The botfly uses a mosquito to transfer its offspring to a human host. The botfly maggots burrow deep inside the skin and feed on tissue and blood. They can get so large that you can literally feel them moving inside you!
To prove how quickly bedbugs can feed and multiply, Dr. Louis Sorkin tries an experiment... on his own arm! Watch bedbug nymphs engorge themselves with Dr. Sorkin's blood.
For bedbugs, food and sex are intrinsically linked; bedbugs cannot mate unless they've just had a blood meal. They also have a super-weird way of having sex: traumatic insemination.
Transmitted via uncooked shellfish, Lungworms invade your body and multiply overnight. If left unchecked they can devour your lungs and cause death within months!
Even dead, the larvae of parasitic roundworms can cause river blindness, or Onchocerciasis. These parasites are transmitted through the saliva of blackflies.
While swimming with a friend a man has a seizure and collapses. Shortly after, he finds out that a pork tapeworm has been slowly eating away at his brain!
When a young boy ingests dirt infected by the toxocara parasite he is in danger of losing his sight. Can doctors stop the onslaught of toxocariasis before it blinds him completely?
The threadworm (aka Strongyloides) lives in soil contaminated by infected feces. It's attracted by chemicals in our feet. Once inside its host, it can spread quickly throughout the body.
Cutaneous leishmaniasis manifests as painful sores that could, if infected, lead to death. It's caused by a flesh-eating parasite that may now be raging just outside of Dallas, Texas - a city of six million people.
Some of the most horrifying creatures on the planet are ones that are too small to see! Get a glimpse of these monsters in the new show "Monsters Inside Me", premiering Wednesday, July 1 at 9 p.m. only on Animal Planet!
The candiru is attracted by urea, a compound found in both fish gill waste products and human urine. When this fish attacks a man's urethra, the results are both gruesome and shocking. Viewer discretion advised.
From the Animal Planet series Monsters Inside Me, Aaron is suffering from painful, weeping sores on his head. His doctors insist they will heal on their own, but then the sores get larger and start to feel as if they are moving on his scalp.
On Animal Planet's "Fooled by Nature," oxpeckers appear to be the perfect neighbor in the African Savannah, cleaning anything from parasites to bodily wastes off of their terrestrial partners. However, their bloodlust makes for a sinister partne ...