This Is What All Mantises Are Afraid of

[abhigyankishor]

bro if i was under constant threat of zombie worm, i'd be praying too

[MrCrazybananas]

Favorite part: "you are not you anymore, you are me" 😂😂 the graphics were on point.

[Starkweather]

As a child in the late 80's, I saw a cricket acting erratically in my gravel driveway. It was walking in circles like it was broken. I yelled for my brother to come see and when he got there I used a flat screwdriver to decapitate the cricket. Immediately a black string came out of the body and wrapped around the flat end of the screwdriver. It then began to coil around the metal tip in an effort to drag the rest of it's body from the cricket. We watched it extract it's 5 or 6 inch long body and then start to corkscrew across the gravel. I think my brother screamed and stomped on it. Our father didn't believe us when we told him what happened and for years even after the internet, I carried this strange experience in the back of my mind knowing nothing of a horse hair worm. I also wonder why I killed the cricket in the first place, I didn't make a habit of killing insects so I think maybe it was a mercy thing. Still, I realized that day that all is not what it seems in the world.

[EternitysSlave]

The first time I ever saw a praying mantis, a very long worm suddenly wiggled out of its body. The mantis was left as just a hollow shell. It forever haunted me. 😱 Now I know it was a hair worm.

[kenc]

Remember two minutes ago when we didn’t know what a hairworm was?

Those were the good ole days.

[TruthArrows]

I've seen these "horse hair worms" coming out of 2 cockroaches before - on a wet, rained on sidewalk at night. It was one of the most bizarre, fascinating and disgusting things I ever witnessed happening.
I had NO IDEA what I was seeing and it was in the 90s. I watched it happen with my cousin and it kept coming up as one of the most bizarre wtf moments ever.
It took me years to find out what it was by actually contacting an entomologist.

[davidnguyen]

Glad that it’s possible that the mantis has the potential to recover from such a violation of its body

[venomousgas]

Shrimp and other crustaceans can also be afflicted by the' horsehair worm.' Yes... the shrimp and crabs you eat.
I had a ghost shrimp in an aquarium that, after about a week or so after bringing it home from Petco, you could actually see the horsehair worm inside, as the ghost shrimp is nearly fully transparent. This is normally fatal for all those afflicted by it. I managed to isolate the shrimp in a 1 gallon bucket of aquarium water, and administer both Pimafix and Melafix, which caused the worm to exit the shrimp. This also is said to almost always be fatal, but somehow my shrimp survived.

[randyrhyne]

Mantises make cool pets. They will even interact with you. They like to eat crickets but they really like stink bugs. My girlfriend actually cried when the one I gave her died. I buried it in the yard. The mantis had laid eggs and they hatched, we had transferred them outside while they were still in their eggsac. They are really kinda cute when they’re so tiny.

[brandonhelcher]

Nature is simultaneously fascinating and disturbing.

[satadaldutta]

The connection between a parasite and the brain somehow reminded me of the line from Inception: "What is the most resilient parasite? An idea that is fully formed, fully understood. It's almost impossible to eradicate it".

[C.Fecteau-AU-MJ]

Brain parasites is a believable, maybe even plausible, zombie apocalypse scenario.

[danielreuben]

It's funny how some parasites have a better understanding of the brain, and how to manipulate it, than humans do. It's very humbling. For some reason, this video by you, and Steve, struck me as one of the creepiest videos you two have done.

[Mangaka-mlxo]

I had never heard of that mollusk with the ability to just drop off its whole body then regrow it as if nothing happened. Was quite interesting and something to learn!

[TheGoodContent]

I could have lived my entire life without EVER knowing about this. EVER!!!

[rolandoscar]

The Bushmen of South Africa have a children's story of a mantis who was very proud. He felt insignificant, because even the birds could fly higher than him. So to rectify the situation, he announced he would fly higher than the moon, and then all the animals would agree, he was the superior amongst them. All his buddies warned him this would go wrong, but he persisted. As the moon rose, he flew towards it, taking advantage of how low it was in the sky. He flew from tree to tree, but in time, he found the moon was getting higher and higher, and he was getting more exhausted, . In despair he noticed the moon's reflection in a pond. Triumphant, he dove into the pond, thinking he has done it. He had finally reached the moon, and now all the animals will worship him, but not only was he drowning, but the water on his eyes showed him a million moons. He cried for mercy, promising that he would keep his hands in prayer for all eternity, to remember his place.

[JunaidRiazAlHassan]

"Just because I am breathing, doesn't mean that I am living"
"Just because I am smiling, doesn't mean that I am happy"

[jamesbronz]

7:24 "You are not you are now ME.!"

That's cold blooded. 😂😂

[darkstatehk]

Can't believe I didn't learn this during my degree studies at Zefrank University.

[celiatawora]

This is very interesting to about these parasites, fascinating how they are transmitted to other animals n so on etc etc…