THIS IS NOT A JOKE.
A newly discovered species of parasitic flatworm has been named Baracktrema obamai, in honor of Barack Obama — the resident of the White House for four more months, who is said to be the 5th cousin twice removed of one of the discovering scientists.
The parasite, a new species of blood fluke, was found infecting the lungs of turtles in Malaysia — a country in S.E. Asia, as is Indonesia where Obama spent part of his childhood.
The scientists found clusters of tens to hundreds of the Baracktrema obamai eggs in the turtles’ lung alveoli — the tiny sacs where blood receives oxygen and gets rid of carbon dioxide. How these eggs get outside to hatch and infect new hosts isn’t clear, although making the turtles cough is probably involved.
Source: Popular Science
In an article in the August 2016 issue of the Journal of Parasitology, the scientists who discovered B. obamai — Jackson R. Roberts, Thomas R. Platt, Raphael Orélis-Ribeiro, and Stephen A. Bullard — described the parasite as having a long, thread-like body, like its namesake.