Hidden Creatures: Luscious Leeches, Bashful Botflies and the Wondrous, History-Shaping World of Parasites

Dr. Dino Martins, an awarding-winning entomologist of Kenya's Turkana Basin, where life was born, unspools the hidden, squirming world of parasites- some of the most misunderstood, and important, creatures with whom we share the Earth (and our bodies). When we think of parasites, we might think of terrifying tiny creatures who suck blood and steal food, and that’s definitely a part of what these mysterious organisms are - but, as Martins shows, it’s only a part.From the tapeworm, which can grow a remarkable 120 feet in length within the gut of a whale, to the tsetse fly, a notorious vector of disease that can pierce the skin even of crocodiles with its vicious, needle-like mouth, to perhaps the most universal symbol of parasitic behavior in our language, the much-mythologized leech, all parasites make a living by exploiting other living things. In each chapter, Martins takes us through gaping geological time to explain the history of a particular parasite’s evolution and its interactio