Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures

IMAGINE A WORLD WHERE parasites control the minds of their hosts, sending them to their destruction.

IMAGINE A WORLD WHERE parasites are masters of chemical warfare and camouflage, able to cloak themselves with their hosts' own molecules.

IMAGINE A WORLD WHERE parasites steer the course of evolution, where the majority of species are parasites.

WELCOME TO EARTH.

For centuries, parasites have lived in nightmares, horror stories, and in the darkest shadows of science. Yet these creatures are among the world's most successful and sophisticated organisms. In Parasite Rex, Carl Zimmer deftly balances the scientific and the disgusting as he takes readers on a fantastic voyage. Traveling from the steamy jungles of Costa Rica to the fetid parasite haven of southern Sudan, Zimmer graphically brings to life how parasites can change DNA, rewire the brain, make men more distrustful and women more outgoing, and turn hosts into the living dead.

This thorough, gracefully written book brings parasites out into the open and uncovers what they can teach us about the most fundamental survival tactics in the universe.

For centuries, parasites have lived in nightmares, horror stories, and the darkest shadows of science. In Parasite Rex, Carl Zimmer takes readers on a fantastic voyage into the secret universe of these extraordinary life-forms—which are not only among the most highly evolved on Earth, but make up the majority of life’s diversity. Traveling from the steamy jungles of Costa Rica to the parasite-riddled war zone of southern Sudan, Zimmer introduces an array of amazing creatures that invade their hosts, prey on them from within, and control their behavior. His vivid descriptions bring to life parasites that can change DNA, rewire the brain, make men more distrustful and women more outgoing, and turn hosts into the living dead.

This comprehensive, gracefully written book brings parasites out into the open and uncovers what they can teach us all about the most fundamental survival tactics in the universe—the laws of Parasite Rex.

Prologue: A Vein Is a River First sightings of the inner world

1. Nature's Criminals

   How parasites came to be hated by just about everyone

2. Terra Incognita

   Swimming through the heart, fighting to the death

   inside a caterpillar, and other parasitic adventures

3. The Thirty Years' War

   How parasites provoke, manipulate, and get intimate

   with our immune system

4. A Precise Horror

   How parasites turn their hosts into castrated slaves,

   drink blood, and manage to change the balance of nature

5. The Great Step Inward

   Four billion years in the reign of Parasite Rex

6. Evolution from Within

   The peacock's tail, the origin of species, and other battles

   against the rules of evolution

7. The Two-Legged Host

   How Homo sapiens grew up with creatures inside

8. How to Live in a Parasitic World

   A sick planet, and how the most newly arrived parasite

   can be part of a cure

Glossary

Notes

Further Reading and Selected Bibliography

Acknowledgments

Index