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Worm that jumps from rats to slugs to human brains has invaded Southeast US (arstechnica.com)

submitted 1 year ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to c/biodiversity@mander.xyz

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[-] autotldr 12 points 1 year ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

The infected animals were spread throughout the study's time frame, all in different months, with one in 2019, three in 2021, and three in 2022, indicating sustained transmission.

The finding is concerning given the calamitous infection the rat lungworm, aka Angiostrongylus cantonensis, can cause in humans.

This can happen if the gastropods eat the rat poop or if the ravenous larvae just bore into their soft bodies.

Infected snails and slugs can also be eaten by other animals first, like frogs, prawns, shrimp, or freshwater crabs.

When a rat lungworm finds itself in a human, it does what it usually does in rats—it heads to the central nervous system and brain.

This can start with nonspecific symptoms like headache, light sensitivity, and insomnia and develop into neck stiffness and pain, tingling or burning of the skin, double vision, bowel or bladder difficulties, and seizures.

The original article contains 497 words, the summary contains 144 words. Saved 71%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[-] HardTea@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Good Bot

this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2023

111 points (98.3% liked)

Biodiversity

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Biodiversity is a term used to describe the enormous variety of life on Earth. It can be used more specifically to refer to all of the species in one region or ecosystem. Biodiversity refers to every living thing, including plants, bacteria, animals, and humans. Scientists have estimated that there are around 8.7 million species of plants and animals in existence. However, only around 1.2 million species have been identified and described so far, most of which are insects. This means that millions of other organisms remain a complete mystery.

Over generations, all of the species that are currently alive today have evolved unique traits that make them distinct from other species. These differences are what scientists use to tell one species from another. Organisms that have evolved to be so different from one another that they can no longer reproduce with each other are considered different species. All organisms that can reproduce with each other fall into one species. Read more...

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