Parasitic Wasp Reprograms Its Host Spider

Dan writes: "The New York Times has an article about a bizarre Costa Rican spider parasite. This tiny wasp larva forces its host, an orb spider, to do its bidding before killing it. Instead of building a normal round web, the spider spends its last night stringing together a frame. The larva then kills the spider and uses the frame to support its cocoon. The scientist who discovered the behavior still doesn't know how the parasite does it." Since this is an older article, there's probably some more recent information available about this critter.

Comments

Evolution?

[Ogerman]

It's stuff like this that makes the whole idea of evolution seem pretty silly. It would be one thing if the wasp used it's poison as a defense mechanism, but this is not a behavior needed for survival. The wasp could build its cacoon someplace else yet it "just happens" to have this instinct to attack the spider and inject precisely the right chemical, then wait around for it to build the messed up web, then kill the spider and use the ill-formed web for a specific purpose. Seems like pretty intelligent design if you ask me.