Sunday, September 02, 2007 - 7:58 pm

Gah! Worms!

Meguro Parasitological Museum is claimed to be the only one of its kind in the world. I'm not that surprised, considering that no one sane would possibly enjoy watching worms.

Well, I went, anyway. But that's no reason to question my sanity. Let's just say, I was curious.

The museum's kind of small. Free admission, for some obvious reason... Two-storeyed, but nevertheless houses plenty of specimens - gross worms pickled in jars... Eew...

(Scratch, scratch elbow...)

Worm-infested stomach-or-liver-or-whatever-internal-organ-I-don't-know...

(Scratch, scratch neck...)

Some 300 ringworms, pickled... Mmm... Bee hoon...

(Scratch, scratch butt...)

A dog heart infested with parasites...

(Scratch, scratch left leg, scratch, scratch right arm...)

And oh, on the second floor... The main attraction!

A 8.8 meter tapeworm retrieved from a Japanese guy in 1986. Said to have ingested the worm larva with sushi. (Make note, make note. No more sushi.) It was less than an inch in size at larva stage. (Notice the little circle in the photo.) The larva took merely 3 months to grow into 8.8m. Imagine hanging one end of the worm from the third floor; the other end would almost touch the ground. The guy only realized about his wormy companion when part of it, uh, slipped out when he was doing his business in the toilet. The worm was later flushed out of his intestines by some medicine.

Eew... Creepy worms. I'm still itchy all over the body after the visit to the museum.

(Scratch, scratch left knee...)

Okay, no more visits to the parasitological museum.

Hungry, hungry. Signing off for dinner. Ciao.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

hat worm is fierce

synth said...

Fantastic photos! photography allowed in the museum?

just a teeny errata though. 圆虫 aint "ringworms" though. the latter is more like a fungal parasite rather than invertebral. but kudos for the photos nonetheless! did you get for yourself one of those Tee-shirts? I like the one with a limegreen motif...