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Mary's Monday Metazoan: Respect for the nematomorph

By pharyngula on July 14, 2014.

There's a new vampire series on FX by Guillermo Del Toro, The Strain. I haven't seen it -- I don't get that channel -- but I've read the book, which I found interesting for making vampires utterly disgusting, and also for stealing biological analogues for the infection (alas, I thought the story started very well but got tedious by the end). Apparently, the model for the vampire parasite was the horsehair worm, or nematomorpha. These are best known as parasites of orthopterans.

HHW_movie

I do have to object to one statement in that story: "Really, for my money, worms are among the worst animal groups out there." Worms are not a proper taxon. The Nematomorpha are a completely different phylum from the worms most people are familiar with, from nematodes, from polychaetes, from flatworms, etc. Worms are phyletically diverse! Not all of them turn you into a vampire.

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