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…the mere presence in the dictionary of a word like “living” does not mean it necessarily has to refer to something definite in the real world. – Richard Dawkins. The Selfish Gene p.18

    Our language has but one word that aptly describes the presence of humans on earth—INFESTATION. In contemplating a thriving wilderness, we observe a rich variety of species engaged in elaborate systems of conflict and collaboration. Diversity, variation, and a formidable complexity of inter-species relations characterize such vibrant communities. But disease may strike. A plague of millions of identical locusts defoliate a landscape overnight, or a swarming brood of mites may encrust a green leaf, withering it at once. These horrific burgeoning monocultures provide the closest analogs in nature to the human presence on this planet. The rectilinear, asphaltic crust extruded by industrial civilization replaces flowering diversity with vacuous repetition. Monolithic and oppressive crystalline geometry overwhelms the delicate fractal foliations of natural forms. An empty parking lot at night, lit by buzzing lamps of metallic halides, summarizes our civilization—brutal, pointless and ugly.

    But while the necessity of violently obliterating this infestation could not be any more manifestly apparent to all beings possessed of some sliver of moral or æsthetic sense, a just and reasonable curiosity impels us to inquire into the origins of this horror. And here we shall find out and uncover realities so shocking, so threatening to all the assumptions upon which our activities and common aspirations are based, that we shall be tempted to recoil in abject horror, like the overcurious child who turns back some forest stone or log to reveal gelatinous scurrying forms, bristling with inscrutable appendages. Yet children we find often to be possessed of an admirable scientific detachment, permitting them to inquire into narrow by-ways of new thought cemented off to more learned investigators. And what is thought but the traversing of worn paths laid out by our ancestors in the deep structures of our language? And what is insight but the demolition of false semantic categories erected by the arbitrary structures of our language and culture?Language, the claw by means of which we seek to apprehend reality, is also the diaphanous baffle that forbids us from approaching it.

   Of course, it is quite possible to think of things for which your language has no words, or to entertain non-linguistic conceptions. These feats, however, are a lot less likely to be attempted, and far more difficult to manage than simply picking up the linguistic tools at hand. Alexandra David-Neel notes somewhere that the Tibetans have something like twelve distinct words for consciousness. It would be foolish to assert that such a fact had no bearing on the ease with which the speakers of Tibetan negotiated that tricky ground.

     The adequate and ample explication of the true significance of the human infestation will require that we undertake a re-evaluation of several basic linguistic categories. The fact that the manifestly abominable nature of our civilization is so completely unrecognized indicates that such a re-evaluation is long overdue.
  
     Intention in our language is ascribed only to beings agreed to be conscious. An angry student at a riot willfully hurls a rock at the police, whereas a stone in an eroding stream bank merely falls into the water below. The osmoregulation of molecules across the lipid membrane of cells is considered to occur as the result of blind and inalterable physical laws, but the organism composed of such cells is somehow commonly supposed to act by means of a separate and distinct will, unrelated to the parts of which it is composed. Innumerable, intractable, and irresolvable difficulties arise in defining the oppositions “conscious and unconscious” and “alive and dead.”
   
    A beached whale, incapable of movement or breath, is yet for some time admitted to be alive, while an ice crystal growing with speed out across a winter windowpane, reproducing its form in an intricate and symmetrical pattern, is thought dead. A lounging hominid is said to consciously select a television channel, but a termite colony is thought to produce an enormous and elaborately constructed edifice, complete with independently interjoining bridges and tunnels, while wholly unconscious. When intention is ascribed to dead things in out language, these statements are said to be merely figurative i.e.: your hair wants cutting, the computer virus is trying to spread, the floodwaters aggressively surged over the levee, the engine was reluctant to start, and so on. But in what respect these dead and figurative agents differ from our own brains, which are merely globules of fatty tissue, is unclear. If we ascribe intention to humans, how could it be denied to other primates, or indeed to other animals? The evolution of animals may be traced back to bacteria, which we know to have arisen from matter itself. A mature and responsible view of evolution can not just ignore the problems that immediately arise in vainly attempting to restrict consciousness and intention to a few of its outermost branches. Consciousness and intention are inherent to matter itself. It is extremely difficult for most people to accept this fairly obvious fact about our reality because their conditioned assumptions, their daily mundane experiences, and the very structures of their language itself, all mitigate against it. How much more difficult is it then to grasp a reality that entails the flagrant contradictions of one’s basic linguistic categories! The train of thought is reluctant to hurl itself from the rigidly established rails. An indiscriminate pile-up threatens. But we must recall that our linguistic categories, useful as they may be, have absolutely no real, necessary or essential relation to the actual reality in which we find ourselves. Crisp, inscrutable, vast and unfathomable, it notoriously defies language.
  
