BRAINY BLOOD-SUCKING NURSES

Do you think all creatures have brains? How many? One? Wrong. Leeches have more than one brain. Can you guess how many brains do leeches have? Two? Three? Not even close.

Yes, leeches have more than one brain. They have 32 brains. Unbelievable, isn't it? How can a creature so small have 32 brains? Why do humans only have one?

Leeches are blood-sucking worms which range from half an inch to ten inches long. They are neither brown nor black in color and feed on decaying plant material or on blood and animal tissues. They live anywhere near water. They find a person thorough one's skin oil, blood, heat and even the carbon dioxide you breathe out. Leeches don't feed often because when they feed, they take in a lot of blood. These little vampires suck your blood in two ways: using proboscis to puncture your skin and using their three jaws and millions of tiny teeth. A leech's bite is painless due to its own anaesthetic.

Leeches were not been made for just pure sucking, or living in the water, sticking on rocks and leaves. Like maggots, leeches do have some uses especially in the field of medicine. Doctors often used leeches to draw blood in the past. Today, scientists have been conducting a study on the use of a leech's saliva. They believe that the substance that prevents blood clots will be soon used on humans. The clotting properties of the substance is believed to be as useful as a drug for the treatment heart attacks. Leeches act as special nurses in a way that they help doctors in curing the patients by restoring blood circulation to grafted tissue and reattached fingers and toes. A leech can remove any congested blood to allow the normal circulation to go back to the tissues.

A leech's talent is to make a wound bleed for hours. A substance in its saliva anaesthetize the wound, prevents clotting and expand vessels to increase blood flow. For over 2000 years, humans have been using leeches for blood removal or bloodletting. Finally, these filthy creatures has found its rightful purpose on Earth.

SNAKE MASSEURS

Snakes--those creepy slithering reptiles do not just hiss around the forest. They don't just swallow rodents and inject poisonous venom on persons and other animals. They do not just change their skin and crawl all day. Snakes can also be useful like some of the animals. They can't guard the house like the dogs do, but they can give you a very relaxing massage.

Yes, snakes can massage a person's body by just crawling. It's not ideal stress reliever for the faint of heart. Twisted muscles slither away trailing after the snakes. This kind of massage are said to be good for the tissues. Large snakes are good for deep tissue massages while the smaller ones are ideal for delicate areas such as the face.

In Northern Israel, Ada Barak offers a different kind of way to treat her clients. For $70, you can avail of the exotic feeling of being massaged by six non-venomous snakes. These snakes will just crawl over your body and will leave a relaxing feeling after slithering back and forth. She uses California and Florida king snakes, corn snakes and milk snakes in her treatments. These snakes act like masseurs that relaxes your stressed and aching muscles as they slip and glide down the spine.

WORLD'S RICHEST DOG

What on Earth will a Maltese Terrier do with $12 million?
This question remains to be unanswered; however, despite of the large amount of money given to the dog, no comments were heard from her bereaved family.

Trouble is rich; literally, because Trouble is the dog’s name. Leona Helmsley, a hotelier, a real estate billionaire and the owner of Trouble, inherited $12 million to her dog when she passed away on the year 2007. Mrs. Helmsley also wrote in her last will and testament that Trouble must be buried in the family mausoleum with a view on the New York skyline.

Trouble, the dog, got more than what her grandchildren and her brother received. Two, out of her four grandchildren only received $10 million on the condition that they visit their father’s grave site at least once a year; and the other two grandchildren got nothing for no reasons known to them.

Leona Helmsley gave $10 million to her brother, Alvin Rosenthal who was appointed by her to take care of trouble. She also gave $3 million to the mausoleum keepers who are taking care of her remains.

RATS RULE THE TEMPLE!

Yes, the title says it very clear. You are not losing your mind; rats really do rule somewhere in India.

Rats are medium-sized, long-tailed rodents. We usually blame rats for damaging our food supplies, and for spreading diseases like plague, typhus, leptospirosis, and eosinophilic meningitis. But some people treat these pests as sacred.


In Northern India, you’ll find people worshipping rats which are considered repulsive by the most of the people in the world. This may sound a bit weird to some but in the city of Deshnoke, they worship rats in Bikaner Rat Temple, Rajasthan. The local people treat rats as sacred because they believe that after death, they return to the Earth as rats. Unlike the city rats which we consider pests, the rats in northern Indian are fed, protected and worshipped.


This Hindu temple was built in the early 1900s as a tribute to the rat goddess, Karni Mata. This temple is made of marble, which line the entrance and the floor, silver and gold decorations throughout the entire room. One of its most priceless assets is the solid silver carved door illustrating Karni Mata and Ganesh. Its inner sanctum is a two-foot silver image of Karni Mata. It is the only place where non-Hindus are not allowed to come in, and where the food for the rats is placed.


The marble panels or the gold and silver decorations are not the main aspects in the temple. The most interesting and intriguing aspect inside the temple is the living snarl of surging fur floor. There are about 20,000 (not the exact number) rats that call the temple their home.


The odd thing in this culture is that, there are about 160,000,000 Hindu Dalits are treated as “untouchables”. The Dalits are not allowed to go inside the temples because they are poor and they bring karma with them. These “untouchables” are deprived of their rights but they allow rats to live in a temple with marble floors and silver and gold ornaments. How odd!

