a still photo, but you could
Speaker 1: tell by the way it was being pulled. It was
Speaker 1: basically like jelly. It's gross stuff, but that's that They
Speaker 1: actually clear up on their own eventually. We read an
Speaker 1: article from the CDC describing leashmaniasis, and I was just
Speaker 1: considered to find you know, under the how do I
Speaker 1: treat leishmaniasis, they're basically like, well, it goes away on
Speaker 1: its own eventually, basically like there is no treatment, but
Speaker 1: it said it could take months or years. So do
Speaker 1: you want a volcano, uh, scab on your forearm for
Speaker 1: years or that thing on your breath gross? Uh. There's
Speaker 1: a really dangerous one though, called visceral. Yeah, so tell
Speaker 1: us about that, chuckers. Yes, Josh, this is the nasty one.
Speaker 1: This is the one that attacks your liver and spleen
Speaker 1: and I think it in large just them. Well, your
Speaker 1: spleen actually can become larger than your liver, which ain't
Speaker 1: supposed to happen. That ain't supposed to happen, and even
Speaker 1: your liver and uh it is liver shrinking and hardening.
Speaker 1: Oh is that what happens? Okay, so your liver's like
Speaker 1: a California raising pretty much. And then not the dancing
Speaker 1: kind of the dying kind. Yeah. Um yeah, it'll kill you.
Speaker 1: It will. And like you said, it is nasty in
Speaker 1: that it is dangerous. It's not as nasty as um
Speaker 1: muco cutaneous leashmaniasis, but it's still pretty dangerous stuff. So
Speaker 1: you want to know how how this uh, this parasite, Uh,
Speaker 1: this parasite's life cycle occurs. It's pretty interesting actually. So
Speaker 1: you get bit by a sand fly, right, and the
Speaker 1: parasite actually is taken up. It enters the bloodstream and
Speaker 1: it's taken up by macro phages, which are a type
Speaker 1: of white blood cell. So they're living happily and protective
Speaker 1: within the macrophages where they're reproducing, and eventually they cause
Speaker 1: the cell to lice. Dat erupts and they're all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, all these new um parasites are released into
Speaker 1: your bloodstream and then they're taken up by more white
Speaker 1: blood cells and so on and so on, so the
Speaker 1: process keeps continuing and they start multiplying exponentially. Yeah, which
Speaker 1: is also how it's flesh eating. When when it's attacking
Speaker 1: these cells, it's it's liz ing the cells in your
Speaker 1: mucous membrane or around your like on your forearm or
Speaker 1: something like that or uh, in the case of visceral leashmaniasis,
Speaker 1: your internal organs. But like we said, don't worry about
Speaker 1: It'll just go ahead and according to the c d C.
Speaker 1: All right, change your press the timer. Man, we're dumb
Speaker 1: in this one. Okay, So that's leashmaniasis. Yes to number two,
Speaker 1: dracunculiass that's a good one. Yeah, this one's pretty awful too.
Speaker 1: It's all this is really sad. As the guinea worm. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is really sad because it affects the poorest of
Speaker 1: the poor in the world. That's the bad news, because
Speaker 1: it comes from drinking un clean water. The good news
Speaker 1: is they have largely eradicated it. Well, the five countries
Speaker 1: that are stubbornly hanging on your guinea worm infection. But dude,
Speaker 1: we're talking. Um, let's go back in time to nineteen six.
Speaker 1: I'm in the tenth grade. You're an elementary school. If
Speaker 1: you're drinking behind the elementary I was in the baseball cards.
Speaker 1: I was into drinking behind the element I was into
Speaker 1: Defender in van Halen Um. So three point five million
Speaker 1: people were infected every year back then. And now let's
Speaker 1: go back a couple of years to two thousand seven
Speaker 1: when I was into Defender and Van Halen and I
Speaker 1: was drinking behind the elementary school. Yeah, that's scary. Only
Speaker 1: nine thousand five cases were reported, so that's awesome, and
Speaker 1: most of those were in the Sudan and Ghana, so
Speaker 1: clearly some work to be done there. Sure, So now
Speaker 1: we should talk about how the gross this is. This
Speaker 1: is a very very gross gross. Paris is the worst one.
