A badass parasite. Trichinella is a multi cellular
animal that can live inside an indiviual cell.
It hatches in your gut and drills its way into your
circulatory system, makes its way into the capillaries, leaves your blood stream, and enters the muscles. Once in the muscle it penetrates into one of the long muscle cells and begins to form
cysts.
The muscle loses the ability to create protein. Trichinella does not atrophy the muscles at first, rather, it takes control of
the genes, the way a virus would, as to make an enviroment suitable for the worm. This is what makes it so cool. It is an animal that acts like a virus. It loosens the muscle to make more surface area for more cysts and then, this is neatest part, it makes the cells produce collagen and a single molecule called a vascular endothelial growth factor. The vascular endothelial is normally used to help heal wounds and what not but the worm uses it to form capillaries around its new home and then uses the collagen to from a hard shell around the whole package. If your going to eat meat, cook it.