Slashdot Mirror
Wasp Larvae Feed on Zombie Roaches
TheUploader writes "The story leaves nothing to embellish: The wasp, Ampulex compressa, has evolved to inject a toxin into a specific part of a roach's brain, turning it into a zombie. The wasp then leads the zombie roach into the wasp's nest, lays eggs inside it, and waits for its young to hatch, who will then go on to do the same to more roaches."
of God's Intelligent Design on Earth
Now how do we get one into Bush/Gates/[insert your favorite villain here]?
-------
1. Enjoy your job
2. Make lots of money
3. Work within the law
Choose any two.
I have fuel for my nightmares now for several more years, thanks!
12:50 - press return.
and....slashdotted...
Looks like we already have another victim of the slashdot effect... Is there a mirror of this site somewhere?
What wonderful breakfast conversation.
Anyway, I think I detect an IgNobile prize winner here.
I don't get it.
Just think about it... we'd better eradicate this species before they become a threat to our planet.
Real_men_don't_need_spacebars.
Now we know where Bill Gates got the idea!!
Looks like Slashdot already turned their server into
a zombie.
Man, I think I've been on a date with that WASP. I woke up the next morning with no money, a splitting headache and size seven poopshoot.
Electric Monkey Pants
Somewhere there's a Romero zombie rolling over in its grave. Then crawling out. And eating someone's brains.
so I'd like to say...
SUCK IT YOU FUCKING ROACHES!
I feel better now.
... so it must be real, is what a friend of mine - a theater-play director - used to say.
Ladies and gentlemen, uh, we've just lost the picture, but what we've seen speaks for itself. The Roaches have apparently been taken over -- 'conquered' if you will -- by a master race of giant space wasps. It's difficult to tell from this vantage point whether they will consume the captive earth men or merely enslave them. One thing is for certain: there is no stopping them; the wasps will soon be here. And I for one welcome our new insect overlords. I'd like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground honey caves.
... who did the same sort of thing -- well, sorta :-)
Regards
John
Falling You - beautiful
Am I the only one who concluded from the title that Windows users are roaches? Mirror here, by the way. The site has been hammered. http://www.networkmirror.com/7uNI66ZP2A2tZOHx/loom .corante.com/archives/2006/02/02/the_wisdom_of_par asites.php.html
My Linux - (L)ove (I)s (N)ever (U)tterly eXPensive
Now if we can just get them to start biting humans we'll be one step closer to the dreaded human-animal hybrids. But, it seems like bugs are smarter than humans. They realized the cockroaches will be around a lot longer than us humans, so why waste their time with us.
http://loom.corante.com.nyud.net:8090/archives/200 6/02/02/the_wisdom_of_parasites.php
Well the site appears to have been well and truly Slashdotted already. However, zombifying a creature for your own benefit isn't anything new.
I seem to recall there exists a paracite who's lifecycle consists of:
Be born in sheep shit.
Get eaten by an ant.
Zombify ant to cause it to climb grass, where it will be eaten by a sheep.
Reproduce inside digestive system of sheep.
If anyone who actually payed attention in biology classes cares to elaborate, please do!
http://loom.corante.com.nyud.net:8090/archives/200 6/02/02/the_wisdom_of_parasites.php
I spent a summer in Ecuador in a field study class. We learned about one fungus that makes its living this way: Spores enter the body of an insect where they mature into the adult fungus. This adult fungus affects the mind of the bug so that it climbs to the tippy-top of whatever tree it's on. Then, when it's at the top it just sits there while the fungus consumes its innards. Finally, when the fungus is done growing, the body of the bug breaks open, and millions of spores go floating about on the wind.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
If they'd just go around stinging the roaches, rather than being efficient enough to lead just one back to the nest to raise more of them for food, you might be able to get rid of roach problems with these wasps. Evacuate a building for a while and drop some of these wasps in there. After a certain length of time, fumigate it to kill the wasps - and voila, no more bug problem!
The wasp, Ampulex compressa, has evolved to inject a toxin...
I think you meant it was designed to inject a toxin!
This really gives new meaning to "Roach Motel" for those Ampulex Compressas... But seriously, this seems a little like an overly viscous way to give birth.