Speaker 1: I think what happens is U it's generally taken up
Speaker 1: through at tainted water supply a year later. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: what was so frightening is you drink bad water on
Speaker 1: vacation and Ghana. A year later, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you say, what's that blister on my foot? Well, the
Speaker 1: tour Ghana Tourism board is gonna be really mad at you.
Speaker 1: The Greater Ghanese um Chamber of Commerce is going to
Speaker 1: be after you chuck to go ahead, all right? So basically,
Speaker 1: what is it? Water fleas are easily infected with these parasites,
Speaker 1: and they show up in unsanitary water. You drink this water,
Speaker 1: you get a couple of water fleas in, or you
Speaker 1: can considerably just drink the larva. Right. Uh, the larva
Speaker 1: travel down to your intestine where they lodge. They can
Speaker 1: pass through the intestine, which most parasites can um and
Speaker 1: then they grow right. Well, the stomach acid what I
Speaker 1: thought was interesting is it does not kill. It killed
Speaker 1: the water, Thank you stomach acid. Right, So, yeah, the
Speaker 1: parasite sticks around. It grows and grows and grows um too,
Speaker 1: about two to three ft long or a hundred centimeters
Speaker 1: long um over the course of ten to fourteen months.
Speaker 1: And it's just the females that grow to this adult stage.
Speaker 1: And they said it's as wide as a cooked spaghetti
Speaker 1: noodle three ft long in your intestine. Yeah, and it's gross.
Speaker 1: That's not the worst part though. Our guest producer Lizzie
Speaker 1: is about the girl. I think we should make that
Speaker 1: our our mission today. Okay, So, um, you've got this
Speaker 1: three ft long live spaghetti noodle that you can clearly
Speaker 1: identify as a female, uh, detached from your intestine, and
Speaker 1: then it migrates to the skin. And here's where the
Speaker 1: beauty parts oil forms on the site where the worms
Speaker 1: about to emerge, and pop goes the weasel. The worms
Speaker 1: starts to poke its head out and uh. Basically you
Speaker 1: look down and you have a worm coming out of
Speaker 1: your body. And here's the tricky part, what getting it out? Okay,
Speaker 1: so if you have them picked up by now, parasites
Speaker 1: are arguably the most intelligent things on the planet, or
Speaker 1: at the very least the most tenacious. The boil or
Speaker 1: the blister where that's that occurs at the site where
Speaker 1: the worms about to emerge. Actually, the pain associated with
Speaker 1: it is alleviated simply by dropping it in water. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a contact with water triggers the guinea worm
Speaker 1: to release this milky white substance, which is actually millions
Speaker 1: of larva into the water supply. So the water supply
Speaker 1: is now tainted and the life cycle begins again. Right,
Speaker 1: So you're in the you're in Ghana, you're feeling bad,
Speaker 1: You get in the river because it makes it feel better,
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, everyone downstream is getting
Speaker 1: this milky secretion of eggs. They get infected. Just so
Speaker 1: g it is so okay again, c DC says, yeah, really,
Speaker 1: the best way to do this is to have a
Speaker 1: clean sanitary water supply. So the treatment for this is
Speaker 1: actually just preventive. You just make sure that population has
Speaker 1: a clean water supply, right, which is what the Carter
Speaker 1: Center has been working so hard for all these years.
Speaker 1: That's odd to mention the Carter Center out of nowhere. Well, no,
Speaker 1: the Carter Center they've been doing all this work. Oh
Speaker 1: they have. Yeah, since when trying to eradicate g W
Speaker 1: d Oh did they help with that drop from three
Speaker 1: point five million to less than ten thousand cases in
Speaker 1: about ten years? You got it, buddy, right, Well, way
Speaker 1: to go, Jimmy Carter. Okay, so the Carter Center is
Speaker 1: working on eradicating the guinea worm. Sure, among other groups,
Speaker 1: got you World Health Organization? Uh? Yeah, right, okay, so yes,
Speaker 1: so we've got we've got it down. But let's say
Speaker 1: that you do have a polluted water source and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden you have a three foot long cook
Speaker 1: spaghetti noodle coming out of your leg in a boil.
