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
Both of these two products were recommended to me from the TDS-3 forum. I believe the topic was something like "How did I get infected in the first place"
Anyway I installed the resident program Spyware Guard and I update and run Spyware Blaster once a month or so. I have not had one piece of Spyware since.
This PC is used by several internet savvy teenagers so I think it's put to a pretty good test. (We also only use Opera browser)
"I for one still find these games, on a pure gameplay level, better than most anything out there currently."
I remember spending countless hours [not mention money] in my local arcade also but I would never say they were better than what we have now.
Somebody must agree with me or they wouldn't be becomeing extinct would they?
Funny YOU should mention Savage. He would be the only reason I would buy this. So I wouldn't miss a minute of it. He's the best.
Re:SKIPPING COMMERCIALS and REWINDING!!!
on
TiVo For Radio?
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
I don't listen to music in the car. Talk show mostly. I also drive 1 hour to work. I will totally buy this when it becomes available.
Also WTF with you getting all ruffled about me wanting to actually enjoy what i listen to while driving to work? Take a Midol "lady".
SKIPPING COMMERCIALS and REWINDING!!!
on
TiVo For Radio?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I have used Tivo now since they came out and I have fantasized many times about having this in a car radio.
What was that? I missed it. Oh I can replay it thankgoodness. (also pause while answering phone etc.)
Not to mention fast forwarding through those god-awful local advertisments.
This is exactly what I would do. But I won't have to because I won't buy a a printer that works this way.
Also I would not worry about serial numbers too much. Too much work for the overworked Wal-Mart employee...
Slashdot Mirror
yep, elsewhere.
I saw this on Real Genious years ago.
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
ok, i lied, there's some text in here...
Both of these two products were recommended to me from the TDS-3 forum. I believe the topic was something like "How did I get infected in the first place" Anyway I installed the resident program Spyware Guard and I update and run Spyware Blaster once a month or so. I have not had one piece of Spyware since. This PC is used by several internet savvy teenagers so I think it's put to a pretty good test. (We also only use Opera browser)
hahaha --same thing
Possesion is 9/10ths of the law me thinks.
Picture of the Black Hole
Picture of the Black Hole
Also a great book I read as a teenager called "The Rings of Cheron." Great Sci-Fi book as I remember it. Read it in 1 1/2 days.
"I for one still find these games, on a pure gameplay level, better than most anything out there currently."
I remember spending countless hours [not mention money] in my local arcade also but I would never say they were better than what we have now. Somebody must agree with me or they wouldn't be becomeing extinct would they?
Funny YOU should mention Savage. He would be the only reason I would buy this. So I wouldn't miss a minute of it. He's the best.
I don't listen to music in the car. Talk show mostly. I also drive 1 hour to work. I will totally buy this when it becomes available. Also WTF with you getting all ruffled about me wanting to actually enjoy what i listen to while driving to work? Take a Midol "lady".
I have used Tivo now since they came out and I have fantasized many times about having this in a car radio. What was that? I missed it. Oh I can replay it thankgoodness. (also pause while answering phone etc.) Not to mention fast forwarding through those god-awful local advertisments.
This is exactly what I would do. But I won't have to because I won't buy a a printer that works this way. Also I would not worry about serial numbers too much. Too much work for the overworked Wal-Mart employee...
I played this for hundreds of hours on the SNES.
'These people are going to hate hay on the wall - let's do it.'