*Puts on karma-protection suit and helmet*
:P
*Turns on microphone - tweeeeeeet -*
*ahem ahem*
Ready?
Braaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiinnnsssssssss....
*Ducks*
It seems that it would be more efficient to guide the roach into its nest, where there are presumably more roaches, than to take the roach away.
That might be dangerous, though.
Even better. Here is a detailed PDF with pictures of the whole thing
"To face death, that's nothing much. But to feel really stupid when you die, well, that would be insufferable."
I actually read about this yesterday through a friend's blog. Although the main link has been ./ he posted a nice summary.
http://lifewithoutfries.blogspot.com/here.
Yes, there are ads, but I couldn't find a summary of the story anywhere else and the main site is down.
Anyone want to try to explain how THIS evolved? If evolution is a series of small mutations, how would an organism go from NOT having this ability to being able to control the roach in such a manner?
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Funny, I wasn't planning on keeping my lunch down anyways. (too much info)
Now, I need to steal some genes from this little wasp, inject them into prostitutes. Then, take over the minds of a few select politicians. Next thing you know, I've got one in the whitehouse...and..uh...
Wait a second...
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
So if they can prove it didn't originally have this, then God did what, changed his mind? Realized it wasn't perfect in the first place? But how can that be? Are you willing to change your belief on that basis?
I just sat down at my computer with a yoghurt, go to slashdot, and this is the first thing I see. Thanks, slashdot, for making my breakfast just that much more inedible.
When filling out your tax returns?
Seastead this.
There is a parasite that changes a rat's behaviour so that the rat can be hunted by a cat more easily. Some scientist report that the parasite also affects humans, for example, citing the story Parasite infection from cat shit linked to schizophrenia, T. gondii cyst infection appeared to decrease novelty seeking behaviors and reduce psycho-motor intelligence in men.
THE LOOM
February 02, 2006 The Wisdom of Parasites
Posted by Carl Zimmer
I collect tales of parasites the way some people collect Star Trek plates. And having filled an entire book with them, I thought I had pretty much collected the whole set. But until now I had somehow missed the gruesome glory that is a wasp named Ampulex compressa.
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 the
There is a group of crabs called Sacculinae, which do the same to the crabs they are parasiting on.
The sacculina is a barnacle which grows on (or rather below) other crabs, squeezing and growing its so called rhizocephalae into the body of the host crab and trying to reach the brain of the crab. After the brain is reached, the host crab turns into a zombie, reacting on each command from the sacculina, even searching for a mate for the sacculina.
The only problem is, sometimes the neurotoxin stops working and the zombie roaches wander off with my eggs. Usually into the mouth of the neighbor's cat, cause even though the neurotoxin has worn off slightly, the roach remains a bit slow and easily confused.
Also my husband sometimes forgets why the zombie roach is there and eats it. This may be funny in retrospect, but at the time it is very disheartening. What's a wasp to do?
"Anyone want to try to explain how THIS evolved? If evolution is a series of small mutations, how would an organism go from NOT having this ability to being able to control the roach in such a manner?"
Evolution involves random genetic mutations which build up over time. The individual bits of DNA (G,A,T,C) are jumbled and switched around. Thus it is, that this wasp's predecessor, Ampulex gompresst, through two such mutations, becomes Ampulex compressa. Any questions?
...isn't that what lobbyists do?
I should point out that the fungus in question might actually be a species of Cordyceps rather than Entomophthorales. There's a cool photo of a beetle that was killed by a parasitic fungus at bugguide.net.
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/02/03/wasp_perform
I'm all for comedy on Slashdot, but these evolution "debates" make us all look stupid.
May the Maths Be with you!
the roach genus is quite prolific and well distributed with only 2 or 3 considered pests. The same goes for wasps, and only a few specieses of the genus are considered pests. A whole lot more wasp species are grown as biological crop protection: the locate the caterpillar, lay an egg in it and watch while the new wasp eats its way out of the still living caterpillar. Nothing new here, except that this particular species has found a way to use the roaches power to move the body to a premade burrow instead of digging the burrow on the spot.
Unless Slashdot has a very high percentage of entymologists, I don't think it is that newsworthy for slashdot readers. BTW the submitter was flogging his own book it seems?
