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Flamingo Parasite

Have you heard of the flamingo parasite? It actually has a long Latin name, but it is commonly known as the flamingo parasite because of its close relationship with the pink bird.

This particular parasite, which is a tapeworm, needs to find its way into the stomach of the flamingo in order to live. So how does it get there? The flamingo has no desire to eat this tapeworm, and even if it did, it would be next to impossible to even see them.

No problem. The tapeworm has a plan. They make their way inside shrimp, and using a system of hooks, attaches itself into the brain of the new host. The parasite then takes control of the shrimp, first causing them huddle up in packs, and then changing their color from transparent to pink. This makes the shrimp easy to spot, and since flamingos enjoy eating shrimp, problem solved. As the bird’s digestive tract breaks down the shrimp, the tapeworm is free to continue its life cycle inside the flamingo.

How does the tapeworm know how to do any of this? How does it even know to do it? Who told the parasite it had to get inside the flamingo in order to survive? Or that flamingos eat shrimp? Or how to enter the shrimp and manipulate it in such a way that they become easy prey for the birds?

The fact that parasites have the intelligence to thrive is an attack on Darwinian evolution, which states that smaller organisms, those we have to look at under a microscope, are simple. The evolutionist will say this is survival of the fittest, but the parasite should be too simple to be the fittest. The very first flamingo parasites would have died before they got into the flamingo, and never would have lived long enough to reproduce themselves. The very existence of these tapeworms speaks against evolution. This is something Charles Darwin could not have known in his time, but we know about it now.

The more we are able to learn about the universe, down to even the smallest parasite, the more we agree with God’s Word, that “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims His handiwork (Psalm 19:1).”

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