Hawaii warns tourists of parasitic worm that can burrow into human brains

the wandering worm primarily takes up residence in rats’ lungs, where female worms lay their eggs. Young worms leave the nest early to find their own windy homes, though. Larvae get coughed up into rats’ throats then swallowed. The hosting rat eventually poops out the young parasites, which then get gobbled up by feces-feasting snails and slugs (intermediate hosts). When other rodents come along and eat those infected mollusks, the prepubescent parasites migrate to the rats’ brains to mature before settling into the lungs and reproducing. The cycle then starts again

  1. rat lung
  2. rat throat
  3. rat stomach
  4. rat poop
  5. slugs
  6. rat brains
  7. rat lung
  8. GOTO 1

It never ceases to amaze me, the life cycle of a parasite. So that's 7 steps with wildly varying probabilities of success. That it actually works is mind blowing.

I want to highlight that the symptoms section was subtitled “All in your head”.

@Katzenjammer, I have to think it's a combination of signaling, timing and specific available nutrients (mammals and mollusks only) and biomass.

It's even weirder, because the lungs cough up, eat, swallow, poop the eggs. Snails eat rat poop, and then hatch the eggs and poop larva in their slime. Rats eat the snails and the larva infest and follow the nerves up the spine. Once sexual maturity is reach they go to the lungs to spawn and die. The distance is too far in humans, so they actually only have enough time as sexually mature adults to cross the distance of a rat's body. When they die inside a human, they've spent too much time and traveled the distance of longer than more than one rat's body.

Who else read the title "Huawei", and wondered why they'd warn about such thing?

I remember watching one of those emergency room shows years back. Three guys go in for swelling in the brain, due to the rat worm. Their conditions got worse, until they administered immunosuppressants, as the doctors assumed that their immune system was reacting to the dead worms. Apparently when they die in a hosts brain, they release antigens. Toxic I think.

It seems like this could be prevented by cooking fruits and vegetables.

I always knew salads weren't really healthy!

On a serious note, I may actually avoid salads and try to find a way to cook fruit quickly instead of eating it raw.