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
Leucochloridium paradoxum is a worm which infects snails and turns them into zombies as well. The zombie snail crawls up vegitation where it can be seen by birds and the parasite causes the snails eye stalks to extend and pulsate to atract birds.
d oxum.htm
The birds then eat the eye stalks and become infected themselves. The worms lay eggs in the bird's digestive system and they are then spread by the birds excrement which the snails eat thus repeating the cycle of life for the parasite.
Rather creepy stuff.
http://people.smu.edu/eheise/Leucochloridium_para
burnin
Here is a very good explanation based on 60+ years of research into this wasp.
B .2003b.pdf
The venom makes the roach become lethargic, whereby the wasp leads the roach by the antenna, much like a 'ruphie' type effect. It is not mind control.
http://www.bgu.ac.il/life/Faculty/Libersat/pdf/JN
We would do well to follow its lead, and gain the wisdom of parasites There are already human parasites. They are called paparazzi.
Brittany Spears, Ashlee Simpson, Mariah Carey and J-Lo pretty much prove this exists in the dominate species as well.
People have been using this same technique with Microsoft OS based computers for years now. Research suggests there is no direct linkage between techniques although they are almost identical in practice. Scientists not yet sure which came first: The roach or the rube.
Happy weekend!
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
This is the most sophisticated parasitic routine I have ever heard of, AFAICR. But I was reminded of David Attenborough's BBC TV series "Life in the Undergrowth", which I recently watched - it's available on DVD in the UK, and according to Amazon will be released in the USA at the beginning of May. That contains a few similar examples, including a small wasp whose grub parasitizes living spiders - the biter bit. Strongly recommended, like everything by "Whispering Dave".
Until he explained it, I did not know that wasps were among the oldest of insects, and that both ants and bees were descended from primitive wasps. That set me thinking about cockroaches, which also go back to the dawn of land life. I wondered whether they were, unlike most other bugs, immune to attack by wasps. I guess this article answers that question pretty decisively.
Ever wonder how you would cope with wasps the size of a human being? I know it should be physically impossible, but it's too good a scary idea to give up. "The Furies", by Keith Roberts, is a very good SF novel on that theme, which - unlike many such books - hasn't dated since the 1960s. To quote a review on amazon.co.uk, the Furies are "wasps with a 2 meter wingspan and mandibles like bolt-cutters". And, of course, they hunt in packs...
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
I for one welcome our new Voodoo Wasp overlords.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
that reminded me of an article by Sapolsky in the Scientific American of March 2003 called "bugs in the brain". a pdf version is here. which then led me to read "a primates memoire". haven't looked at other animals/organisms the same since.
Hmmm, snips of their antennae and uses the stubs to lead them around? That sounds familiar...
Remote controlled roaches
Although I think that roaches will eventually rise up and rebel using their roach controlled robots.
The original paper can be found here. It actually dates from 2003. Despite my weak biology background, I found it very readable.
They also describe an interesting middle phase of the wasp attack which was not mentioned in the summary: after the brain injection, the roach furiously "grooms" itself for 30 minutes. They also note that the zombie behavior takes about 30 mins to take hold. Thus there's a possibility that the intense "itch" in the cockroach keeps it in the same place until its escape reflex has been fried.
ENOUGH with the ethnic slurs already!
http://outcampaign.org/
Works on Boing Boing
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
...and people called him "Crazy".
Now, if only I could do that to women, I might actually stand a chance of reproducing.
If you are going to the rainforest or even considering it, it is a good idea to pick up a good guide os you know what you are looking at. Me and my wife spent our honeymoon in the rainforests of 3 countries and I swear the only animal common in all 3 was human.
from one of my favorite authors, Peter Watts. He writes hard as hell sf, which includes behavioral modification in this manner. His first two novels are schedluled to be reprinted soon, but until then he has made them available for free in basic tect or pdf form, all downloadable, on his website http://rifters.com/ red the right hand column on the newscrawl section too, it's very much like /. in topics.
The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it. - William Gibson
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.
This reminds me of a social dynamic between human employees and employers:
1. Employer doesn't want to kill the employee: check.
2. Employer doesn't want to paralize the employee: check.
3. Employer delicately takes away employee's self-motivation: check.
I bet the stuff about oxygen and metabolism is true as well.
