Re: Photos! Flukes or Tapeworms?

Look for the red eyes. Anything that has them is a rotifer, believe it or not. This is where the sh*t gets scary. Rotifer species are commonly known to eat a bit of DNA of their host. I have found small food items that were left out, sealed at room temp. When opened, a swarm of tiny bugs flew at me, much like my initial bout with the morg. I now believe these to be dried up rotifers that somehow attain a slight electrical charge (Think static electricity). The charged dust-speck-sized rotifers automatically "fly" toward the first thing that attracts them when the container is opened, and the rotifers have found their new host. When this happened I quickly caught one or two, and was surprised when I placed them under the microscope because they were, in fact, bugs that resembled the food item in the package! Then I realized one of two things must be happening: 1) while I was eating the item, I was shedding eggs or adult rotifers. The rotifers landed on the food item and began consuming it, as I ate. Time passed and when I retrieved the food item, the rotifers had basically absorbed enough of the food's DNA to resemble the food itself. Like I said, look for the red eyes. (Go look at some pics of rotifers so you can see what the eyes look like. Some of the items in the photos are not rotifers, but appear to be partly digested bell peppers, or worms of a different sort. Acanthocephalans are a worm that resembles a tapeworm, but is actually a rotifer. (Why does this matter? Because Rotifers are not susceptible to the same toxins as tapeworms, so they might not be affected by commonly used anthelmintic treatments.) But the tomato peel looking things are definitely rotifer (maybe acanthocephalans) lorica, (a shell with the shape of a triangle when flattened but looks like a squid when intact). I know this as I've seen zillions under the microscope. Alternate possibility, to explain the red eyes on food items: there are rotifers that are virtually transparent. I had a bunch on my lips, and have found two separate instances of one hiding on a plant leaf. They are attached via their mouths, but they are able to flatten and attach their body so that they are almost invisible..like little hitchikers. All you can see is the food item (or leaf)....basically imagine a bug that resembles a sheet of plastic wrap. I know this is hard to believe, but the red eyes are the proof positive that there's a rotifer involved. Hard to miss, once you know what to look for. And no, I do not know which species of rotifer even comes close to performing this magic trick...and I'm pretty sure most scientists do not know either....the little animals evolve VERY quickly under favorable conditions, with a generation time of appx 1 day (from the time a hatchling reaches sexual maturity to the time when that hatchling's offspring become reproductively mature. So they can have one generation per day...and each individual can put out thousands of offspring per day. That's a lot of opportunity to evolve quickly, which is probably why rotifers have been on this planet about 30 million years longer than we have. Tweet