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Subject: Monster of the Weak (was Re: REL: Agua Mala questions)
From: trevorREMOVE@THISiinet.net.au (Trevor Calder)
Date: 16 May 1999 07:10:04 GMT
Organization: R'lyeh Tourist Bureau

A nice person called Chris Sloan (who can be contacted at 
ibid@a011.aone.net.aus) told all the world the following....

>OK, folks. I haven't done biology since 3rd form (1983), so this
>partly explains my confusion, but what the Hell was the life-cycle of
>that creature?

For the first time for a long time, they almost got the MOTW right.
There were a few bits I didn't much care for, but this monster
almost works.

It turns out to be a giant jellyfish, of all things.

First off, it's a sea monster. There is a lot of the ocean which 
hasn't even been scratched by explorers, and for that reason alone a 
sea monster is always more believable.

It's parasitic - nothing wrong with that. Lots of perfectly good animals
have far more complicated parasitic life cycles.

We never saw the adult form - just some tentacles. Lots of animals have 
tentacles - in particular jellyfish.

Ok, so here is the life cycle of the agua mala according to Trevor:

The young are "injected" into a host by an adaptation of the jellyfish
stinging cells. They are several centimetres long to start with, which
indicates the animal usually deals with large animals as hosts.

The young grow, and while doing so excrete digestive enzymes into the
host body absorbing the resulting "stew" through their skin.
On reaching a large enough size, they burst the hosts body and become 
free living forms.

The adults feed by attacking prey, secreting a slime capsule around itself
and the body, and doing the external digestion bit again.

After mating, the adults attack suitable hosts and place the larval form
in them.

Simple.

It's a jellyfish variant for several reasons - the tentacles, the
adapted stinging cells used for infesting a host (with presumably a 
venomous type for feeding). It is still translucent, like most jellyfish.
It can take considerable damage without being killed (someone count the
shotgun blasts the nutcase put into the one in his ceiling, please),
yet if exposed to sufficient fresh water, appears to dissolve away to 
(almost?) nothing.

The tentacles are strong enough to lift an adult into the air without 
breaking - that indicates serious muscle. I would hazard a guess that
these things normally prey on large bottom dwelling fish, but given that
the young didn't suffer from being in a hot body, there is also a 
suggestion that they will also go after dolphins, etc.

I didn't like the way that the eaten bodies dissolved away without 
leaving 
behind any traces - that is *very difficult* to do, and given that we
have had similar effects used before, I don't see why we couldn't have 
had various bits left floating about in the bath.

I especially did not like the "it dissolves in fresh water" way of
dealing with this thing. If they are that sensitive to osmotic pressure
(and they could be) then invading a human body (or any body) is not 
going to be a pleasant experience. Bodies are about halfway between 
seawater and fresh water. Freshwater will kill 'em dead instantly, but
they live happily in bodies?
Nope, sorry, it just don't work.

I never expect any MOTW to be right, but overall this was a bit less 
wrong than most.

-- 
Trevor Calder
"..it is foolishness and endless trouble to cast a 
stone at every dog that barks at you.."