     As we would throw away a tool that could neither grip nor interact with any mechanism in our environments, let us at last jettison these words, intention and consciousness, which by remaining in our linguistic toolbox serve only to prevent us from grasping our situation. But how are we to explain the presence of these empty concepts in our linguistic arsenal? Are they merely artifacts of out own limited abilities, convenient shortcuts in navigating our daily reality? Or, instead, do they serve a more sinister purpose, blinding us to certain forces that are farming us out for their own purposes?
   
    How useful would it be to a jailer if his prisoners were prevented, not by iron bars and granite walls, but by the very structures of their own language and thought from ever contemplating escape! Perhaps it was more by eliminating in them the concept of liberty, than by the construction of corrals, sties, pens and leashes that animals were domesticated. The fact is, the entirety of civilization, a foul smut blighting the fair face of our planet, is essentially a vast factory farm being run by entities to which our language prevents us from ascribing intention. Chief among these are technology, hierarchical social systems, and cheap scams being run out of the lower astral (religions).
   
    But try suggesting to someone that their computer is using them, and you will be met with sputtering incredulity. While the established categories of our thought render such an idea outlandish and perverse, an objective analysis of reality strongly suggests that agency, and indeed intelligence, are inherent to all complex systems. How do these things arise in our own brains, if they are not native attributes of matter? It seems clear that will and intelligence, and indeed cunning of the vilest sort, all arise out of matter itself. This view of reality is an essentially magical one, applicable to belief systems termed animist. Such systems of thought remain uninfected with false distinctions between alive and dead. Systems of thought labeling themselves scientific or rational, are actually found to be wallowing in the rankest superstition, unwilling to face the fact that consciousness and will exist throughout matter. Cavernous voids of unexamined self-contradiction lie below worldviews restricting agency to humans. The investigator heedlessly torturing rodents in a lab, despite his ostensible “scientific” detachment, is actually relying on the most phantastical and baseless superstition to disguise the fact that his unwilling laboratory assistants are as conscious as himself. The human intellect in its pristine and undomesticated state easily recognized this pansophistical reality. Yet at some point, something began to cloud over these hitherto obvious facts. At what point? At the beginning of civilization, when the process of domestication began. As we shall see, when we domesticated plants and animals, something domesticated us.


    In medieval times, a view of reality once prevailed, now characterized as “the great chain of being.” This led upwards from mineral to vegetable, to human, angelic and divine strata of existence. Alchemical engravings depicted these realms as radiating out from a central core, the crude ball of earth itself. In classical times, that great goddess Artemis of Ephesus, was depicted as a glorious female being, ringed with breasts, arising out of successive levels of minerals, vegetables and animals. Here let us adopt that old system of thought, as we investigate the feats of intelligence and will in the complex interactions of matter. From base Physics we shall progress to Biology, that vast and scintillating field of lights upon which we can most easily observe the interactions of complex organizations of matter, commonly termed life. Nor shall we draw a thick and arbitrary line between the biological and anthropological realms, or between the dæmonic and the divine.
  
     But this hierarchical chain of being serves also to disguise and obscure from us a great truth, namely, that simpler, blinder, less aware and even atavistic forms often dominate and control more complex, mobile and outwardly evolved forms. A population of magnificent lions, striding across the Serengeti, may be rigidly regulated by their intestinal parasites. Submicroscopic viruses are often more responsible for population dynamics than spectacular predators.
   
