Parasites!

Parasites! Parasites! Parasites! More than four months ago, I visited the Natural History Museum's Darwin Center in London to see their collection of parasites.

Housed in a vast and seemingly endless series of carefully maintained cabinets, thousands of jars contained millions of preserved parasitic worms.

Here is a jar full of nothing but tapeworms. I couldn't record what species they were.

I particularly regret not being able to recall what these things were. Whatever they are, these chunky, thumb-sized maggot/worm things were some of the most awesome things I'd seen. Mrs Eileen Harris, who guided me on my tour, told me they were retrieved from the liver of a horse.

More parasitic goodness: This worm had been preserved as it was emerging from its host fish, Alien-style.

Here is a jar that's full of nothing but parasitic nematodes. They were all collected from people, whose guts they particularly like to infect.

Parasitic nematodes come in all sizes. The ones you saw above were pretty small. Here is a bunch of medium-sized ones, as long as chopsticks.

And finally, giant nematodes as long as someone's arm.

But even that is far away from the largest parasitic worms can get. The jar you see here contains one worm. That's right, one, single, frighteningly long worm. It was collected from a killer whale and measures more than forty meters long. That's longer than some whales are, you know? This giant worm is the crown jewel of the NHM Parasitology collection and was even exhibited to the Queen of England!

Aside from tapeworms and nematodes, the collection also had numerous flatworms (like the one shown above,) eyeball-clinging copepods and parasitic catfish that attach themselves to... to... well, perhaps you could watch my latest documentary on the subject to find out.

If you like this kind of stuff, I strongly recommend visiting the NHM. This, by the way, won't be the last you'll see of this place in my blog.