Speaker 1: What do you do, Chuck, what do you do? Well?
Speaker 1: One thing you can do, Josh, is you can pull
Speaker 1: it out, and you can only do this a few
Speaker 1: centimeters at a time on a daily basis. I'm glad
Speaker 1: I read this because if I ever had this, I
Speaker 1: would yank that thing and pull it out from my
Speaker 1: intestine in one long piece of spaghetti wolf. But apparently
Speaker 1: you can't do that. I imagine it would break off
Speaker 1: or something and causing infection, and you just make it mad.
Speaker 1: And you don't want to make a guinea worm. No,
Speaker 1: you're tough. So what you do is you wrap it
Speaker 1: around a piece of gauze or a small stick, a
Speaker 1: little bit at a time, every day, every day, for
Speaker 1: several weeks, for several weeks, until it's out. That's one
Speaker 1: thing you can do. Or it can be surgically removed,
Speaker 1: clearly by a trained professional. But we're talking about the
Speaker 1: poorest of the poor in the world, and they can't
Speaker 1: they don't have access to this, or you can just
Speaker 1: blow your head off. Well that's another option. Sure. Um.
Speaker 1: The big problem with guinea worm disease, or when it
Speaker 1: was a real real problem, is that, um, it is
Speaker 1: a it's a disease of poverty, but it's also a
Speaker 1: cause of poverty because if you have a three foot
Speaker 1: log cooks spaghetti noodle coming out of your leg um,
Speaker 1: you're pretty much temporarily disabled until that thing comes out.
Speaker 1: You can't farm, No, you can't take care of your children. Right,
Speaker 1: it's very sad. So it does have an economic impact.
Speaker 1: That just it's a cycleman, it makes everything even worse.
Speaker 1: It's does. But luckily again we've largely eradicated it except
Speaker 1: for Ghana and Molly is completely clear of it now
Speaker 1: and they used to have a problem with it all right, Chuck, Well,
Speaker 1: then turn off your time or again, buddy, that was
Speaker 1: a good one, I thought, so as well, are we
Speaker 1: leaving this part in where you're actually manipulating the timer? Yes,
Speaker 1: we'll find out onto tape worms, tapeworms. This one is
Speaker 1: pretty common, the big finish. Everybody knows tapeworms. There's that
Speaker 1: tapeworm diet which actually is real, is it really? We're
Speaker 1: not endorsing that. By the way, I'm just big on
Speaker 1: calorie restricted diets and knowledge. Even Chuck won't let me
Speaker 1: endorse that one. But still, uh, this is We chose
Speaker 1: this one because it's actually really interesting. Um. The study
Speaker 1: of tapeworms has revealed a change and understanding of human evolution.
Speaker 1: Big deal, or at least pitology. Yeah, we always thought
Speaker 1: humans always thought that we get tapeworms from animals. Thanks
Speaker 1: a lot, cow and pig for getting us tapeworms. There's
Speaker 1: some research that's been done that actually turns the tables, Josh,
Speaker 1: and in a switcheroo. It looks like we may have
Speaker 1: started the whole thing and given it to the animals.
Speaker 1: So not only did we domesticate you for slaughter, we
Speaker 1: also gave you the tapeworm. So tapeworms uh known affectionately
Speaker 1: in the medical community as tania. Uh. There's uh tanias solium,
Speaker 1: which we'll talk about that's distinct from Tania sagenada and
Speaker 1: Tania asiatica. Thank you. I worked on pronunciations like all
Speaker 1: day uh sagonada and asiatica both actually for their lifestyle
Speaker 1: life cycle require an herbivore in there as an intermediate
Speaker 1: host to get to their definitive host us, the carnivores carnivores. Right,
Speaker 1: does this mean a vegetarian or vegan wouldn't be infected?
Speaker 1: You would think so, but look out for tanias solium,
Speaker 1: which will get anybody. Yeah, very broad range and including dogs.