    In attempting to understand the human infestation on earth, we must first understand perhaps the single and central ruling dynamic of all biological systems—Parasitism. Parasites are simply species that live on or in another organism, and harm it. No parasitology text fails to inform its readers, in its first paragraph, that the majority, or even the vast majority of species are parasitic. In tracing the parasitic lifestyle up through the chain of being, we will everywhere observe how parasites control and farm out their host’s populations. An objective view of human civilization will reveal us to be essentially a farmed species. What are some of the characteristics of farmed animals? First: large, crowded populations of redundant individuals, entailing the concentration of waste products, with its attendant diseases. Second: loss of wild attributes, such as self-reliance, endurance, and especially awareness. Third: confinement into sties, cubicles, corrals or enclosures. Fascinating morphological curiosities such as obesity and the persistence of malformed individuals into adulthood are also highly characteristic of domesticated animals. But while it is clear who domesticated hogs or cattle, who domesticated humans?
   
    When my housemate’s rabbits, raised for meat, escape from their cage, they don’t wander far, but sadly seek only to re-enter their befouled enclosure, encrusted with rotten shit, where the extruded pellets to which they are accustomed are provided. Such is domestication—abject, craven enslavement to bloodthirsty beings, a castration of possibility, a sick lust for whatever foul pit most overflows with our own diseased shit. While caged rabbits can have little conception of their masters beyond a beneficial source of food and treats, just so do humans look upon their parasitic overlords. Engorged hominids squeeze out of their transport pods and mob the entrances of malls, lusting after the latest electronics. Placed in the wild, they require rescue.
  
    But let me restrain for a moment these delightful spasms of vitriolic hyperbole. Let us take the deep view, the view corresponding to the immense layered deposits of geological time. Let us seek to understand the human infestation by tracing its parasitical roots back down the great chain of being, back through animals to bacteria, to viruses and at last to the molecular codons of life itself.

Biology

    All species are complex arrangements of matter whose forms and functions are controlled by their DNA, the spiral molecule that codes for their constituent proteins. The DNA of a typical species contains tens of thousands of base pairs. But if we are to look closely the genetic code of any organism, a strange and striking fact will become apparent: the vast majority of this DNA does not code for any protein, and indeed has nothing to do with the expressed form and function of the individual. This non-coding or “junk” DNA can take up almost the entirety of a species genetic code. Something like 98% of human DNA is non-coding. Junk DNA just gets pointlessly carried along from generation to generation. Occasionally, the repetition of these vast sequences of useless DNA goes awry and interferes with the coding DNA, producing mutations. Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the DNA molecule itself, was the first to suggest that these vast stretches of non-coding DNA were essentially parasitic. This opinion has since gained wider acceptance. So, just as the majority of organisms are parasitic, so too is the majority of genetic code. The very book of life itself largely consists of meaninglessly garbled and empty symbols bearing no relation to the organism that carries them. These empty codons reproduce solely for the sake of reproduction itself.
   
    Before going on, let’s here address a crucial point. You might very well ask why any organism reproduces but for the sake of reproduction itself. Is there any other purpose for the reproduction of organisms besides merely the blind and empty struggle of genes to replicate? Perhaps, in the strictest sense, there is not. Yet I see a difference between parasitic and independent organisms in what their life-process seems to be striving towards. Parasitic beings are exclusively concerned with reproducing themselves in their hosts, while independent beings seem to be striving towards something else, something that William Burroughs in a memorable essay termed “my own business”. This ulterior goal seems to pertain to the unfoldment of latent potentials, the development of new parts, and the extension of faculties of awareness. Vision, freedom, and a sort of aspiration towards the infinite differentiate independent from parasitic organisms. Those latter tend to recede into blindness, atavism, loss of parts and dwarfism. Their effect in populations is one of control, coercion and prevention, hindrance and impediment.
  
     It is of course most unfashionable and politically incorrect to speak in such terms. An egalitarian view of species is now favored. I am fully aware of, and indeed overawed by the astounding intricacy and complexity of many parasite morphologies and life cycles, from the thousands of tapeworm attachment structures, to the fearsome strategies of the parasitic wasps, the ghastly Ichneumonidæ. Yet while it would clearly be unfair to term these triumphs of parasitic evolution as somehow less “highly developed” than their hosts structures and strategies, and setting aside any moralistic opprobrium that may attach in our culture to a derivative and parasitic existence, I think it is still clear that independent beings, in their struggle for existence, are perusing something beyond mere replication – namely, the outward and aspirational unfoldment of latent possibilities of autonomous development and awareness, i.e.: “their own business.”
   