Brrraaaaiiiinnnssss Brrraaaiiinnnsss bbbrrraaaaiiinnnsss ARRRRgggggghhh!!!!!!!!!!
Finally "we" understand it all. Christ was never crucified - instead he was turned into a zombie - and didn't need to be resurrected.
Equal satirical treatment for Christains and Muslims alike ;)
are very informative and readable. I just finished "At the Waters Edge" and I must say that as a layman it really expanded my knowledge about evolution. The whole "no transitional fossils" line from creationists is just so much crap and it doesn't take much exposure to paleontology to see that. I read that the book that Zimmer wrote as a companion to the PBS series "Evolution" is going to be re-released with some additions and updated information. If you are looking for a good starter book on evolution I recommend it.
Karl Rove can do the same thing with a few choice images in the background of a political ad...
There is no evolution, don't you know?
Intelligent design guides all such outcomes.
So it is written.....
By definition, the paprazzi want to photograph celebs. Any ressemblence between a celeb and a human is purely coincidental.
The slugs eat the parasite eggs that are on the surfaces of leaves. The eggs hatch inside the slug, and the parasite takes over the slug, making it climb to the tops of leaves. The parasite even extends part of itself into the slug's antennae, making them swell and pulse (it's gross as shit).
The movement is designed to attract birds, which will eat the slug (and parasite).
The parasite matures inside the digestive tract of the bird, and lays its eggs in there.
The bird poops, and the poop has the parasite eggs in it. If the poop lands on anything a slug might eat....
I just didn't know about this sophisticated method of victim kidnapping.
The ones we have here are entirely green though -- no brownish leg. Come to think, it might be a relative, not Ampulex Compressa. But it is otherwise identical, metallic green and all (huh, "green hornet"?)
We have walls of apparent brick here; they can build a kind of tomb between the bricks (with mud and saliva?).
Kinda like this:Only problem is those tubes are the size of full-grown woman's middle finger -- not enough to fit a cockroach inside... at least, the ones we have here.
NB: This lameness filter sucks.
... Sony Corporation denies it has been using the knowledge to develop a "cerebral root kit" in an attempt to "attract" new customers to its music division..
Off to play some StarCraft...
For those of us that have actually been outside anywhere in North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa or Asia, this shouldn't be news:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicada_killer_wasp
These wasps do the same thing as the species you mention here, but to Cicadas rather than roaches. Growing up in Texas we saw these all the time -- very impressive animals. They're rumored to have inspired the alien from "Alien".
Looks like someone was reading JWZ@LJ...
http://jwz.livejournal.com/
-bZj
.sig
[quote]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.[/quote]
I wonder how many governments are funding research on this now?
[quote]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.[/quote]
Maybe NASA should study them also?
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
Prove it or gtfo
I, for one, welcome our new wasp larvae overlords.
swanker than you
There are already human parasites.
They are also called "children".
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
turns out it was just the eggs hatching !
"Toxoplasma is one of a number of parasites which require alteration of host's behaviour for their life cycle[1]. The changes observed are likely due to the presence of cysts in the brain, which produce or induce production of a neurotransmitter, possibly dopamine[2], therefore acting similarly to dopamine reuptake inhibitor type antidepressants. A slightly increased car accident rate, and reaction time slowed by a few percent have been observed (specifically, the infected lose concentration more quickly than the controls in the second and third minute)[3]. "If our data are true then about a million people a year die just because they are infected with toxoplasma," the researcher Jaroslav Flegr told The Guardian[4]. The data shows that the risk decreases with time after infection, however all older drivers are generally able to compensate for longer reaction time[5]. Ruth Gilbert, medical coordinator of the European Multicentre Study on Congenital Toxoplasmosis, told BBC News Online these findings could be due to chance, or due to social and cultural factors associated with toxoplasma infection[6]. Studies argue about the influence of the parasite on personality. There are claims of toxoplasma causing antisocial attitude in men and promiscuity[7] (or even signs of higher intelligence[8]) in women, and greater susceptibility to schizophrenia and manic depression[9] in all infected persons. A review of research focused on the schizophrenia connection confirms an association but does not confirm a causal relationship [10]."
