Pub trivia: Parasites
Parasites
Its not just footballers WAGS that live off other people's resources, parasites have been doing it far more successfully for many a millennia. Here are some fruity facts for you to feed off.
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Fact
A whopping 75% of the world's creatures are parasites. And the average human body alone is known to host over a million parasites.
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Fact
A staggering 1.3 billion of the world's population suffer from hookworms, minute monsters that cause anaemia by sucking the blood from the intestinal lining.
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Fact
Pregnant women may have a special reason to resent parasites. Scientists believe that morning sickness is the body's way of protecting mother and child from parasitic infection.
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Fact
Smallpox was officially eradicated in 1980, but the micro parasites that cause this deadly disease still lie dormant in the ice of Greenland. Some scientists are even worried that global warming could actually free them from captivity.
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Fact
The good thing about Tapeworms is that they have the decency to stay hidden. Not so the Guinea Worm. Ingested via contaminated water, the larvae burrow into the intestines and eventually emerge, fully grown, from the skin.
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Fact
Some parasites are content to feed on bits of you over time. Others are less polite. The dreaded Ebola parasite will, for example, attack internal organs and eat into collagen, which is the connective tissue that holds the human body together.
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Fact
As prevalent in the West as anywhere else, Pinworms are staple-sized intestinal blighters that crawl out of your backside while you're asleep and deposit their eggs on your bedding.
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Fact
Malaria has been responsible for over half of all human deaths since the Stone Age, and currently kills a person every 30 seconds.
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Fact
Men are twice as likely as women to die of parasite-induced causes. This is thought to be because men tend to be larger and present a greater target.
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Fact
If you don't have at least one kind of worm residing in your guts, you're in the minority. After all, over three-quarters of the world's population keep them cosy. Though most of them are small, the biggest tapeworm ever recorded was over 60 feet long. Nice!
Dara O'Briain interview
Suavely suited and booted, Irish wit Dara O'Briain's tongue is as sharp as a jagged razor blade. We chatted to the big man (he's 6' 4'') about college, cartoons and off-the-cuffery.
