Fearsome Fauna: A Field Guide to the Creatures That Live in You - Softcover

Roger M. Knutson

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0716733862 ISBN 13: 9780716733867

Publisher: W. H. Freeman, 1999

Synopsis

Hypochondriacs beware-- would you believe the nastiest creatures in the known universe live inside our bodies? Not content to just find a home and produce offspring in our internal space, parasites will drink our blood, eat our cells, and infest our muscles. There is very little that can be said in their favor, with perhaps one exception-- they are truly fascinating!

Fearsome Fauna is a wickedly amusing and startlingly informative look into the secret world of these fascinating creatures. Perhaps the greatest biological success story of all time (there are more kinds of parasites than insects), parasites have found homes in the vast majority of people on earth and have learned to live in their environment without destroying it (usually). For readers who would like to meet these hardworking beasts-- or learn how to avoid them-- Fearsome Fauna tells you everything you always wanted to know about parasites but were too disgusted or terrified to ask.

About this title

About the Author

Roger M. Knutson is professor emeritus of biology at Luther College in Iowa. He is author of the now-classic Flattened Fauna: A Field Guide to Common Animals of Roads, Streets, and Highways and Furtive Fauna: A Field Guide to the Creatures Who Live on You.

Reviews

-This well-written tour of the human parasitic world presents fascinating and extremely unsettling scenarios. Consider a 30-foot tapeworm setting up housekeeping in someone's intestines, an amoeba (which grows in poorly cleaned hot tubs) that can destroy the brain within a few days, or coughing up a 10-inch-long white worm. Primarily contracted by contact with human or animal sewage, parasites can live in just about any system or organ within the human body. Most people tend to feel that such scourges can't happen in civilized parts of the world with proper sanitation. This book will put that lie to rest. A cat, the air, fresh fruits and vegetables, and undercooked meats can all be a vector for squatter parasites to colonize the body. A short bibliography, a succinct list of dos and don'ts to avoid infection, and an index make this a valuable reference tool. Readers will find themselves both captivated and repelled by this treatise on our hidden companions.
Carol DeAngelo, Kings Park Library, Burke, VA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: W. H. Freeman
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0716733862
• ISBN 13: 9780716733867
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 124