Frederic Libersat of Ben-Gurion University in Israel and colleagues discovered that the venom targets a specific area of the brain responsible for initiating movement. Then the wasp strikes again in the roach's head.

Unauthorized use is prohibited.įirst she injects a toxin into the roach that paralyzes its front legs. (See a video of the graphic novella 'Sting of Doom' from November 2014 National Geographic magazine.) When the female jewel wasp is ready to procreate, she finds a cockroach to serve as a living nursery for her young. ( See photos of the world's biggest, strongest webs.)īut this new web isn't for the spider: It's meant to support the cocoon that the wasp larva will build after finally killing and eating the spider. In honor of Halloween, here's a selection of a few zombie parasites.įemales of the Costa Rican wasp Hymenoepimecis argyraphaga lay their eggs on the abdomens of unlucky orb spiders called Plesiometa argyra.Īfter living off its host for a few weeks, the wasp larva injects a chemical into the spider that makes it build a strange, new kind of web, unlike anything it's built before. (See 'World War Z: Could a Zombie Virus Happen?') This strategy seems to work, she added: 'A parasite that can alter the behavior of its host, and in doing so improve its own transmission, is going to be favored by natural selection,' she said. 'Some parasites can alter the behavior of their host in ways that give the parasite a better home, or provide more nutrients, or cause the host to move to a different environment,' said Janice Moore, a biologist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. (Read 'Mindsuckers' in National Geographic magazine.) These masters of mind control manipulate their hosts from within, causing them to act in self-destructive ways that ultimately benefit the parasite. Zombies may still be a thing of fiction, but some parasites more or less turn their hosts into the walking dead.

This story was updated on October 22, 2018.

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