And even in the jungle canopy
I could totally see that. When I was trying to kill them, they seemed unaffected by hot water, soap, and 3% hydrogen peroxide, hypochlorite (bleach) based drain cleaner for PVC piping, and acetic acid cleaners. I resorted to high concentration bleach hypochlorites in combination with a pyrethrin based Raid products (house and garden + cricket and roach), and a proprietary drain cleaner and that seems too kill them if you fill your sink up and let them soak in the pot of chemicals. I avoided the temptation of mixing a strong acid, like my pH up or barkeepers friend, with the bleach hypochlorite because I didn't want to suffocate myself on the fumes created by this mixture.
They literally infected a couple of my soap sponges. You know the ones with the bristles and a self dispensing container for soap above? There is a small rubber piece that you press down on to dispense soap. I noticed a little spike coming out of that rubber part, so I cut into it, expecting a tiny one to have burrowed into the rubber. When i opened it, there was an entire transluscent isopod, or 2, living within the soap filled dispenser. There were another 2 living in my other identical cleaning item. Not only that, but they burrowed into the bristles of a plastic billow pad like thing and a sponge. Each time I tried to kill them I would see them in the drain catcher trying to escape the little holes in it. They seem to be weak to desiccation because when they weren't wet they'd loose their ability to change shape and just kind of be a blob, while others appeared to have an actual transparent exoskeleton. I have no idea if these were different species or not. The ones without the exoskeleton seemed to loose the ability to move without being wet, but the transluscent ones that had a more definite shape and probably could survive without water or at least move a little on land. Another creepy thing was watching a tiny little red piece of flesh climbing up the side of my sink using little stubby arms after my first barrage of chemicals.
Update on the hermit crab I did surgery on to remove the parasites - it was all for naught. There was a lesion on his abdomen that I knew I couldn't remove without killing him and didn't exactly know what it was that the hermit seemed especially bothered by. I had him in a tiny plastic tupperwear container with a bunch of calcium supplement for land hermit crabs. This was after the surgery. He seemed to be improving, he was eating and active, and the post surgery infections had healed. He seemed back to normal. So I got him a 2.5 gal quarantine tank with some stringy algae plant and live aragonite substrate, gave him some dried seaweed to eat in the tank, and several shells to pick from, and kept the main water parameters constant from his tiny container to his actual new tank with a little filter and an aerator. I left for 4 hours and when I came back the entire tank was infested with the creatures and it looked like they had burst out of his abdomen. The creatures were using the pieces of dried seaweed like little rafts, but their locomotion was very slow. They also seemed to have infected/assimilated part of the stringy algae plant like they did with some of the moss that was in my old freshwater tank I took pictures of earlier. Some were burrowing in the substrate, some with proboscis like extensions sticking out that I had noticed in my last tank but thought they were just part of the substrate (the tank the hermit came from had a crushed coral substrate, and the more liquidy of the creatures would inhabit the snail shells in the crushed coral and the more solid would burrow and do the proboscis thing. One of the things on the seaweed raft was slowly making its way to the hermit's carcass and looked like he was starting to eat/assimilate it. If you read the 2019 paper I mentioned in a previous reply, it looks as if the kelp raft thing has developed one of those claws you can see in Figure 2 of the referenced paper and the crabs flesh is gone but the legs are still there and the seaweed is kind of like and extension of the hermit remains that I am guessing the creature finds 'useful'. I'll attach a picture of this. Also some of the shells in the tank are starting to look a little too... mouth like.. I am guessing they have inhabited all of the shells in the tank as well and are probably waiting to ambush.
I think these creatures are intelligent. I don't think that the bursting out of the abdomen was random. I think that the creature sensed that it was in a more desirable habitat and decided to burst out then. These creatures are pink to translucent in color, where as the ones I removed from the hermit while it was alive were black in color. Are they different species or did the original parasite just lay eggs inside the hermit in addition to physically inhabiting it while it was alive?
I think I could potentially have multiple novel species of predatory isopods or something else entirely contained within by now duct taped sealed shut tanks. Would there be any researcher out there who would be willing to take these live samples off my hands and study their behavior, and possibly identify parasites that are not currently described by science? Or someone who works in the R&D department for an aquarium supply company to develop some sort of chemical that can specifically target these isopod like and liquidy parasites without killing the rest of the tank? This could be a potentially lucrative venture because apparently the rates of these predatory isopod infections are on the rise. I don't think it was pure bad luck that I got 2 shipments from 2 separate distributors that had the same types of parasites in them. These things are practically invincible and reproduce incredibly fast, so if they have entered the supply chain I don't think it will be long until this parasite becomes common within the hobby. I was too scared to even remove the temperature probe and air line, I just cut those off at the exit point, shoved them into the tank and sealed the exits. The cleaning supplies that got infected I put in jars or tupperwear and duct taped the tops. can't see the creatures anymore, but when it comes to these things I've learned not to assume just because you don't see them anymore they aren't still there. Last thing, I used some type of anti-fluke/parasite medication on the water after I first put the hermit in the new tank, and clearly that has no effect. I would also doubt the effectiveness of current anti-isopod treatments currently on the market because some of these guys don't seem to bother with an exoskeleton.
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. Year predator was released in the same region of the world the movie takes place in.
