Dracunculus or better known as the Guinea worm is one of the most well known parasitic creatures in the human world. Not only does it target humans, it can grow all the way up to 80cm long. Imagine having an 90cm long worm inside your body. In order for the Guinea worm to find its way into a host it lives in contaminated water that humans or other animals eventually will drink. Once the larvae grows into its full size inside the host it will give birth (like a human not a bird) and will try to force the baby Guinea worm out of the host through the skin (this is really the only opportunity to get the Guinea worm out of its host). The cycle continues again affecting more and more hosts throughout the world.
The Guinea worm does not have a skeleton like all other Nematodes. They do not need one because there entire life they live in a host. If a Guinea worm were to develop into an adult outside of a host, then it would die. Instead the Guinea worm stays in its larvae form until a host comes by and drinks the wrong water.
Over time Guinea worms were a big deal back when medicine wasn't developed very well. People back then used to call Guinea worms serpents because of how large they were. People would remove a Guinea worm from the body by taking a stick and twirling it around the body of the Guinea worm as it tries to eject its larvae and basically pull as hard as the host can until the worm pops out. That is why the medical symbol is a serpent surrounding a rod of some sort looks that way.
The Guinea worm does not have a skeleton like all other Nematodes. They do not need one because there entire life they live in a host. If a Guinea worm were to develop into an adult outside of a host, then it would die. Instead the Guinea worm stays in its larvae form until a host comes by and drinks the wrong water.
Over time Guinea worms were a big deal back when medicine wasn't developed very well. People back then used to call Guinea worms serpents because of how large they were. People would remove a Guinea worm from the body by taking a stick and twirling it around the body of the Guinea worm as it tries to eject its larvae and basically pull as hard as the host can until the worm pops out. That is why the medical symbol is a serpent surrounding a rod of some sort looks that way.