Speaker 1: It said. That's very sad, right, Yeah, once we domesticated dogs, cows, pigs,
Speaker 1: you know again, we thought that that's when we started
Speaker 1: getting tapeworms. Actually, tapeworms go back as far as about
Speaker 1: two point seven million years. Humans or hominids have had
Speaker 1: some sort of trouble um with all of the wretching
Speaker 1: and the pooping and stuff like that, if you believe
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Yeah, we've been around for two
Speaker 1: point seven million years? Do you believe that? Hogwatch? Sorry, so,
Speaker 1: chuck um. Let's talk about tapeworms. What they do, how
Speaker 1: they do it, what they look like. All right, we're
Speaker 1: talking about intestinal tapeworm infections. A lot of times, uh,
Speaker 1: they're not detected because it's pretty mild symptom. Wize, I
Speaker 1: assume that one or both of us has a tapeworm
Speaker 1: right now? Can I tell you something? Boy? Yes, So
Speaker 1: I'm actually a big proponent of high colonics. Yeah, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I learned so much. They are mood changing, really and
Speaker 1: you have to get to And also anyone who goes
Speaker 1: out and gets a high klonic make sure the place
Speaker 1: you go is ultra sanitized and insist on watching them
Speaker 1: sanitize the machine, especially in our producers. Jerry's House of Klonics.
Speaker 1: I mean, she's tidy, but I wouldn't accept the high
Speaker 1: klonic from her. Right, Um, I was. I got high
Speaker 1: klonic two of them. The second one it was like
Speaker 1: I was a brand new person. I literally felt reborn.
Speaker 1: But the guy who was running the place was telling
Speaker 1: me about a customer. They it's so perverse. They have
Speaker 1: this table set up and it's like a doctor's exam
Speaker 1: table um, and you have certain things sticking certain places, um,
Speaker 1: and then a tube. Dr Frankenstein going sure, you have
Speaker 1: a tube going out right, And then there's mirrors showing
Speaker 1: the whole thing, so you're seeing all the stuff. One
Speaker 1: guy had to call the owner in who was telling
Speaker 1: me the story, and he had stopped up the tube
Speaker 1: and they went and removed the tube on it out.
Speaker 1: You know what it was. It was a fist size
Speaker 1: ball of worms. You're kidding. The guy had had no symptoms,
Speaker 1: had no clue they were in there. Uh, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, the fist sized ball of worms coming out. Well,
Speaker 1: it's pretty clear why the Discovery show is called Monsters
Speaker 1: Inside Me. Yeah, fistful of monsters inside of you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so high colonics equal getting rid of worms. Sometimes that's
Speaker 1: my that's my little ast side there, Chuck. I'm going
Speaker 1: to Jerry's House of clonics right after this. You should, so, Chuck,
Speaker 1: how do we get these tape worms that come out
Speaker 1: and fist size balls? Well, there's different ways, Josh. Um.
Speaker 1: It's usually you can get it through eating food. But
Speaker 1: there's uh, there's a little disturbing asset to all this
Speaker 1: is fecal matter has to be involved. Yeah. I saw
Speaker 1: in this article that you could get it through intimate contact.
Speaker 1: But if fecal matter has to be present, what is that?
Speaker 1: I don't know, And you out there in podcasts, I
Speaker 1: can't make your own call there. But if let's say
Speaker 1: you were preparing some food and um, you have poop
Speaker 1: on your hands and poop or something involved involved, yeah,
Speaker 1: then then you can get it. And I know, undercooked
Speaker 1: pork I think is one way that you can get
Speaker 1: the Uh the which one was it? The solum? No?
Speaker 1: Is it? I thought? So? No? Yeah, Solium is the
Speaker 1: only one that doesn't require a herbivore. It's the others.
Speaker 1: Solium is often found in raw or undercook pork, and
Speaker 1: it's therefore called the pork tape worm. Well that's pretty definitive.
Speaker 1: It sounds like it. Yeah, at least that's what Dr
Speaker 1: Hoburg says. It's so. One of the things I found
Speaker 1: disturbing was this. So you know how tapeworms are segmented.
Speaker 1: First of all, they can grow up to sixty twenty
Speaker 1: meters long. That's disturbing, And they're heavily segmented. Each segment
Speaker 1: can contain up to forty thousand eggs larva eggs um.
