By Nick Galia
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The lancet liver fluke is a parasitic flatworm which is usually 5-15mm in length. these things a pretty scary. they are pretty much mind control parasites. their eggs are found in the slime of some snails. from there, they are usually consumed by ants or other insects. this is when it starts to get crazy. after they enter the hosts bodies, they burrow into a certain part of their brains. and for reasons unknown, the liver fluke pretty much controls the insect from then on. for example, if they take control of an ant they will act normal until the liver fluke senses that a mammal host is near. if one is near the liver fluke will make the ant go to a place where it could easily be eaten by the mammal and then freeze there. when the mammal eats the ant the flukes burrow out of the stomach and grow into adults. as adults, they will feed on liver tissue and eventually excrete their eggs into the bial duct. from here these eggs will be defecated out of the animal and the process of locomotion for the flukes will start up again.
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The blood fluke is another parasitic flatworm. these things can cause many diseases and infections in humans. the life of the blood fluke starts in the water as an egg. the fluke will swim around to find there first host, a snail. when it finds a snail it will invade its soft tissue and enter it. inside the snail it will mature and multiply until the snail dies. at this point the fluke leaves the snail and returns to the water to swim around until they find their next host, a human. if they enter a human by burrowing through the skin, they will infest the blood vessels around the bladder. they can also be excreted through urine. and this is how the blood flukes travel.
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These are also flatworms, but unlike their parasitic cousins, these are more free living. usually carnivores, the turbellarians will most likely feed on tiny aquatic vertebrates like rotifers or other worms. these flatworms have circular, longitudinal muscles that work in tandem with each other to help them to swim around. when they move, one part of their body gets bigger, and another part gets smaller, allowing them to swim around in water. these are very different from the other parasitic flatworms in this phylum, mainly because the parasites usually rely on some other outside source to help them travel. the turbellarians are also bigger than their parasitic cousins.