Over the millions of years that animals have been living on earth, they have learned to exploit every available source of food and to do that, many have become hunters of other animals. At some point in the distant past, the first animals capable of actively hunting showed up with bodies suited for the job, and lions, tigers, sharks, people and all the rest of the world’s hunters inherited their tools. The earthworm predators of Scotland, giant tapeworms in Mississippi, and parasitic flatworms that wreck hundreds of thousands of human lives are the descendants of those first hunters that have carried their body architecture into the present. They don’t make very good company, but they have a heck of a story to tell.
