One thing no human or animal would want invading their body is a parasite.
They’re not a disease but they spread the disease. And the worst part is that parasites work slowly because they need a living host to live, grow, and multiply. So they will keep their host human or animal alive to help them grow in number.
In 2019, a doctor named Kurosyamo from Japan shared a video of a hornet infected by a parasite.
The parasite is called Strepsiptera or Xenos Moutoni.
According to the North Carolina State’s Department of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the Strepsiptera is described as “free-living and highly mobile and infiltrates a host by actually entering the body.”
They are also called twisted-wing parasites and they can also live as internal parasites of bees, wasps, grasshoppers, leafhoppers, and other insects.
Can you believe there are actually 600 species of Strepsiptera?
And they invade young insects so they can live longer and multiply more numbers of their kind.
According to Professor Laura Beani’s research, instead of dying at the end of winter, these parasites extend the lives of hornets until springtime so they can look for young hornets they can use to multiply.
In this video, Kurosyamo held the hornet tightly between his fingers to avoid the hornet from escaping but not too tight to hurt it.
He already knew there was a parasite invading the hornet because he can glimpse a portion of the parasite’s head. Unfortunately for this hornet, there were two parasites clinging to its body.
Using a pair of tweezers, Kurosyamo pulled out the parasite by the head.
Your eyes will grow big when you see it being pulled by the tweezers but you’ll eventually realize it’s stretched when the entire parasite is pulled out.
And when it’s out, you won’t believe that parasite has been inside the hornet!
The pain the hornet must have been feeling.
“Unlike a lot of parasites out there, they have no interest in keeping their host alive for very long: They use them, abuse them, and explode out of their bodies, leaving gaping wounds that haven’t the slightest chance of healing,” Newsweek shared.
They’re forced to live longer than they should and their lives are ended in the most brutal way.
And the cycle doesn’t end.
“Paper wasps infected by the Strepsipteran parasite Xenos vesparum avoid all colony tasks, cluster on vegetation where parasite dispersal and mating occur, hibernate and infect the next generation of wasp larvae,” Professor Beani discussed in her study with other authors.
A lot of viewers wondered what would happen to the hornet now.
We’re not sure if the hornet had a prolonged life at this point but Kurosyamo mentioned in the comments that the hornet did survive the extraction and died eventually, like all other hornets.
A lot of the viewers are pretty relieved that the parasite is no longer invading the life of the hornet.
Kurosyamo then fed the parasite to a frog, who grabbed it immediately. Kurosyamo said the parasite will end up getting digested by the frog.
Want to see how Kurosyamo extracted the two parasites invading the hornet? Watch the video below.
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