Sometimes I just look at the majestic tiger and think... yawn. I mean we all know what it is. Even when it inevitably goes extinct due to humanity's inescapable brutal ineptitude, children will remember it for generations to come.

But nobody will remember the Helminth parasitic worms in the endangered hooded grebe. Why? Because it's a new species! And nobody cares to learn about new stuff.

( ^{That and it's an} _{ɯɹoʍ ɔıʇısɐɹɐd ʎןƃn}^{but still})

So I figure, if nobody else is going to do it, I WILL BE THE ONE to dedicate one post per week or whatever to a variety of newly discovered organisms, from plants to worms and crabs and even homosteemians if such a thing ever evolves.

These posts will be shorter than my usual ones so I guess expect them around the weekends. Without further state of agitation and fuss:

𝓗𝓮𝓵𝓶𝓲𝓷𝓽𝓱𝓼

Helminth is just a kind of umbrella term for parasitic worms. Apparently, like the Journal of Nature, there is a somewhat more specific Journal of Helminthology. Not a subscriber myself for some crazy reason, but one published article tells of a critically endangered bird - the hooded grebe - being killed off by some unknown assailant. I wonder who.

It turns out, looking at the guts of a bunch of these dead birds found numerous new Helminth species including:

Trematoda

Trematoda are a class within the flatworm phylum which have an interesting reproductive cycle. If anybody out there actually reads all my stuff, you might actually remember I wrote about Parasitic Symbiosis, in particular one insane parasitic worm that infected a larger animal so it could sexually reproduce there, but required a snail or ant to infect first in order to be eaten by that animal in the first place.

Well, these guys take it one step further, as if that's even possible. Basically, a Trematoda ends up in a bird and lays a bunch of eggs. These eggs are pooped out onto the floor. Then, a snail needs to eat the eggs from the poop and hatch inside the snail and become a kind of larval sac, if you can imagine such a thing. This takes over the digestive tract of the snail and soon enough its head and even eye stalks. In the core part of the snail, the trematoda larvae replicate themselves as embryos which then mature, get eaten by a bird, and sexually reproduce within.

In short, this creature requires reproducing both sexually and asexually within its life cycle. shudder.

I'm sure it pleases everybody to know that two new species were discovered in the carcasses of these birds.

In case you were wondering, this is partially what one of them looks like:

𝓞𝓽𝓱𝓮𝓻 𝓭𝓲𝓼𝓬𝓸𝓿𝓮𝓻𝓲𝓮𝓼

Now there was quite a goldmine within these birds, including known species, species that couldn't be identified due to corrupted specimens and never-seen-before species, such as two of the digenean species, 'plagiorchid' and 'echinostomatid'.

Digenean is just another class of Trematode - the kind of sucker-y flat worms you typically might find in your digestive tract.

Of all these Helminths, this is actually the first time they've been observed parasitizing the hooded grebes, although this isn't to say they were conclusively to blame for the increased deaths of the bird. I reckon they're totally to blame though. Bloody parasites. Get a job already.

If you want to read much more information about these discoveries and see the full, gross pictures, check out and support the publication here (paywall)

So there you have it! Hope you like this series! If not, get over it ^__^

Image Sources:

Hooded Grebe