Parasite Rex
Okay, so there's this fluke. It lives in ants and cows, and to get from one to the other takes a bit of work. When it infects an ant, the ant changes its behaviour: it climbs to the top of a blade of grass and sits there, waiting to get eaten. If night comes, it climbs back down and goes back to being a normal ant - forages for food, etc - then at sunrise it goes up some grass again.

In terms of 'changed my life', you couldn't do much better than this book: it completely altered the way I look at nature. Basically it's a study of parasites, how they work and how they affect ecology. It's satisfyingly icky (some great pictures of threadworm-infested legs and ants with fungi growing out of their heads), and contains some mind-blowing facts (as well as the above-mentioned fluke, there's a barnacle that eats a crab's reproductive organs, deposits its own eggs in the same place, then hijacks the crab's reproductive behaviour by getting it to wave the eggs away into the sea with its back legs, and another fluke that crawls into a snail's horn and pulsates to look like a tasty caterpillar) Can't recommend it enough.
( flatfrog Staring vacantly into space, Mon 19 May 2008, 9:41, 13 replies)

You get a
*click*
I love parasites (not in that way), they're what spurred me to do a biosciences degree.

Perfect examples of evolution.

Small point, snails don't have horns, those are their eye stalks.
( Cawl, Mon 19 May 2008, 10:24, closed)

Schmeye stalks
Sure, but they're still commonly referred to as horns. Tch.
(Not that I want to be ungrateful for the click...)
( flatfrog Staring vacantly into space, Mon 19 May 2008, 12:25, closed)

*unclicks*
*frowns*
( Cawl, Mon 19 May 2008, 12:29, closed)

*cries*
*begs*
( flatfrog Staring vacantly into space, Mon 19 May 2008, 13:44, closed)

*unzips*
*points*
( Cawl, Mon 19 May 2008, 13:59, closed)

*thinks*
*shrugs*
*kneels*
( flatfrog Staring vacantly into space, Mon 19 May 2008, 14:02, closed)

Haha
Er... Still, they're eye-stalks to me, and always will be...
( Cawl, Mon 19 May 2008, 14:07, closed)

i
read that book halfway through my parasitology degree, and one sentence set me on the path to where i am now 'trypanosomes are the darlings of the parasite world'.
made me want to know more about them, and indeed, i fell in love with the wee bastards, and have spent the past 5 years working on them, and am about to spend another 4 years on them \o/
( ascorbate, Mon 19 May 2008, 14:11, closed)

A parasitology degree!
Sounds amazing!
I did zoology, with a big chunk of "Biology of Parasitic Disease".
My favorites are roundworms, but they're all pretty fascinating.
( Cawl, Mon 19 May 2008, 14:15, closed)

Just remembered this

( flatfrog Staring vacantly into space, Mon 19 May 2008, 14:34, closed)

Haha!
Amazing!
( Cawl, Mon 19 May 2008, 14:37, closed)

Parasites
Here's an interesting one.
( mistaspakkaman and the inedible shifting caterpillars, Mon 19 May 2008, 15:24, closed)

Oooooooh
Thanks for that spakka. Perfect example. And, may I say, a good one to throw in the face of creationists.

Actually, just throwing a poisonous spider or wasp in the face of creationists sounds like a good idea in itself.
( flatfrog Staring vacantly into space, Mon 19 May 2008, 15:34, closed)