Rudy Mancke discusses naegleria fowleri, often called the "brain-eating amoeba."
Transcript (edited for clarity):
RUDY MANCKE:
Hi, this is Rudy Mancke from USC for NatureNotes.
Naegleria fowleri is an amoeba, and it's a free-living amoeba feeding on debris on bottom of shallow water, especially warm water. And if you dive into that water and jam water up your nose, these crazy free-living amoebas can become parasitic, migrating through the little cribriform plate which connects the olfactory nerves to the brain.
And it's a very interesting animal because free-living and parasitic in the same animal, that's the potential change. Maybe this is an example of an animal that's changing how it does business, so to speak. Be careful.
