Parasite or disease that resembles centipede?
November 1, 2015 9:45 PM   Subscribe

So there is a local myth in my part of the US (New Mexico) -- usually told by the hispanic people whose families lived in the region for ages -- that centipedes burrow into your skin and live parasitically, and that if not caught they will get all the way into your heart and eat it. Any idea what these people are talking about?

Biologically this makes no sense, since centipedes are not parasitic. Yet my grandmother insists her sister got a centipede in her leg and had a centipede-shaped scar on her thigh for the rest of her life from where it was removed; another time I heard a substitute teacher tell of having a centipede removed, alive, from inside her own ankle by a doctor.

My only guess is there might be some other parasite that resembles a centipede? I know in the case of my grandmother, she has mistaken rollie-pollies for centipedes. (I recall she told me as a kid not to touch them or they'd burrow under my fingernails and then into my heart.)

Looking online brought up this story but for all I know the person who sent it in could have given fake photos as a prank -- and even then, centipedes in the intestines is different from live centipedes in your legs.
posted by Peregrine Pickle to Science & Nature (9 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
Maybe scars from stitched incisions look like centipedes with legs?
posted by bq at 9:54 PM on November 1, 2015 [1 favorite]


Sounds like Morgellons.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 10:12 PM on November 1, 2015


Maybe Cysticercosis?
posted by sarah_pdx at 10:16 PM on November 1, 2015


Or Guinea Worm?

Google image search shows the disturbing process of removing the worm.
posted by sarah_pdx at 10:18 PM on November 1, 2015 [1 favorite]


I'm wondering if the "parasites that get up into your heart and eat it" part of this might be conflating centipedes and other creepy crawlies with Chagas disease, which is endemic to Central and South America (although making inroads in the US) and spread by insects (not any kind of centipe though). Chagas actually does end up affecting the heart. Over time infection with the trypanasome leads to congestive heart failure. I could kind of see people hearing about this second-hand and connecting it to something like hookworms, which can actually enter through your skin, and then with centipedes, which look even scarier than any of the bugs that actually cause these diseases.
posted by permiechickie at 10:30 PM on November 1, 2015 [4 favorites]


Botflies?
posted by Metroid Baby at 5:35 AM on November 2, 2015 [1 favorite]


Your Grandmother's description, especially of the centipede's removal and the scar, sounds like Guinea Worm to me.
posted by OrangeDisk at 8:05 AM on November 2, 2015


Chagas is also spread by kissing bugs or "love bugs," and urban legend (at least along the Texas border) says that they burrow under your skin. To clarify, I think it's urban legend, or I heard that it was at one point, but upon googling it right now it turns out to be not something I want to be reading about while eating lunch, so you're on your own.
posted by mudpuppie at 12:59 PM on November 2, 2015 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: Worth elaborating -- the New Mexico hispanics are usually old families that have been around since the days when it was New Spain (that is, not recent immigrants from Mexico or South America.) I would imagine from the age of my grandmother and of the substitute teacher that their "centipede" stories probably took place in the 1940s or 1950s.

Climate in New Mexico is high altitude and very very dry, with cold winters.
posted by Peregrine Pickle at 1:40 PM on November 2, 2015


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