A Monstrous Barnacle

There is one animal living in the ocean that is a particularly scary creature. When learning about what this thing does it appears very disturbing. Many people have said this creature is comparable to animals from a monster movie but this one is very real and very dangerous to other sea animals. In order to fully understand what these animals do, imagine you are a full sized crab after a life of dodging predators your age and size make it impossible for many predators to attach. All of the sudden you feel something inside of you. There is a Rhizocephalan barnacle inside of you and it’s going to take over. This Rhizocephalan is dangerous and painful for the animals it attacks. Its roots crawl through the tissue, gut, and brain of the animal. The adult female body of the Rhizocephalan is twisted and deformed, not resembling in any way its barnacle cousins living on rocks near shore. She has lost her hard shell, her legs, her eyes, and transformed into sickly yellow roots and sinuous twisting filaments that are slowly grow like black mold through your tissues. As the barnacle continues to eat away at your body, eventually your abdomen explodes. This barnacle has now taken over the body of the attacked completely. The attacked now thinks that it is a female organism and will produce new life. It is a bizarre process that is often not seen but in this case it makes it able to reproduce without using its own body.

Citation:

http://deepseanews.com/2013/10/this-may-be-the-oceans-most-horrifying-monster-and-youve-probably-never-heard-of-it/