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From today's featured articleGigantorhynchus is a genus of thorny-headed worms that parasitize marsupials, anteaters, and possibly baboons by attaching themselves to the intestines using their hook-covered proboscis. The life cycle includes a larval stage in an intermediate host such as termites. In addition to the proboscis, the body is characterized by pseudosegmentation, filiform lemnisci, and ellipsoid testes. The largest known specimen is a female G. ortizi (example pictured) with a length of around 240 millimetres (9.4 in) and a width of 2 millimetres (0.08 in). Genetic analysis on one species of Gigantorhynchus places it with the related Mediorhynchus genus in the Giganthorhynchidae family. There are six species in this genus distributed across Central and South America and possibly Zimbabwe. Infestation by a Gigantorhynchus species can cause potentially fatal partial obstructions of the intestines or severe lesions of the intestinal wall. (Full article...) Did you know ...
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![]() | The Vision of the Blessed Hermann Joseph is a 1629–1630 oil-on-canvas painting by the Flemish Baroque painter Anthony van Dyck. Hermann Joseph was a 12th- and 13th-century German canon regular and mystic whose status as a saint of the Catholic Church was formally recognized by Pope Pius XII in 1958. Legend relates that he had several visions of the Virgin Mary; this painting shows one such vision, in which he is joined in a mystic marriage to Mary, receiving the name Joseph after her spouse Saint Joseph. Produced for a chapel in Saint Ignatius Church in Antwerp, the painting now hangs in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Painting credit: Anthony van Dyck Recently featured: |