God hates cockroaches
Thursday February 02, 2006; part of: Science without worms

and the proof, via Carl Zimmer is in some research in the Journal of Neurobiology. They want $25 to read it, so I am relying on Zimmer's summary here. There is a species of wasp, Ampulex compressa, which lays its eggs in cockroaches. So far, nothing unusual. There are several species of wasp which paralyse their prey before planting eggs in them. But this wasp merely zombifies its victim cockroach: in the language of the paper The wasp Ampulex compressa injects a cocktail of neurotoxins into the brain of its cockroach prey to induce an enduring change in the execution of locomotory behaviors. It stings it precisely in the head in such a way as to abolish its fear reflex. Somehow the sting contains a venom which renders the cockroach completely docile, if rather sluggish.

The stung and zombified cockroach can then walk on its own legs, tugged by the wasp that pulls at its antenna, into the wasp's burrow, where it is immured for the little baby waspling to burrow into and devour alive in the normal way.

The scientists involved have been looking at cockroach neurons to find out how the neurotoxins work, but when I think about the story,. what I find most remarkable is the wasp's behaviour. How are those instructions stored in its tiny brain?

Posted by andrewb at February 02, 2006 03:18 PM
Comments

That's nothing. What I want to know is, how did Arthur Guinness learn the same trick?

R

Posted by: RupertG on February 2, 2006 09:25 PM

Louise gets you home by pulling one antenna? Much is explained.

Posted by: acb on February 3, 2006 08:09 AM

If God hates the cockroach, then he must love A. compressa. But then that wasp devours the imago, or adult. What can the Almighty think of the Evanoidea, wasps who lay their eggs in roach oothecas and whose larvae devour the roach-eggs? If we take as our model the Amercian Christian right, who are enthusiasts for the capital punishment of adults but enraged at the abortion of even a just-fertilised ovum, A. compressa is numbered among the Elect whilst the Evanoidea will roast in hell. But then your theological knowledge doubtless outstrips my own, so I leave the matter to you to puzzle out, perhaps with an assist from Donald Quicke and Lord Carey.

Posted by: Mrs Tilton on February 3, 2006 12:47 PM

Remember Attenborough's spider series? the one I liked was the grub which is laid, as an egg, on a spider, and then sucks juice out of it for a couple of months.
Then, when it's ready to pupate, it injects a hormone into the spider, and the spider promptly stops spinning webs, and creates a sort of coccoon in which the grub can pupate.

I checked the press release but that doesn't seem to be one they indexed. Pity!

:-)

Posted by: gkewney on February 3, 2006 10:47 PM

Life in the Undergrowth is the Attenborough thing. It's quite the most horrifying piece of television I've ever seen. My conclusion was that all wasps are evil. Never did I think I'd pity the cockroach.

Posted by: qB on February 7, 2006 09:28 PM

Funny - you use this to demonstrate how God hates roaches, and I use it to demonstrate how there ain't no God. So..

Posted by: Charles on March 22, 2006 10:08 PM

Ah, Charles, yours is a demonstration of apophatic theology. God is like the selfish gene -- just as true and important even if all the words used to describe him, or his existence, are changed for their opposites.

Posted by: acb on March 23, 2006 07:59 AM

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