Speaker 1: These eggs can actually live twenty five years out in
Speaker 1: the open. So if you poop somewhere like in the
Speaker 1: desert at age, if you go back and visit your
Speaker 1: poop in the desert age fifty, if there were taper
Speaker 1: makes in there, you could consuerably eat them and start
Speaker 1: it over again. That's crazy, isn't that gross? That is
Speaker 1: and if you swallow these eggs, josh, uh, the larvae
Speaker 1: can actually penetrate your intestinal wall and lodge in an
Speaker 1: organ or form a cyst. Well, yeah, they can form
Speaker 1: brain cysts. They can also attach They can attach to
Speaker 1: any organ, including your eye and brain, which can cause.
Speaker 1: They've said they've linked it to blindness and epilepsy and
Speaker 1: insanity and um seizures. Yeah, what else is there? Um? Paralysis, UM,
Speaker 1: A lack of equilibrium, Yeah, like vertigo, dizziness, that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. It's bad stuff, it is, So stay away
Speaker 1: from dirty pigs and don't cook if you have poop
Speaker 1: on your hands, just get somebody else to cook an
Speaker 1: maybe go out to eat. Yeah, that's a good call.
Speaker 1: Does that it on tape worms? Yeah? We already covered
Speaker 1: the part about how it turns out we infected livestock, right,
Speaker 1: sorry pigs. So that's three uh three gross parasite Again.
Speaker 1: I want to say I want to give a shout
Speaker 1: out to my favorite which we didn't cover because there's
Speaker 1: actually a dearth of information out there on it. It's
Speaker 1: called the human bot fly, bot fly, the fly. Did
Speaker 1: you read my blog post on it? Did you watched
Speaker 1: the video? And that's awesome? So the bot fly actually
Speaker 1: doesn't sting or lay its eggs or spread its larva
Speaker 1: directly into humans. It uses um mosquitoes to do it
Speaker 1: for him. So these flies actually capture mosquito midflight, lay
Speaker 1: some eggs on it, and then the mosquito flies around
Speaker 1: with the eggs until they hatch into larva. Once the
Speaker 1: larva hatch, the mosquito um plunges its proposes into a
Speaker 1: human or any any mammal I believe in to me
Speaker 1: there in the so the larva are actually transferred. They
Speaker 1: go under the under the skin, so there and eat
Speaker 1: your fatty tissue for several weeks, and then finally a
Speaker 1: maggot emerges from your skin and falls off and goes
Speaker 1: into the soil where it burrows and until the pupa.
Speaker 1: Then that's the pupa stage, and then it emerges as
Speaker 1: an adult bot fly. That's the wrath of con Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there is no treatment for it. Also, people who
Speaker 1: have these things, they they as they grow they stay
Speaker 1: close to the surface. So if you there, it breathes
Speaker 1: through your skin, right through a hole in your skin
Speaker 1: um and if you cover it up, you can feel
Speaker 1: the maggot moving underneath your skin. People have reported was
Speaker 1: just not in the top three because there's not that
Speaker 1: much information on it, but we're still talking about it anyway, Bunny. Um.
Speaker 1: And then the the only way to get rid of
Speaker 1: it is to actually pop it out. So if you
Speaker 1: go to the blogs at how stuff works dot com
Speaker 1: you can, uh, I think you go through older posts
Speaker 1: and you find one on the bot Flight's probably a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks old by the time this this podcast
Speaker 1: comes out. And if you're into parasites or that kind
Speaker 1: of thing, well, definitely that's one thing. But while you're
Speaker 1: getting help, while you're filling out the requisite insurance forms,
Speaker 1: you should probably check out um Monsters Inside Me on
Speaker 1: Animal Planet on Wednesdays at nine and Chuck and I
Speaker 1: don't talk just anything like this is a cool show. Yeah,
Speaker 1: cool and gross and just you know, if you're into
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, and I know you are, and
Speaker 1: again that it's like you're abusing our listeners. Um. That
Speaker 1: website for Monsters Inside Me has one of the great
Speaker 1: writers on staff here at how stuffworks dot com, Robert
Speaker 1: Lamb to work by him, Robert's one of my favorite.
