Fish Flukesįor most fish, evading predatory birds is as simple as swimming just beyond the reach of a beak…so just how do so many fish end up in the gullets of pelicans and cranes? A huge portion of the average seabird’s diet consists not of normal, healthy fish, but fish under the influence of parasitic worms. Days later, she’ll upchuck a bunch of live larvae on the next flower you visit, the perfect place to infect even more insects.
Try to imagine having to stand around for hours while the face on your back flirts with strange, tiny men.
To find herself a male, the parasite will release her mating pheromones on the wind and force her insect host to wait patiently in an obvious and convenient location, such as the tip of a long leaf or twig. They exist solely to find the female and mate, which can be quite tricky, because the female Strepsipteran is a limbless, eyeless, bag-like parasite living inside the body of another insect, such as a fly, bee or even a preying mantis, with only her head sticking out of the host’s body to breathe. Possibly the world’s weirdest insects, male strepsipterans are gnat-sized flying critters with huge eyes, fine senses and lifespans of only a few hours.