    The DNA that does actually code for proteins builds some kind of external structure or body in order to facilitate its own reproduction. This structure may take the form of a fungus, an oak, a squid or you. The majority of DNA, derisively termed “junk,” is merely along for the ride. But, to take a parasitical view of the matter, could we not view the coding DNA as a host inhabited, and to some extent perhaps designed by its vaster parasite, the junk DNA? Peering into these deep foundations of the phenomenon of life, we see that exploitation and parasitic relations are the most basic blocks there, upon which the vast superstructure of biology is erected. Parasitism is the cryptic subtext in the book of life, which can be easily overlooked by a superficial reader whose eye is drawn merely to the most flamboyant and florid passages. The profounder critic reads another book in the same covers, one layered with interfolded latencies of control and exploitation.
   
    Surely no joy could be greater than to slay your enemy, crack open his skull, and greedily devour the hot, limpid mush of his brains. But even this pure and simple source of innocent delight is fraught with a parasitical peril, and one acting in the sub-biological or molecular realms. Prions are misfolded molecules which, once they enter the brain, somehow manage to replicate themselves, eventually reducing that marvelous organ to a sagging terrain of cratered rot. Mad cow disease, Kreutzfeld–Jacob disease, and Alzheimer’s disease are all thought to be caused by prions. So is kuru, the inevitably fatal malady of progressive brain rot, observed in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, where ritual cannibalism was a popular practice. Although the exact mechanics of prion action are far from being understood, these pathogens indicate that the phenomenon of parasitism extends down to the molecular realm.
   
    The foul rupturing of crustulous pustules, the atrophy of limbs into frail sticks, the spasmodic, convulsive ejaculation of mucosal globules, threaded with blood, and the fevered gibbering of the terminally diseased – all these familiar domestic occurrences are provided for us by that “sub-microscopic, obligate, intercellular parasite” the virus. Like certain other parasites we shall investigate later, viruses enjoy the distinction of being powerful entities not generally classified as being alive. They do not grow, but are manufactured ready-made by their host cells. If ground up into bits, they will re-assemble into the complete virus. In humans they cause diseases like smallpox, polio, herpes, rabies, measles, mumps, AIDS, SARS, Ebola, and the common cold. The author of Principles of Molecular Virology proudly declaims “There is more biological diversity within viruses that in all the rest of the bacterial, plant and animal kingdoms put together. This is the result of the success of viruses in parasitizing all known groups of organisms …”
   
    A virus is a small strip of DNA encased in a protein coat, to which some sort of attachment or injection structure is frequently added. When the viral DNA enters a host cell, the cell stops going about its own business, and starts manufacturing viruses. Often the cell is destroyed when the new viruses are released. This cell death leads to the symptoms of disease in the host organism. Obviously, it cannot be in the interest of the virus to kill or totally eradicate its host. Here we come to the central goal for all parasites: achieving optimal virulence. A parasite with suboptimal virulence is unable to fully exploit its host population, while excessive virulence will eliminate the host entirely. Newly emerged viral diseases in humans, like Ebola hemorrhagic fever, are often excessively virulent. They kill their hosts before the virus has been allowed to spread much. In contrast, more established viruses, like the flu virus, generally allow plenty of time for their hosts to go about spraying viruses everywhere. The practical result of a parasite’s struggle to attain optimal virulence is that the parasite is managing, controlling, and in fact farming out its host population. This farming effect is one of the basic actions of parasites. Farming is what parasites do. They seek to manage their hosts with maximal economy. Their account books and ledgers are the statistical permutations of natural selection.
   
    Consider a human farmer of rabbits. Although the entire point of the operation is to kill and eat the rabbits, he spends far more time caring for them than he does killing them. Still, were he to lavish too much care on them, perhaps by feeding them special delicacies, caressing them and reading them bedtime stories, he would be easily undersold by his rabbit farming neighbors. Were he to devote too little time to the rabbits, they would either starve from neglect, or else be buried in a conglobulated accumulation of their own pelleted shit.
   
