![]() ![]() ![]() Some tapeworms have hooks or suckers on their front end (“head” is too generous a term), which they use to anchor themselves in place. Once inside us, tapeworms can live for decades, deftly escaping the notice of the immune system despite their being as long as an anaconda. Their bodies are like a kind of inside-out intestine, rippling with finger-like projections that absorb nutrients. They feed on our food, despite the fact that they have neither a mouth nor a digestive tract. The tapeworms that live in humans can get up to sixty feet long. ![]() These flat, ribbon-like creatures live inside the digestive tracts of vertebrates. It’s a pity, because tapeworms are as strange as animals can get… But for some reason–perhaps thanks to his famously weak stomach–Darwin didn’t write a single word about tapeworms. Darwin also pondered the origins of barnacles, orchids, and many other strange creatures. And today scientists have found about twenty different species of hominids, from chimp-like creatures that lived six million years ago to not-quite humans that lived alongside our own species. Humans, Darwin argued, evolved from apes, most likely in Africa where chimpanzees and gorillas are found today. His suggestion was greeted with shock and disbelief neverthless, scientists have found bones from ancient walking whales. Whales today might be fish-like warm-blooded beasts with blowholes and flukes, but long ago, Darwin argued, their ancestors were ordinary mammals that walked on land with legs. Darwin gave a lot of thought to the strangest creatures on this planet, wondering how they had evolved from less strange ancestors. ![]()
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