Parasites That Can Control Insect Minds

Ant writes to tell us that NewScientist is running an article about an interesting parasite that apparently has the power to 'brainwash' its host. From the article: "The parasitic Nematomorph hairworm (Spinochordodes tellinii) develops inside land-dwelling grasshoppers and crickets until the time comes for the worm to transform into an aquatic adult. Somehow mature hairworms brainwash their hosts into behaving in way they never usually would - causing them to seek out and plunge into water."

Comments

There is also a jungle fungus that does this

[lawpoop]

In a field study trip in Ecuador, we learned about a fugus that, as a spore, infects an insect and corrupts their nervous system, causing them to crawl to the top of whatever plant/tree they are on top of. Then, at the top, the fungus consumes the insect, while it is still clining to the branch. Then, the insect shell bursts open, spreading out spores from the upper canopy.

VERY scary, very science fiction. What if this happened to people, but the behavior was at least passable, until it was 'too late'?

Re:There is also a jungle fungus that does this

[Anonymous Coward]

I saw it in a BBC documentary once(where else?). The mushroom grew right out of the ant's head. And apparently the ant can scream so loud even humans can hear it.
Here's one description(source:
http://www.mjt.org/exhibits/stinkant.htm)

Our planet's rain forests - rich matrices of life which exist primarily in tropical regions - provide us with unique opportunity to observe life in all of its manifold and perplexing beauty. Most rain forests date back some two to three hundred million years. This extreme age has allowed many unusual and complex relationships to develop among the inhabitants of these tropical ecosystems.
In the rain forest of the Cameroon in West Central Africa lives a floor dwelling ant known as Megaloponera foetens, or more commonly, the stink ant. This large ant - one of the very few to produce a cry audible to the human ear - lives by foraging for food among the fallen leaves and undergrowth of the extraordinarily rich rain forest floor.

On occasion one of these ants, while looking for food is infected by inhaling a microscopic spore from a fungus of the genus Tomentella. After being inhaled, the spore seats in the ant's tiny brain and begins to grow, causing changes in the ant's patterns of behavior. The Ant appears troubled and confused; for the first time in its life the ant leaves the forest floor and begins to climb.

Driven on by the growth of the fungus, the ant embarks on a long and exhaustive climb. Completely spent and having reached a prescribed height, the ant impales the plant with its mandibles. Thus affixed, the ant waits to die. Ants that have met their ends in this fashion are quite common in some sections of the forest.

The fungus continues to consume first the nerve cells and finally all the soft tissue that remains of the ant. After approximately two weeks a spike appears from what had been the head of the ant. This spike is about an inch and a half in length and has a bright orange tip heavy with spores which rain down onto the rain forest floor for other unsuspecting ants to inhale.

What about cat parasites controlling humans?

[tyroneking]

Basically, a parasite in cats passes to humans and a research study revealed that...
"...women infected with toxoplasma spent more money on clothes and were consistently rated as more attractive. "We found they were more easy-going, more warm-hearted, had more friends and cared more about how they looked," he said. "However, they were also less trustworthy and had more relationships with men." "By contrast, the infected men appeared to suffer from the "alley cat" effect: becoming less well groomed undesirable loners who were more willing to fight. They were more likely to be suspicious and jealous. "They tended to dislike following rules," Flegr said."
Here's the first link I could find that refers to the story I first read in the UK Times a while back (the link to the Times in the blog is broken but the best bit of the Times story was some suggestion that this parasite might explain the behaviour of the cat-loving French): http://althouse.blogspot.com/2005/06/have-cats-aff ected-your-brain-yet.html
and another to the Guardian (UK) on a similar vein: http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/thisweek/story/0,12 977,1048642,00.html
CATS MUST BE STOPPED!

No, it's science.

[Colin Smith]

It's quite common for parasites to change a host's behaviour. There are parasites which change the behaviour of their human hosts.

e.g.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/thisweek/story/0,12 977,1048642,00.html

There are others.

More discussions and ant parasites...

[antdude]

I posted this on my ant message board as well in this thread. It has more comments.

Ants have parasites as well according to this thread/discussion : "There is a parasite that cause behavioural change in ants. It's called lancet fluke. The parasitized ants become "ant zombies". They're influenced to cling to grass, until eventually eaten by herbivores. I sometimes find decapitated ant heads clinging to grasses. These may well be such cases."

Re:Why the article?

[poopdeville]

Newton didn't discover gravity. You might be surprised to know that people weren't floating around the planet before 1600. Really, it's true. Newton discovered a simple mathematical model that describes the workings of gravity (i.e., the mechanism by which it works).