Bodyguard Manipulation - Or "Why I'm Taking Over Your Brain and Turning You Into a Zombie."

We're probably all somewhat familiar with the concept of parasites using their hosts' bodies to serve their own nefarious ends.  I think we all know the story of Zuul, the Gatekeeper of Gozer, all too well.  But, in the bug world, there's a parasitic insect that's taken things to a whole new level.  Meet Ampulex compressa, better known as nasty-ass-little brain-sucking-wasp.  It may also be called the "jewel wasp", but what do I know?  I'm not a biologist.  


In a nutshell, these wasps inject venom into the brains of their hosts.  They are then able to manipulate the mobility of the host bodies.  For example, by injecting the poison directly into the protocerebrum of the cockroach, the wasp can control the cockroach's ability to walk.  This is accomplished by inhibiting the octopamine production in the roach's brain.  What does all of this mean for the cockroach?


"Unable to fight back, the 'zombie' cockroach can be pulled into the wasp's underground lair, where an egg is laid in its abdomen. The larva later hatches and eats the still living but incapacitated cockroach from the inside out."


Ew.  For more on that, click the Nat Geo link above.


The jewel wasp isn't the only wasp to get in on the zombie game. Dinocampus coccinellae, a braconid wasp, likes to use its host to hatch larva.  After the larva hatches, it zaps the ladybug with some poison so that the ladybug will continue to be subject to the churlish desires of the wasp larva.


"[S]cientists note that sometimes the ladybugs survive the larva's emergence, and in those cases, the D. coccinellae larva then 'brainwashes' the bug into defending the vulnerable cocoon from predators," to paraphrase Nat Geo and Jacques Brodeur, a biologist from the  University of Montreal.


Double ew.  So glad I'm not a ladybug.  Or a cockroach.  Or any bug at all, really.