Advertisement

Tide Pods Are Out...Kids Are Getting Their Brains Infected By "Rat Lungworm" After Eating Raw Slugs On A Dare

Screen Shot 2018-03-19 at 2.41.53 PM

NatGeo - Sam Ballard was 19 years old when friends at a party dared him to swallow a slug. Within days, the Australian teen developed a rare form of meningitis and fell into a coma that lasted more than a year. Even after waking up, he remains paralyzed from the neck down.

The culprit, doctors said, was a parasite in the slug called a rat lungworm, which can burrow into the human brain.

Ballard isn’t alone, or even the only person infected on a dare—at least three reported cases involve boys or young men who were dared to eat a slug or snail. What’s more, the parasite is now spreading to new places around the globe.

Major development coming from National Geographic. Turns out that if you eat raw snails or slugs you can get this thing called a Rat Lungworm that infests your brain and then I think you just die.

Oh, you wanna know more? Some kid in Australia ate a slug for a dare and next thing he knows he’s got a parasite in his brain and went into a coma for over a year, waking up paralyzed from the neck down. ALL FOR A DARE.

People in Australia are fucking crazy. In the US we just dare each other to say stupid shit to strangers or chug bottles of hard liquor or eat delicious looking pods of laundry detergent. In Australia we got dudes over there swallowing slugs and waking up in a hospital in a coma. Obviously, you hate to hear that. Obviously, you don’t wake up in a coma, that’s the opposite of the nature of being in a coma. But now he’s actually awake and can’t move his body. I guess that’s why they say you are what you eat.

Rat Lungworm sounds like a problem if you ask me. It’s spreading around the world and infecting all different species. People are ending up getting infected when they eat these type of things raw. What do you call them? Gastropods. Don’t eat raw Gastropods. Or eat any escargot in Brazil. That one kinda seems like a no brainer though.

I’ve never been to Brazil and I doubt I’ll ever go. It ain’t my vibe. And I promise you won’t catch me eating any raw gastropods either. Im officially off the stuff.