Maybe women like cats because their toxoplasmosis infections make them smarter! Or maybe it's just because women can identify with creatures that are obsessed with their appearance, are impossible to understand, predict, or order around, and look down their nose in scorn at all of the huffing and panting and howling and slobbering we direct at them...
A-Bomb
I wonder what the street value of the wasp toxin would be. I bet that shit would fuck you up.
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!!
plus a little more at the end
In Soviet Russia, backwards is everything.
http://www.mjt.org/exhibits/stinkant.html
real?
unreal?
Charles Fort would have been proud.
I for one welcome our new wasp overlords.
dont forget the x-wives
Evolution works both ways. Just de-optimize them. Run a breeding program where the wasps that have a high failure rate of getting the roaches back to the nest are allowed to live while you kill off the wasps that are efficient.
Seastead this.
I will buy Microsoft. I will buy Microsoft. I will buy Microsoft....
Table-ized A.I.
Hello, this has been floating around for at least two days - why is it worthy of front page news here and now?
There's a species that infects the mind of man, enslaving them for reproductive purposes.
It's called woman.
You know, this might explain the behavior of people in suburbia. They seem to behave like zombies and sort of stiffly walk around doing what each other is already doing. So I'm thinking there must be some parasite that is turning them into zombies and controlling them, we just have to figure out what it is.
This is just an early form of marriage.
...that WASP Larvae feed on custodial accounts!
Here's some more ....
Dermatobia hominis, or Torsalo, or Human Botfly is a type of moth whose larvae live inside human flesh. The female doesn't lay her eggs directly on a human host by herself. Instead, she "captures" a female mosquito, places some eggs on the mosquito and then releases her. As soon as the mosquito reaches a mammal and starts feeding, the heat from the host activates the eggs which hatch and then burrow into the wound that the mosquito just created. Since the larvae needs to breath, it will maintain a small airhole leading to the surface of the skin.
Removal of the larvae is performed in several ways: (1) Just let it grow until it falls out, (2) surgical removal, or (3) suffocate it out - By using camphor or superglue, it is possible to block the airhole, which will drive the larvae to the surface. Then with the appropriate application of pressure, the larvae can be forced out of the host (usually shooting 6-10 feet in the process).
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
This natural evolution reminds me of the American Plutocracy, where politicos and meda figures combine to turn once-thinking people into zombies so the resulting offspring serve the colony.
(Turn off your TV. Don't tell me about how the scifi channel is equivalent to books, drone.)
Thanks. I got lots of good ideas for the nanobot lab in my basement. You'll be hearing about some of my creations real soon now. (You might want to wear a helmet for the next, say, 250 years.)
Wasp (guy) injects neurotoxins (buys cocktails) into cockroach's brain (for a hot chick) turning it (her) into a zombie (an easy hot chick) and then leads it (her) back to it's nest (bachelor pad), lays eggs inside it (screws her without a rubber), and waits for eggs to hatch (shotgun wedding!).
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
There's a rather good episode of Dr. Who (with Tom Baker) about The Wirran, in which aliens lay their eggs in a human(+/oid) host. He mentions the appropriate genus of wasp. Alien was ripped from this IMHO. As was The Matrix - a disgraceful rip of a different Dr. Who series, again starring Tom Baker. But, that's another thread.
shin phantomflanflinger
Take a look at this skinworm infecting people in Mafikeng. FTFA:
"People come to clinics complaining that their body is itching. Within three days small sores develop. A yellow spot then develops from each sore as it gets ripe. Once the sore is expressed a worm comes out of it."
Ripe sores. Now thats entertainment.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
Here's to hopeing i evolve soon. It would make getting laid so much easier. "Excuse me... is that your car on fire" Then she turns around... I inject my toxin into her brain... take her home...
Zombie baby... Sweet sweet zombie sexy time.
here in nyc
Yes, but can the roach run linux?
There was a previous discussion about this one on my message board.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
... for now.
Of Code And Men
...jumping up and telling us all that this behaviour can be seen in human beings too, in social democrats and other parasitic creatures who paralyze the brains of the worthy through the toxic sting of public education and/or quaint concepts of "morality" so that they can be led like a dog in a leash away from their fundamental right of participation in a free market!
I want to play Free Market with a drowning Libertarian.
as parasites on cows
won't someone think of the roach children?!!?
