I Walked With a Zombie (insect)

[rose_cat]

Walking with zombies: fact or fiction?



Actually, it's both.

Many species of wasps feed their babies meat. The wasp, a single mother, provides for her brood by scavenging from dead animals, hunting and killing insects and spiders, and crashing your picnic and stealing bits of your hamburger. But she obviously can’t carry a whole hamburger or deceased chipmunk back to the nest. Could you bring home a whole cow on the bus or on foot? And, even if you could borrow a truck, what would you do with the darn thing once you got there?

Wasps don’t have big freezers. They don't even have refrigerators. If the wasp's killed an insect or a spider, she can carry the whole thing home in one go, but her growing children need a lot of fresh meat and it's still not going to keep long enough. That makes for a lot of tedious and exhausting shopping expeditions. So, some wasps have found a way to make a single trip's worth of food last longer. It isn’t pretty.

The wasp finds a nice prey item – a nice plump caterpillar, maybe...



...or a spider.



She then paralyzes it with a sting and schleps it back to the nest.



It’s a heavy load, but the wasp only has to carry it once. Then she lays her eggs on the paralyzed animal. The adult wasp soon dies, but her prey doesn’t. It lies quietly in the nest, staying nice and fresh, while the larvae hatch out and feed on it. It takes a few weeks for them to finish their meal.

This wasp is making her nest by digging a burrow in the sand.



After she’s laid her egg and dragged the paralyzed spider inside, she’ll fill up the entrance with dirt and go about her business.

The emerald cockroach wasp, or jewel wasp, has, however, gone a bit further. She doesn’t paralyze her prey. Instead, she injects its head with a neurotoxin.



The now-docile cockroach stands quietly while the wasp bites off one (or both) of its antennae and takes hold of one of the stumps.



The wasp then leads the cockroach, which walks along obediently like a dog on a leash, back to the nest, where she lays a single egg on it.



The cockroach is still standing in the nest, unable to flee, when the wasp seals it up.

Comments

[topfashionbelt.livejournal.com]

......I don't like bugs...:(

[rose-cat.livejournal.com]

Sorry :( Did you read it anyway?

[topfashionbelt.livejournal.com]

Yes,just now, sorry about that. :(
I like your post,but I have a fear of these insects.haha

[rose-cat.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank you :) Sorry I freaked you out. Halloween is just three days away, though! (Oh, and thanks for stopping by.)

[i-want-2.livejournal.com]

My favorite are the mud daubers. They sting spiders and insects by the millions and stuff them in their adobe nests. Then there's the wasp that rides roaches like a cowboy, using the antenna like reins.

[rose-cat.livejournal.com]

Goddamn wasps. I know they're just doing their thing, but I'm pretty sure it was a happy colony of paper wasps that decimated a humongous brood of monarch caterpillars this summer.

...the wasp that rides roaches like a cowboy...

My first reaction: WTF?

My second: OMG THIS I HAVE TO SEE.

Unfortunately, it looks to me like it's just a hilarious misinterpretation of what a jewel wasp does. (If you already knew that, feel free to point and laugh.)

I'd like to see an illustration of it, though. Cowboy hat and all.

[i-want-2.livejournal.com]

Not a hilarious misinterpretation. It was on a nature documentary. The jewel wasp was the one I think did it. But I could swear it was a purple wasp. It rode the damned thing because the roach was bigger, guiding it with by its mouth alternating between the antenna and it's head. The roach wouldn't move without the wasp directing it.

[i-want-2.livejournal.com]

Or maybe the roach was small enough it walked/rode it from behind.

[rose-cat.livejournal.com]

Responding to both your comments here.

I've done a lot of googling (and found a lot of interesting stuff along the way!) and still can't find a reference to it. But I'm not saying you're nuts, honest! If you do find it, let me know, please? I'd really like to see the documentary, in any case.

Here's some neat stuff I did find:

http://www.metafilter.com/48838/Wasp-performs-roachbrainsurgery-to-make-zombie-slaveroaches A light -- very light -- post about it, which I'm including because of the hilarious comments.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2010/04/20/a-wasp-finds-the-seat-of-the-cockroach-soul/ An article from Discover Magazine which explains the process in a lot more detail than I did (or knew about, for that matter), and also details some of the research. I'm thinking of editing the post to include a link to this.

And, finally, if you're up for some real nightmare fuel, here's a video showing the entire process, from the initial life-or-death fight between the wasp and the cockroach, through injections (the wasp actually does paralyze the roach initially), leading to the nest, egg-laying, "entombment," and the hatching of the egg and everything that goes on, to the emergence of the new adult wasp. It's quite graphic, just so you know: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHsSqsqJtZg

I'd like to link this to the post as well, but I'm really not sure I should...

[i-want-2.livejournal.com]

Why would you not? This is all fascinating.

[i-want-2.livejournal.com]

That last link, the video, was funny at the end. That wasp was hell on wheels trying to get out of there. It's shaky and manic like a crackhead.

"So many roaches, so little time. Huaahhhhhhhh!" *drooling*

[rose-cat.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I thought you might like this quote (from here: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2006/02/02/the-wisdom-of-parasites/#comment-2301)

“I had a dream that I was a cockroach, and that wasp Ann Coulter stuck me with her stinger, zombified my brain, led me by pulling my antenna into her nest at Fox News, and laid her Neocon eggs on me. Soon a fresh baby College Republican hatched out, burrowed into my body, and devoured me from the inside. Ann Coulter’s designs may be intelligent, but she’s one cruel god.” – from a commenter calling themself Kafka

[i-want-2.livejournal.com]

LOL. Though, I would think the wasps would be insulted in the comparison.