    In seeking a relationship of optimal virulence with its host, a parasite is doing something similar to our rabbit farmer. Both their livelihoods depend on the successful management of their host populations. Since a rabbit farmer does not live inside his rabbits, he is not termed a parasite, but he is still living a characteristically parasitic existence. He might keep the rabbits confined, but he himself cannot stray too far, or linger too long, from the cages he has set up. In domesticating animals, he domesticates himself.
   
    It is popularly imagined that viruses are the simplest pathogen, but incredibly, even these simple entities can themselves be infected by still smaller agents. These sub-viral parasites, termed virusoids, are small RNA molecules that depend entirely on the presence of another virus for replication. Their replication interferes with the function of their host viruses, making them true parasites. Certain viral diseases of plants are particularly vulnerable to virusoids, whose effects are visible in the types of leaf damage caused. These minute agents are the first example we encounter of hyperparasitism, or the parasitization of parasites themselves. Hyperparasites indicate the fearsome complexity of biological relations, in which a sort of fractal parasitism can often be perceived. Infinitely unfolding and symmetrical patterns of parasitism spring to life wherever we look. From these most minute sub-elements of the microcosm, up to the vast planetary agencies that dominate the earth, a single script is being played out. Replication of forms through the exploitation of others is its keynote, and domination, domestication and control are its themes. Everywhere a gravitational lapse towards parasitism is evident. While all known parasitic species presumably evolved from free forms, there are no known examples of a parasite that evolved into a free-living form.
   
    In passing from the viral to the bacterial realms, new aspects of the farming and domesticating behavior of organisms become apparent. Most parasitology texts are careful to make the distinction between parasitic and mutualistic organisms. While both live within other organisms, parasites harm (to a carefully modulated degree), and mutualists help. Frequently cited examples of mutualistic life-forms are the symbiotic algæ within corals or lichens, or the bacteria within the digestive tracts of vertebrates that permit digestion to occur. The more candid accounts, however, admit that “the distinction between parasites and mutualists can become a headache.” It can be difficult to determine who is exploiting whom. Some symbionts exploit their hosts, some hosts their symbionts.
   
    Around deep-sea sulfur vents, far below the level where sunlight can penetrate, live certain bivalve mollusks. In the absence of photosynthetic energy from plants, these organisms feed on certain chemosynthetic bacteria that live within their own flesh. While the mollusks provide a protected environment in which the bacteria can live, they also kill the bacteria in order to feed upon them. This is a very clear example of parasitic farming relations, in which two species have become enslaved to each other. One author mentions a laboratory experiment in which “a strain of (free-living) Amœba proteus became infected with a parasitic bacteria, and over a period of several years, the Amœbas became unable to survive without that bacteria.” I met one unfortunate individual who had lost 80 pounds while traveling in India, due to the massive chronic diarrhea that he acquired there. He mentioned endless days spent lying befouled on the floor of the bathroom of a cheap hotel, uncontrollably spewing fœtid waste from all orifices. But when passing amateur nurses gave him an antibiotic that killed off all his intestinal bacteria, he assured me his condition then became even worse. I myself escaped from that abominably foul nation, and from death itself, only with the aid of many bed-ridden days of continual intravenous antibiotics. These experiences left me with a renewed appreciation of our mutualistic intestinal species.
   
    With the sole exception of the noble echinoderms, all animal phyla have evolved parasitic forms. Some, such as the coelenterates have only one parasitic species, while others, such as the Platyhelminths or flatworms, are mostly parasitic. The worm phyla provide an excellent starting point for an investigation of parasitic animals. The staggering fecundity of these parasites would certainly merit reward from the Catholic or Mormon churches, could these animals only be converted to those religions. The Ascaris species of roundworm can lay 2,000,000 eggs per day, and their ovaries threaten to rupture with 27 million developing eggs. These production statistics, which would have aroused paroxysms of delight in Stalin or Mao, have resulted in Ascaris infecting 1.4 billion humans. Yet Hymenolepis diminuta, a tapeworm parasite of rats, can unleash up to 250,000 eggs each day, and 100,000,000 per year.
  