REAL VAMPIRES

If you have read Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight sequel, then you probably know the Cullens. Meyer’s description of a vampire in her book differs a lot from that of the old myths. The Cullens do not sleep in coffins, nor did they burst into flames when exposed to sunlight. They do not sleep either. The old myths say that vampires burst into flames when they are directly exposed to the sun. They sleep inside a coffin during the day and goes out at night to hunt for their prey. The only common thing with their description is that, vampires drink blood.

Both definitions about vampires are not true. Real Vampires do not glitter like diamonds when exposed to sunlight like Edward Cullen nor do they burst into flames like that of the old stories. They sleep, unlike the Cullens; they do sleep, but not inside a coffin like Dracula.

Not all vampires crave and drink blood. According to Rune Thower, there are kinds of vampires. First, is the Psychic Vampires or psy-vamps.

These vampires do not feed on human blood, but they ”feed” on the “life energy” of people around them. The vampire can choose his victim and what type of energy he would take. Their victims would feel “drained” whenever the vampire is next to the victim.

The second is the “Spirit-Influenced” Vampires. They are those who live by the demonic acts. They let their bodies be controlled by some “spirits” or demons. It is said that the spirits and demons can give people special abilities in exchange for partial possessions.

The third one is the Viral Vampire. These are the ones that seem to have the most right to be called vampires. The “virus” is the cause for their transformation. It is passed on from one body to another through blood, sexual secretions and saliva. Photosensitivity, increased night vision, dual personality, anemia, blood cravings and red meat cravings are just some of the effects in the human-vampire transformation.

Fourth, the Vampires by Birth. They are the ones who can trace their vampirism through their ancestors. This type of vampirism may be genetic. They usually don’t know what they are. Only when they reach the puberty stage, the begin to act differently.

National Geographic Channel also featured a real live vampire named Don Henrie. He is also known as “The Vampire Don” and a self-proclaimed “Vampire Emperor”. He admitted that he drinks blood and that it is human blood.

So you see, vampires are not only seen on movies and read on books. Vampires do not necessarily suck all the blood out of their victim; they do not burn under the sun. They are human beings too. They could be anywhere; they could be living in your neighborhood. They could be your friend, they could be you.

DR. MAGGOT

Maggots are larvae of flies. Flies lay eggs on decaying tissues. Maggots come out from the eggs in warm weather and they instantly nosh on and develop on where the flies laid their eggs.

For many years, maggots have been renowned to clean wounds. Maggots feed on rotten flesh and leave the wound clean. Now, if maggots came from flies, does it mean that maggots are not clean too? If maggots are not clean, then why can they clean wounds? Wouldn’t the wounds be infected?

Since maggots came from flies, they’re not really clean creatures; Scientists are now raising sterile flies—the Greenbottle fly, Lucilia Sericata, which would eventually produce sterile maggots. They put the flies in a lab with a sterile milieu and when the flies lay eggs, they separate the maggots and put it in another sterile setting. They are then applied to the wound when they are still smaller than a grain of rice. They will be removed after two days when they have grown to more than a centimeter.

Maggot therapy is not new. It’s as old as the civil war. Mayans and Aboriginal tribes in Australia have reported of the successful maggot treatments.

Recent studies revealed that maggots heal wounds than a professional surgeon. Maggot therapy has been made known to speed up debridement of necrotic wounds which leads to fast healing. The enzymes maggots secrete are able to kindle the growth of human fibroblasts. These enzymes contain a substance, allantoin, which gives the patient a soothing effect on the skin.

Of course, we can’t avoid the “yuck” factor when we hear of the creepy maggots crawling in and eating the rotten tissues of our wounds. This factor could be a barrier to the usage of the therapy. Researchers who have been scrutinizing the advantages of this kind of treatment alleged that we should ignore the “yuck” factor for the betterment of our health.

World's Youngest Mom

Could you guess the age of the world's youngest mom?

Your speculation might not even come close.

She was 5 years old.

A Peruvian girl named Linda Medina was brought by her parents from their home in the Andean village of Ticrapo to the hospital due to the abnormally huge swell of her abdomen. What was first thought of as a tumor shocked the doctors as test later proved that what caused such swelling was her progressing pregnancy which was at that time on the 7th month. After having confirmed this, Dr. Gerardo Lozada, the attending doctor and chief physician if the Hospital of Pisco, took the girl to another hospital in Lima, Peru to have other specialists confirm his diagnosis. And on May 14, 1939; Lina gave birth to a 5 lbs and 9 ozs baby boy, named after her doctor, through caesarean section as her small pelvis does not make normal delivery possible.

The father of the baby boy nor the circumstances on how Lina was impregnated remains unknown until now. Her father was arrested as suspect for rape and incest but the lack of evidence resulted to his later release. It is presumed that Lina does not actually know herself who has caused her fate as she was not able to let out precise answers. Lina , who is now 75 years old, has not granted interviews which may mean that the identity of her son Gerardo will remain unknown.

Though some abnormalities that causes maturity to young girls is not unheard of. Lina's case was one of the rarest few. The youngest known mother in the medical history was said to have had her first menstruation at the very young age of 8 months and had them regularly at 3. By the time of her pregnancy, she also had fully developed breasts.

No this is not a hoax. And it's quite hard to take in but this is true. Over the years, a good number of doctors have attested to this based on the records of photographs, biopsies and Xrays of the baby in Lina's womb taken by the doctors who attended to her care.

This story has undoubtedly resulted from the corrupt act of a child molester. It's sad that Lina Medina has to become a part of the medical history through having been impregnated at the age of 5. But I doubt if her medical condition of extremely precocious puberty or full sexual development in childhood would have been brought to the attention of specialist if not for the incident.