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Full Version: [News] Wasps make zombie roaches
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| As an adult, Ampulex compressa seems like your normal wasp, buzzing about and mating. But things get weird when it's time for a female to lay an egg. She finds a cockroach to make her egg's host, and proceeds to deliver two precise stings. The first she delivers to the roach's mid-section, causing its front legs buckle. The brief paralysis caused by the first sting gives the wasp the luxury of time to deliver a more precise sting to the head. The wasp slips her stinger through the roach's exoskeleton and directly into its brain. She apparently use ssensors along the sides of the stinger to guide it through the brain, a bit like a surgeon snaking his way to an appendix with a laparoscope. She continues to probe the roach's brain until she reaches one particular spot that appears to control the escape reflex. She injects a second venom that influences these neurons in such a way that the escape reflex disappears. From the outside, the effect is surreal. The wasp does not paralyze the cockroach. In fact, the roach is able to lift up its front legs again and walk. But now it cannot move of its own accord. The wasp takes hold of one of the roach's antennae and leads it--in the words of Israeli scientists who study Ampulex--like a dog on a leash. The zombie roach crawls where its master leads, which turns out to be the wasp's burrow. The roach creeps obediently into the burrow and sits there quietly, while the wasp plugs up the burrow with pebbles. Now the wasp turns to the roach once more and lays an egg on its underside. The roach does not resist. The egg hatches, and the larva chews a hole in the side of the roach. In it goes. The larva grows inside the roach, devouring the organs of its host, for about eight days. It is then ready to weave itself a cocoon--which it makes within the roach as well. After four more weeks, the wasp grows to an adult. It breaks out of its cocoon, and out of the roach as well. Seeing a full-grown wasp crawl out of a roach suddenly makes those Alien movies look pretty derivative. I find this wasp fascinating for a lot of reasons. For one thing, it represents an evolutionary transition. Over and over again, free-living organisms have become parasites, adapting to hosts with exquisite precision. If you consider a full-blown parasite, it can be hard to conceive of how it could have evolved from anything else. Ampulex offers some clues, because it exists in between the free-living and parasitic worlds. Amuplex is not technically a parasite, but something known as an exoparasitoid. In other words, a free-living adult lays an egg outside a host, and then the larva crawls into the host. One could easily imagine the ancestors of Ampulex as wasps that laid their eggs near dead insects--as some species do today. These corpse-feeding ancestors then evolved into wasps that attacked living hosts. Likewise, it's not hard to envision an Ampulex-like wasp evolving into full-blown parasitoids that inject their eggs directly into their hosts, as many species do today. And then there's the sting. Ampulex does not want to kill cockroaches. It doesn't even want to paralyze them the way spiders and snakes do, since it is too small to drag a big paralyzed roach into its burrow. So instead it just delicately retools the roach's neural network to take away its motivation. Its venom does more than make roaches zombies. It also alters their metabolism, so that their intake of oxygen drops by a third. The Israeli researchers found that they could also drop oxygen consumption in cockroaches by injecting paralyzing drugs or by removing the neurons that the wasps disable with their sting. But they can manage only a crude imitation; the manipulated cockroaches quickly dehydrated and were dead within six days. The wasp venom somehow puts the roaches into suspended animation while keeping them in good health, even as a wasp larva is devouring it from the inside Scientists don't yet understand how Ampulex manages either of these feats. Part of the reason for their ignorance is the fact that scientists have much left to learn about nervous systems and metabolism. But millions of years of natural selection has allowed Ampulex to reverse engineer its host. We would do well to follow its lead, and gain the wisdom of parasites. |
There are also parasites that coerce infected slugs to climb on top of plants and make there fealers thicken, move and pulsate with colors, so birds have an easy grab on them and get infected themselves. 
But the zombified roaches were allso my favourit exsample of mindcontroll througout my studies
But the zombified roaches were allso my favourit exsample of mindcontroll througout my studies
Whoa. Interesting... Time to get cracking using some of this info. Very, very disturbing and interesting ideas...
Wow... That is SOOO COOL!! Thanks a ton for sharing it!! During one of my student jobs I studied parasitoid wasps and flies that predated upon catepillars. Very cool to watch. The little catepillar would climb to the top of the petri dish and stop there. You'd see these faint, white lines inside and all of a sudden they'd start pushing out of the catepillar's skin!! They'd form some sort of cocoon webbing over the body and themselves and hang out for a bit until they hatched as full grown wasps. It was *VERY* neat (although the catepillars didn't seem to enjoy it much).
Thanks again.
Thanks again.
And the street sam asks the Spanish-speaking decker, "What the frag is a Los Plagas?"
Interesting story.
Interesting story.
Whoa, never read that one, interesting article/link, Frank.
Fuck the tinfoil hat, now I want a 100% sterileroom... Assuming it's not too late.
As an aside, it occurs to me that Aztechnology would find it easy to reverse-engineer Ampulex, figure out how to apply the process that robs someone of self-motivation to humans, and then start doing that en masse to it's workers. Implant them with a cyberchip that gives them the directions to continue working...
Gives the term "Cyberzombie" a whole new meaning, eh?
As an aside, it occurs to me that Aztechnology would find it easy to reverse-engineer Ampulex, figure out how to apply the process that robs someone of self-motivation to humans, and then start doing that en masse to it's workers. Implant them with a cyberchip that gives them the directions to continue working...
Gives the term "Cyberzombie" a whole new meaning, eh?
Thats just what persona-fix-BTLs do. No nead for anything else. Sad thing is, the workers "best before" date might be severly reduced by 24/7 chipping, allso imagin how many new stuffers the pr would have to throw out underprized, just to cover the bed press!
There are more easy ways to controll baseline workers and the premium wagers are generally to precious to frag there brains like that.
Edited for less bad words
There are more easy ways to controll baseline workers and the premium wagers are generally to precious to frag there brains like that.
Edited for less bad words
Ooh, nifty.
| QUOTE (MK Ultra) |
| Thats just what persona-fix-BTLs do. No nead for anything else. Sad thing is, the workers "best before" date might be severly reduced by 24/7 chipping, allso imagin how many new stuffers the pr would have to throw out underprized, just to cover the bed press! There are more easy ways to controll baseline workers and the premium wagers are generally to precious to frag there brains like that. Edited for less bad words |
Yeah, offer them free internet and all the booze they can drink during company sponsored happy hours...
Bread and Games 
Aztechnology add campaign:
Days without accident: 332
Days without free thought: 332
coincidence?
Days without accident: 332
Days without free thought: 332
coincidence?
| QUOTE (ShadowDragon8685) |
| Fuck the tinfoil hat, now I want a 100% sterileroom... Assuming it's not too late. As an aside, it occurs to me that Aztechnology would find it easy to reverse-engineer Ampulex, figure out how to apply the process that robs someone of self-motivation to humans, and then start doing that en masse to it's workers. Implant them with a cyberchip that gives them the directions to continue working... Gives the term "Cyberzombie" a whole new meaning, eh? |
As long as your paranoid you’re safe.
Once your not you don’t much care.
The medical implications of this are significant but reverse engineering it to work on humans would be very difficult, mammalian brains are far more complex than insect as is basic biology, still the potential utility in suspended animation surgery is significant.
I doubt it will see high speed zombie slave making application. The delicacy of affecting small sections of the human brain and the presence and refinement of already developed mind softening drugs delivered buy simple injection make it unworthy the effort and risk.
Edward
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