Speaker 1: Rocked it out. So yeah, so there you go, three
Speaker 1: gross parasites plus the bot fly, and that means it's
Speaker 1: time for listener mail. So, Josh, I'm just gonna call
Speaker 1: this listener mail from two dudes someone took you to
Speaker 1: ask on Superman, did you read those we only get
Speaker 1: too well. We had a few people right in, but
Speaker 1: I'm going I'm gonna read Thomas. It's really ultimately, Chuck,
Speaker 1: I don't. It's gotten to the point where I'm not
Speaker 1: sure why I opened my mouth unless I'm definitively sure
Speaker 1: I know what I'm talking about, because I tend to
Speaker 1: say the exact opposite of what's true. I know, but
Speaker 1: you know that's Uh, that's part of the show. You know.
Speaker 1: People like finding little tidbits that we get wrong. It's
Speaker 1: becoming the crux of the show. No, no, no, these
Speaker 1: are things, These are little tidbits. This is this is
Speaker 1: not high science here, It's about Superman for godsakes. Um, Hi, guys,
Speaker 1: have been listening to your great podcast for a while
Speaker 1: and I love them. I've never seen an email, but
Speaker 1: I felt I needed to correct something in the Earthquake podcast.
Speaker 1: You said Superman lied to Lex Luthor's girlfriend. I believe
Speaker 1: was he's test marker. Uh not true, Superman did not lie.
Speaker 1: She made him a promise. She made him promise to
Speaker 1: save her mother before stopping the missile headed for California.
Speaker 1: He reluctantly agreed, and she removed his Kryptonite necklace and
Speaker 1: flew to Hackensack, New Jersey to say, miss test Marker's mom.
Speaker 1: After he pushed the missile to space, you turned around
Speaker 1: to see the second missile hit the San Andrea's fault.
Speaker 1: So sorry, Superman did not lie, and he even says
Speaker 1: uh in his own words, lois, I never lie. It
Speaker 1: comes from Thomas from Harvard, Illinois. He's a dogmatic and inflexible.
Speaker 1: He may have toxic plasms. I think he does. And
Speaker 1: this is from Anthony. Hey, Chuckers, listen to the new
Speaker 1: podcast on twinkies. He didn't address you. I thought that
Speaker 1: was weird. Does well because they think that you don't
Speaker 1: read the listener meal when in fact you too. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I get the listener emails too, you just don't respond
Speaker 1: and read them on the air. To clear that up,
Speaker 1: Josh treats everything. Yeah, so hey Chuckers and Josh, oh,
Speaker 1: he did say that, I just missed it. Uh. Bell
Speaker 1: is a whole lot of unnecessary twinkies reminded me of
Speaker 1: a time in the early nineties when I worked at
Speaker 1: The State News, Michigan States University's independent student newspaper, Start,
Speaker 1: we had a weekly junk food cookie day when we
Speaker 1: would all chip in a buck or two, multiplied by
Speaker 1: a staff of fixed fifty or sixty, and get heaps
Speaker 1: of sugary and salty snacks. While gorging ourselves on Twinkies.
Speaker 1: We had a debate about their shelf life. We took
Speaker 1: some gaffer tape one of your favorite things. I love that,
Speaker 1: and uh stuck at two pack up on the inside
Speaker 1: of a locker, intending to leave it for as long
Speaker 1: as possible. For over three years. We watched the twinkies
Speaker 1: disintegrate into heaps of powder, but never during our experiment
Speaker 1: during did we see any mold visible. We eventually threw
Speaker 1: away the package, and I have not even from sins
Speaker 1: how it comes from Anthony? Well, Anthony, Yeah, what year
Speaker 1: did he say? He didn't Well, he said early nineties,
Speaker 1: so he was he was, he's my age. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: grunging it out. You cried when krit Cobain died. Dues. Now, well,
Speaker 1: if like Chuck you cried when Kurt Cobain died, you
Speaker 1: can send us an email about that too. Stuff podcast
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. For more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. Want more House stuff Works, check out our
Speaker 1: blogs on the House of works dot com home page.
Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready, are you