Nature's Freak Show

First of all, I don't know if I can provide a post that is worthy of that title, but I did have quite a mind-blowing experience today. For the past week, I have been working at the university's field station, Konnevesi, about an hour outside of Jyväskylä. It is not the most exciting place; basically all there is to do is work. Every once in a while, though, work can provide some surprises. Today, I was measuring some worms from an experiment done yesterday. This is usually very tedious, repetitive work. Definitely not interesting. However, I came across one male worm, coded 8.51, that was most definitely interesting...because it had no head. Ok, that might not shock y'all, but it sure knocked me out of my seat. I've looked at hundreds, maybe thousands, of these worms and never, ever seen anything like this. I'm studying a group of parasites called, in the vernacular, thorny-headed worms. As the name suggests, these animals have a proboscis that is studded with spikes. This "freak" worm didn't have a probscis; it just wasn't there. However, everything else was more or less normal. Highly abnormal individuals of any species are very rare because they probably die very young. Nature is too harsh for those with crippling developmental abnormalities. This worm, however, developed to what might be approximated as adolecence. Amazing. It wouldn't have made it to adulthood, though, because it wouldn't be able to attach to the host's intestine. I wonder how common such abnormalities are...1 in a 1000, 1 in 100,000. It's anyone's guess. No matter what the odds are, I doubt I'll ever see anything like it again.

Dan