And that's really hard to study in humans,” said Ben Hanelt, a biologist at the University of New Mexico who researches hairworms. “Toxoplasma is one that gets into your brain and changes your behavior. That parasite can cause brain damage in the babies of infected mothers. What they learn could shed light on parasites that impact human health, such as toxoplasma, which is transmitted in the feces of cats and lodges in the human brain. Scientists are slowly unraveling the details of the hairworm’s and cricket’s relationship. Pet owners sometimes find a hairworm swimming in their cat or dog's water dish. A young hairworm finds its way into a cricket or similar insect like a beetle or grasshopper, and once it has grown into an adult, it takes over its host’s brain to hitch a ride to the water. How a hairworm ends up in a puddle, or another water source such as a stream, hot tub or a pet’s water dish, is a complex story. The darker-colored hairworm, a male, curls around the lighter-colored females in an attempt to mate. But if you had happened on the puddle a few hours earlier, you might have witnessed a gruesome spectacle - the hairworm wriggling out of a cricket’s body, pushing its way out like the baby monster in the movie “Alien.” Three hairworms emerge from a cricket in the lab of biologist Ben Hanelt, at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. Good news: It isn’t interested in infecting or attacking humans. It’s a hairworm - also known as a horsehair worm or Gordian worm.
If you’re looking down at the puddles this winter or spring, you might spot a long, brown spaghetti-shaped creature whipping around madly in a figure 8. The rains in California bring out more than mushrooms and newts.
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