     Let us linger here a while on the subject of tapeworms. These charming animals, which often prove a source of amusement or diversion as they crawl out the anus, mouth, or even the nostrils of our acquaintances, reside in the intestines of vertebrates. Here they attain to prodigious lengths. Tapeworms (Cestodes) consist of a head or scolex, beyond which is a neck containing the stem cells that generate the proglottids or reproductive segments. The scolex, often fearsomely armed with spines, thorns and suckers, serves merely to attach the tapeworm to the intestinal wall. There is no digestive or excretory apparatus at all. Nutrition is obtained through absorption alone. The proglottids are hermaphroditic, and can fertilize each other. “Immediately behind the neck are the young proglottids, followed by mature, then gravid proglottids. As new proglottids are formed in the neck, the previous ones move posteriorly in a continuous process” Eventually the oldest proglottids rupture, releasing eggs that are passed out with shit. Entire proglottids observed in human craps were considered by ancient and medieval philosophers to resemble melon seeds. Only with the dawn of experimental science were these recognized as pertaining to tapeworms.
   
    That most august journal of the heroic days of science, the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, documents progress on the cestodological front. Edward Tyson, in the 1683 edition of that publication, corrected in his doubtlessly enthralled readers, the view hitherto falsely held, that the wide end of tapeworms was the head. He notes “a specimen of T. sagina, which he obtained from a young man who ‘dragged it from himself, not without some frightful apprehensions, that guts, and all, were coming out’; he plainly perceived it alive, and to move: and having put it into a wide mouthed glass it often endeavored by raising its body to get out.” Like many parasites, tapeworms often require two hosts in their life cycles. Once a tapeworm egg is eaten, it hatches and migrates in the body of its first host before forming a podlike cyst. Only when the cyst-filled meat is eaten can an adult tapeworm form in the secondary host.
   
    Humans may obtain their own tapeworms by eating the cyst-filled flesh of hogs or cattle. Pigs, notoriously coprophagic, provide an ideal way for people to get tapeworms. When people ingest the tapeworm eggs, or proglottids, the cysts form in human meat. The larval tapeworms exhibit a decided preference for encysting in the brain. Perhaps the resultant neurological damage increases the chances of the human being eaten by a predator. At any rate, these tapeworm cysts in the brain are the leading cause of epilepsy in humans worldwide.
   
    How might a person chance to ingest a proglottid? Aside from those who mitigate the tedium of their hours with protracted debaucherous bouts of anilingus and coprophagia, ample opportunity for proglottid ingestion abound. This possibility becomes understandable once one grasps the enormous magnitude of proglottid production of which the cestodes are capable. They have evolved the capability to continually deluge their environments with eggs. While amazing reproductive capabilities are characteristic of most parasites, the tapeworm is a paradigm of fecundity, even in this overflowing field. Hexagonoporus physeteris, a tapeworm parasite of sperm whales, can attain to lengths of over 30 meters (100 feet), and have over 45,000 proglottids. Each proglottid may have 4–14 complete sets of genitalia. With up to 630,000 independently functioning sets of genitalia, the Hexogonoprus physeteris perhaps ranks as the sexiest animal on the planet. Nevertheless, cryptopaleontologists are left to speculate on the glorious lengths that may once have been attained by tapeworms in the intestines of the largest dinosaurs. Parasites over a kilometer long, fully capable of extruding billions of eggs per day, remain as a tantalizing possibility. But perhaps far greater parasites exist today, attached to human populations by means of a semantic scolex that prevents us from recognizing autonomous agency in the institutions that dominate our lives. Spreading over thousands of kilometers, infecting billions of organisms at once, and resistant not only to eradication, but to recognition, these parasites are the true factory farmers engineering the human infestation now befouling our planet.
   