Funny, I've found another example!
Wasp (girl) injects neurotoxins (possibility of sex) into cockroach's brain (single heterosexual male) turning it (him) into a zombie (a single heterosexual male who thinks he's going to get some) and then leads it (him) back to it's nest (parents house), lays eggs inside it (marriage), and waits for eggs to hatch (slow and painful death!).
What's the difference between this and the way humans grow animals which are later slaughtered for food. Are humans natural parasites?
The story leaves nothing to embellish: The wasp, Americanus Conservatoris, has evolved to inject a toxin into a specific part of a Republicans
brain, turning it into a zombie. The wasp then leads the Republican into the wasp's nest, lays Prophecy inside it, and waits for its young to
hatch, who will then go on to do the same to more Republicans.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Likewise, the grandparent's argument implies there IS a reason for suffering. Western religions are populated by such a bunch of crybaby four year olds.
Suffering just is. There's always something. The buddha noticed it two hundred years BC and noticed it's inescapable. But in the east, they don't assume some single creature is doing it deliberately; after all, it's not like it really matters.
He also noticed WE make the suffering worse but sitting there bitching about how wrong and unfair it all is, and going "Why? Why? Why?".
Thirdly he noticed we can make it quite a bit better.
Last he said the way to make it better is to quit wishing for things to be different. Once we give up these desires, suffering vanishes.
Westerners should think about these ideas more. At least it would be quieter.
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
Isn't this just similar to how people recruit an audience for an infomercial?
tone
tone
before wasp ( . )
after wasp ( o )
same detection
before wasp ( . )
after wasp ( O )
I could almost swear the (leader of the) east is ruled by wasps; isn't there a similar movie about it ?
oh my, Here come these "I bow to our (alien) wasp masters" jokes again ... ;)
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
And did they commit the original sin?
I had a dream that I was a cockroach, and that wasp Ann Coulter stuck me with her stinger, zombified my brain, led me by pulling my antenna into her nest at Fox News, and laid her Neocon eggs on me. Soon a fresh baby College Republican hatched out, burrowed into my body, and devoured me from the inside. Ann Coulter's designs may be intelligent, but she's one cruel god.
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
Except the wasp, FTFA, doesn't lay the eggs inside. It lays an egg outside, and the lava eats its way into the roach.
Hmmm... The guy's seed is "layed" only somewhat inside, and works its way further in?
Almost works...
First zombie dogs, now zombie cockroaches! Now that my pets AND my pests have been zombified, I await for my own impending zombie future.
My college voodoology teacher would be proud
Sacculina
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
When life is viewed as a test for an afterlife, disease, paracitism and all kinds of worldly horrors can be explained away just fine. Life itself is not precious for a God who has power over life and death.
Not that such beliefs need logical explanations. Just bend over when the priest asks you to.
Dicrocoelium dendriticum (a type of liver fluke) has been known to do this for a long time. One of its life stages is ingested by an ant and at some point causes the ant to climb up onto the tips of grasses and grab on (with its mandibles) to the tip of the grass blade. Then when certain grazing animals (such as sheep) come by they inadvertently consume the ant and the grazer can then become infected. There are lots of other freak-stories in any parasitology book -- check one out at your local library!
Fugus attacking insects is pretty common actually. Cordyceps spp do this. We get some fine [herbal chinese] meds from a few such as C. senensis. Another that is really interesting is C. subsessilis which is also known as Tolypocladium inflatum from which we get cyclosporin.
This is a whole new field actually - fungal control of insects. There are a few patents out and undoubtably this will be a nice growth area. Perhaps we can even get rid of the nasty pesticides we have used in the past under the mis-idea that chemistry will pave the way to a brave new world devoid of human pathogens. Our hospitals have been busy breeding a whole raft of really nasty critters by following this mantra.
> The larva grows inside the roach, devouring the organs of its host, for about eight days.
The wasp then dies, painfully, of food poisoning.
Max.
...filthy, slimey, utterly self-serving
die bitch...next!
This is the exact same mechanism used in art schools to keep attendance up:
"Wow, you're a great artist, kid."
"How would you know?"
"I'm an art teacher."
"Wow, really? And you think I'm good?"
"Yes, good enough to be an art teacher one day."
