Some leeches are known to enter any orifice they can find, including the eyes, vagina, urethra, or rectum. Rectum InvadersĪ roach in the nose is not as bad as it gets. The point is, no one really knows, but you’re usually better off with the insect staying alive until you can get to an emergency room for professional extraction, for unpleasant reasons you’ll read soon. How long? “Maybe one of your readers will volunteer to stuff a roach up their nose and see,” quips entomologist Gwen Pearson, insect education and outreach coordinator at Purdue University. The nasal cavity and sinuses are larger than you might think, extending between the eyes and into the cheekbones, and since these are air-filled spaces, an insect can survive in there for a while. Given its small size, Schal says it’s plausible that the roach could have gotten pretty far into the sinuses. (See " Giant Roaches Can Grow Big Testicles When They Need Them.") Though the roach in the Indian video seems large, Schal could tell immediately it was young and likely a nymph, or pre-adult form, of Periplaneta, a group that includes the large American cockroach sometimes found in houses. That’s why almost all roach invasions happen while the person is asleep. “The roach is not really interested in being on a human, and he wouldn’t be if the human was awake,” Schal notes. Though they might see your ears as snacking territory, roaches aren’t parasites. Likewise, nasal secretions might be appealing to a roach hunting for a midnight snack. Meat also emanates these compounds, “so a roach could go in to explore and then get stuck,” Schal says. “And earwax might be appealing to them.”Įarwax harbors bacteria that produce compounds called volatile fatty acids. Why so many roaches? “Roaches are searching for food everywhere,” Schal says. “It’s actually not an uncommon phenomenon to have a cockroach in the ear,” says entomologist Coby Schal of North Carolina State University. Ten were German cockroaches, followed by eight flies, three beetles, a tick, an assassin bug, and a badly mangled moth.Īnd in 1985, he New England Journal of Medicine reported that one patient came to an emergency room with roaches in both ears-when sprayed with numbing lidocaine, one of the roaches shot out "at a convulsive rate of speed and attempted to escape." ( Read more about bug and spider myths.) In a period of two years, a South African hospital pulled 24 critters out of people’s ears. Roaches are the most common invaders worldwide. Each structure is not present in all species.Watch: Cockroaches Survive Squeezing, Smashing, and Moreīut what kinds of creatures actually climb into people? More importantly, what parts of the body do they get into? And could this happen to you? These are just the kind of gory details I love to dig up for you, curious reader. Many annelids have bristles and other types of external structures. Several of the structures are described in Figure below.Īnnelid External Structures. This is called regeneration.Īnnelids have a variety of structures on the surface of their body for movement and other functions. Annelids have the amazing capacity to regrow segments that break off. This allows the whole animal to be more efficient. Segmentation also allows an animal to have specialized segments to carry out particular functions. Thus, localized muscle contractions can move just those segments needed for a particular motion. Each segment generally has its own nerve and muscle tissues. For one thing, it allows more efficient movement. The segmentation of annelids is highly adaptive. Gills for gas exchange (but many exchange gas through their skin).Sensory organs for detecting light and other stimuli.An excretory system consisting of tubular nephridia.A closed circulatory system (like cephalopods).Annelids have other similarities with mollusks, including: In fact, the annelid coelom is even larger, allowing greater development of internal organs. Like mollusks, however, they have a coelom. They never attain the large size of some mollusks. \)Īnnelids range in length from less than 1 millimeter to over 3 meters.
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