    Organisms pursuing a parasitic lifestyle exhibit characteristic morphological changes. In mollusks, these may include loss of shell, reduction or disappearance of sense organs, disappearance of anus, and then of the entire the digestive tract. They become progressively more wormlike in shape. Absorption replaces digestion. Yet as the bodies of these animals seem to be undergoing atavistic degeneration, their lifestyles frequently sprout new and phantastic innovations. The life of a predator (catch food and eat it) seems atrophied and dull compared to the brilliant and profoundly cunning strategies parasites often employ to reach new hosts.
   
    The Dicrocoelium trematode worm, whose secondary intermediate host is an ant, penetrates into that animal’s brain and somehow makes it crawl up to the top of a blade of grass and latch on. Here it is far more likely to be ingested by a sheep, the main host. If no sheep comes by, the parasite retreats and lets the ant go about its business for a day, before trying the same trick the following night. Another trematode worm, Leucochloridium, resembles a banded caterpillar. It enters its intermediate host, a snail, and worms its way up into the poor animal’s tentacles, where it proceeds to pulsate and gyrate in a colorful display designed to attract a hungry bird, its main host. In a human example, the Guinea worm Dracunculus, causes an extremely painful burning ulcer to erupt on its host’s limb. Seeking relief, the infected person goes to the nearest body of water to cool the inflammation. Upon immersion, the freshly hatched juveniles are released into the water, where they find their intermediate host, a copepod.
   
    The annals of parasitology burgeon with similar accounts, each exemplifying the profound and villainous cunning of these superficially degenerated animals. Again and again, we find small unforbidding forms, lacking even basic sense organs, manipulating their host’s behavior and engineering their host’s populations for their own purposes of endless reproduction. Accustomed to expect that anything damaging will be more powerful than we are, we fail to perceive the forces that engineer our own populations and dictate the details of our behavior. We seldom expect to encounter cleverness in non-human, let alone non-animal agents. Yet in truth, intelligence, will and downright villainous cunning are inherent to all systems and their interactions. But before rushing on to these human concerns, we must pay at least a brief call to the arthropods, where gruesome and fascinating parasitological narratives await.
   
    At the family reunion of life forms, the arthropods far outnumber all other classes. In grotesque feats of ingestion and unfathomable depths of degeneracy these organism likewise excel. The female cattle tick, Boophilus microplus, can drink 150 times its own weight in blood. Try as they might, even the most ardent and dedicated consumers can seldom purchase, let alone ingest such quantities of the extruded pellets upon which they feed. The Pentastomida, or “toungeworms,” are an almost wholly inscrutable class of parasites that infest the lungs of reptiles. It is unclear whether they are indeed worms, or else some form of absolutely degenerated arthropod, having lived sequestered in reptilian lungs since the Triassic era. The latest speculation affirms that they are “probably a very degenerate crustacean.” One hundred million years of parasitism have reduced these animals to almost total estrangement from all other forms of life. The intricate and fearsome arrays of vicious thorns with which they are adorned have, however, endeared them to several of the more morbidly inclined parasitologists of note.
  
     Several arthropods also provide excellent examples of a parasite’s ability to modify the behavior of its host. The Rizocephela, a crustacean parasite of crustaceans, is one such animal. After a “normal” youth, spent in a state in which it resemble a free-roving barnacle larva, the parasite becomes “a living hypodermic syringe” that seeks out a crab, its host. The Rizocephala injects itself into the crab, where it becomes an “undifferentiated cell mass” It lacks a gut and appendages (“not even reduced ones”) but “gets its nutrients by means of root-like processes ramifying through the tissue of the crab host.” Strange things then begin to happen to the crab, most notably “parasitic castration.” “Various degrees of feminization appear in subsequent instars.” In females, the result is hyperfeminization.

    The mechanism of host castration has yet to be explained … however, the combined results of parasite structure and castration lead to an astonishing diversion of host behavior to promote parasite survival. The externa of the parasite is in the same position and is the same size as the egg mass of the crab, as it would be carried on the crab’s abdomen. Reacting as if the parasite were its own egg mass, the crab protects, grooms and ventilates the parasite. If the grooming legs of the host are artificially removed, the externa of the parasite soon becomes fouled and necrotic. At the time the parasite begins to release its larvæ, the crab performs spawning behavior. The parasites apparently release pheromones that elicit larval release behavior in the host crabs. And a final note: because they are castrated and feminized, the male crabs also display appropriate maternal behavior! The host departs from its normal hiding place, stands high on its legs, and waves its abdomen back and forth. The naupuli (the earliest larval stage) of the parasite are released into the current created by the host.
   