Then they lead them into the art school... it's shockingly ugly.
Windows XP SP2 told me to install third-party software that prevents viruses and protects stability... I chose Ubuntu
I for one, welcome our Wasp/Zombie overlords.
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
A practical way for slashdoters to reproduce.
I suggest you actually look at the rest of the site and see the blurring of the line between the real and unreal. That was Charles Fort's whole point... never trust the adherents to any priesthood, no matter how polished their presentation. The Museum of Jurassic Technology is an exploration and physical manifestation of that concept.
It's the sin that causes imperfection. The original Design was perfect, but God allowed freedom of choice, and humankind chose imperfection. Hence the nature evolves to reflect that imperfection. In this case, we chose to ignore the Creator.
Come to think of it, the true fitness function in natural evolution is destruction and death. Survival of the fittest is nothing more than a futile attempt to fight against destruction. In the end, everything gets destroyed.
I remember watching a nature program of animals trying their best to survive in a drought. At the peak, only the strongly adapted survives, but eventually, everything dies. The fitness function of the drought was death. The adaptation was nothing more than short-lived attempt to prolong the survival. Instead of a period of drought, think of thousands of years of survival of generations of species. They will evolve the best way they can to pass on their genes in order to fight against total annihilation.
Natural Evolution is not a creative process. People say sun is the energy source that created life. That's not true. Think of a steam engine. You increase thermal energy, and the engine runs. Does the thermal energy make the engine? No, it only makes it run. Evolution is nothing more than a process of life adapting to the destructive fitness function. It doesn't create a fitness function. Energy only gives the necessary fuel for the adaptation. Not creation. Life forms can either just give up and die, or fight by evolving in futility. But the end result is death either way. Pretty meaningless.
Are you trying your best to survive in a rat-race that goes downhill, or do you hold on to the truth, and let God guide you through your life?
That suffering is somehow always evil and to be avoided.
I beg to differ with you... at least in the Judeo-Christian mythology, suffering is a quality of the good. If you didn't suffer, you would likely be evil, (though, in the much rarer cases, blessed).
The Admin and the Engineer
This is exactly why I rejected both established science and established religion, because of their dogmas and circular arguments to support their dogmas.
What you are saying is that something (intelligence and reason) came out of nothing. Well then what is this nothing, that everything evolved from?
A circular argument that science ignores is: they have their "big bang" theory, it was all one big ball of s**t, that went boom, and wow we have galaxies, stars, planets, and life. The question still is where did the big ball of s**t come from? The scientific sleight of hand again, explaining a process and pretending that it is a cause. If you make the process explanation big enough, and put it far enough back in time, maybe no one will notice that the essential question still has not been answered. What caused this, and if part of this process outcome resulted in intelligence, then what is the supporting evidence, that no part of the cause was intelligent?
If you are truly scientific you will have imperial evidence for this claim, or else there is no basis for the statement that there is no intelligence behind the evolutionary process.
What I see here is no difference between the Grand Pubahs or Big Kunahs of the scientific world today, and the Grand Pubahs or Big Kunahs of religion in the 1500s. They each had / have dogmas and if you contradict their dogmas then you will be burned at the stake. Dogma of course is a position that is not supported by empirical evidence and reason.
Most recent case of burning at the stake that I remember was Pons and Fleischman. A classic case of today's scientific closed mindedness, because they could not reproduce the same results, instead of asking themselves, what is different about our set-up that may be an unanticipated causal factor, it was easier to call Pons and Fleischman frauds and liars. This is scientific?
Because science still cannot answer the big question, by producing imperial evidence that supports either it is so, or it is not so, they resort to dogma, it is not so because we say so. Apart from being dogmatic, the only other similarity that I see between today's science and religion, is they both seem to agree that order came out of chaos, and something came out of nothing, neither seems to dispute this, but also neither one gives a satisfactory explanation for how this happened.
I know, why don't we just ignore it, or pretend that we already know the answer, even we have no evidence to support that position. Is this is science, or is this dogma? There was a man from Persia about 150 years ago who said "Religion without science is superstition, and science without religion is dead materialism", I believe Albert Einstein said something similar, "I think that science without religion is lame and, conversely, that religion without science is blind."
I did.
(signed) The Secrete Metamodder.