Excerpts

1: Before Parasites Were Cool   It's not easy being a parasite. Sure, you get a free meal. But the life of a moocher still comes with plenty of stresses. You have to be able to adapt to the environment inside one, two, or, if you belong to a class of parasitic worms known as trematodes, three different hosts âe<-- âe       The answer to that question is what set Janice Moore on her life's path. In 1971, she was a senior at Rice University in Houston sitting in an introductory course on parasitology taught by a titan in the field, Clark Read, a lanky man with a commanding presence and an odd style of lecturing. He would puff away on a cigarette and seemingly free-associate, drawing students into his passion with fascinating details about different species of parasites that he presented with no discernible regard for logic or order. But he was a gifted storyteller who could evoke the lives of parasites so richly that you could almost picture what it was like to be one. He also knew how to spin a good mystery, which was how he ensnared Moore.        She couldn't imagine how to get an ant into a sheep's mouth in spite of Read's admonishment to "think like a trematode!" In fact, no one could, because the solution the parasite lit upon is absurdly improbable: It invades a region of the ant's brain that controls its locomotion and mouthparts. During the day, the infected insect behaves no differently than any other ant. But at night, it does not return to its colony; instead, it climbs to the top of a blade of grass and clamps onto it with its mandibles. There, it dangles in the air, waiting for a grazing sheep to come by and eat it. If that doesn't happen by the next morning, however, it returns to its colony.        Why doesn't it just stay attached to the leaf? asked Read, scanning the classroom as if he expected his students to discern the trematode's logic. Because otherwise, he told his rapt audience, the ant will fry to death in the noonday sun âe<-- âe       Read's tale stunned Moore. The trematode called to mind a comic-book arch villain who controls minds with a joystick, causing law-abiding citizens to rob banks and commit other crimes so the villain can take over the world. The report of the trematode's astonishing feat came from a German study done in the 1950s, but, thrilling Moore, Read had just learned of research being done on a different organism that was producing findings similar to the Germans'.        The protagonist of this tale was a thorny-headed worm âe<-- âe