The parasitic isopod Ancyroniscus bonnieri also feminizes its host.


    Eyeless, wingless and flattened, armed with clinging claws and feeding on blood, mucus and sloughed skin, able to attach their eggs to hair or feathers with cement, lice have been a constant companion throughout human evolution. The world record for lice removed from one person is over one thousand. “Years of infestation lead to a darkened, thickened skin, a condition called vagabond’s disease. In untreated cases of head lice, the hair becomes matted together from exudate, a fungus grows, and the mass develops a fetid odor. This condition is known as Plica Polonica. Large numbers of lice are found under the mat of hair.” Obscure museums preserve enormous specimens. How, you might ask, could anyone with a six foot long enfungated monodread fail to instantaneously ameliorate their situation by the simple expedient of cutting it off? Superstition, we are told, was responsible for the preservation of these moldy paradises for parasites. Similarly, Saint Simeon Stylites, who spent 37 years living atop a pillar in the 5th century AD, was widely lauded at the time for the solicitous and tender care with which he deliberately re-attached to himself the lice that fell from his body. Today on a sunny summer’s day, we may seen local hominids diligently polishing their multiton transport pods, or hulking bloblike on couches, absorbing programming, or even more likely, toiling in cubicles under grim synthetic lighting. Lacking any distinct business of their own, they do the business of their parasites.
  
     But fleas, lice and ticks, merely external parasites, hold not half the horror of the unspeakably repellant BOTFLY, a large pulsating larva, ringed with sharp spines, that grows to grotesque magnitudes while inextricably ensconced deep in human flesh. Amateur attempts at botfly extraction generally fail, thwarted by the animal’s multiple rings of spines. Panicked gringos at posh Costa Rican resorts reach in vain for the forceps when the larval nature of the pulsating saclike pustulosities in their pampered flesh becomes apparent. The mangled remains of the mutilated grub rapidly putrify, opening into a gangrenous, festering lesion, rank with oozing purulent matter. The insufferable stench of flagrant rot precedes them as they come down to breakfast, and irrepressible geysers of vomit mar the polished floors, as executives and tycoons are treated to a gratuitous display of hyperparasitsm.
  
     Yet even these abominably parasitized tourists get off easy, compared to children who get botflies in their heads. Since the plates of their young skulls have yet to grow together, the botflies are able to penetrate into the brain, where they wax fat on the vehicle of thought itself. Death follows for the fortunate, debility for those less so.
   
    In this survey of the phenomena of parasitism from the molecular to the animal realms, several significant trends have become apparent. First, we commonly find simpler, blinder, more atavistic and less aware forms controlling and farming out more complex and aware ones. Second, we observe the amazing abilities of parasites to modify the behavior of their hosts for their own purposes. Not content merely to passively inhabit their host’s tissues, parasites can control all aspects of their host’s behavior, hijacking the entire organism. Third, we notice the care with which an effective parasite must manage its host population. Excessive or insufficient virulence are alike detrimental to parasites. A parasite that has attained optimal virulence is analogous to a farmer who wisely manages the plants and animals on his farm. Parasites farm their hosts. Finally, we note that the general trend in parasite evolution is toward greater and more effective attachment. While this may be achieved by all manner of hooks, thorns, spines, suckers, or by deep burial within the host’s most vital tissues, these merely external apparatus are less effective than the ruses and deceits by which a parasite makes itself invisible to its host’s often formidable immune system. This defense having been circumvented, the parasite is able not merely to skim off the host’s excess, but to use every aspect of the host’s body and behavior for its own purposes. The host then becomes essentially an extension of the parasite.
   
    As we pass from the mineral, vegetable, and animal, to the human, dæmonic and divine parasites, let us keep these four dynamics in mind. We shall see them like luminous worms, writhing and glowing, extending to obscene lengths as they emanate from the foundations to the most exalted pinnacle of that vast structure, the interaction of complex systems, Life.

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