Brain-Eating Amoebas. No, Seriously.

Naegleria fowleri.
Doesn’t sound so threatening, does it? What the heck is it, anyway? you think. Some kind of glaring pigeon?

No. It’s am amoeba.

You remember amoebas, right? Everyone’s favorite microscopic critter: a shapeless blob of primal sludge that consumes food by simply engulfing it and absorbing it. You know, like the Blob…but smaller than the eye can see unaided.

Well, Ectomo-boy Mr. Fancy-pants-scientist Pegritz, you say, that doesn’t sound horrifying at all! The Blob is scary because…well, it’s like a gigantic Jell-O mold with an appetite for human flesh–but the Blob isn’t real, and amoebas are so damn small every footstep I take destroys a few million of ‘em, probably. FEH! I publicly mock amoebas!

Yeah, but guess what, smart-ass? Naegleria fowleri eats human brains.

No, these are not zombie amoebas–they are 100% alive. And they live in warm water lakes, ponds, streams, etc. all over the country. Nonetheless, infections by Naegleria fowleri are pretty damn rare…otherwise anyone who ever went skinny-dipping in the local pond on a warm summer night would be dead and brainless, their skulls filled only with starving amoebae and mush.

However, so far this year Naegleria fowleri has caused six deaths throughout the South and Southwest. Witness the horror!

Beach said people become infected when they wade through shallow water and stir up the bottom. If someone allows water to shoot up the nose — say, by doing a somersault in chest-deep water — the amoeba can latch onto the olfactory nerve.

The amoeba destroys tissue as it makes its way up into the brain, where it continues the damage, “basically feeding on the brain cells,” Beach said.

People who are infected tend to complain of a stiff neck, headaches and fevers. In the later stages, they’ll show signs of brain damage such as hallucinations and behavioral changes, he said.

Once infected, most people have little chance of survival. Some drugs have stopped the amoeba in lab experiments, but people who have been attacked rarely survive, Beach said.

“Usually, from initial exposure it’s fatal within two weeks,” he said.

In a word: YIKES. My ass is never, ever splashing around in a body of water that has not been first completely sterilized by phosphoric acid and radiation. In fact, from now on, I even refuse to bathe in anything other than distilled water. It’s bad enough I live near Pittsburgh–Zombie Capitol of the United States–and have to worry about macroscale brain-munchers casting devious stares in my direction, now I’ve got to wore about microscale brain-eaters, too. God, someone build me a spaceship so I can move to Pluto, already–a completely abiotic environment!

Amoebas that eat brains [Yahoo! News]: Boing Boing.