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Asked by 326nepk48 to Ed, Kerrianne, Nina, Oli, yoyehudi on 7 Nov 2017.
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Oli Wilson answered on 7 Nov 2017:
There are tonnes of parasites on all sorts of animals, including insects. Parasites are organisms that live with a host and survive by stealing its nutrients; even more interesting in my opinion are parasitoids – these are parasites that kill their hosts. There are tonnes of types of wasps that do this, and they’re amazing!
The jewel wasp, for example, paralyses cockroaches then wiggles its stinger around in the cockroach’s brain until it finds two specific, tiny areas where it wants to inject venom. This basically makes the cockroach into a zombie – next the wasp leads it into a tunnel, lays an egg on its leg, and seals it in. In time, the egg hatches and the wasp larva/baby eats the zombie cockroach before going out into the world. Lovely stuff…
But sometimes even wasp parasites aren’t safe. There’s a kind of wasp that is a parasite on oak trees, but this year scientists discovered another parasitoid wasp can attack it. This makes the bigger wasp get stuck inside the tree branches, then the parasitoid eats its way out of the big wasp’s body before escaping through its head. It’s incredible! Have a look at the video on this page: https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/01/crypt-keeper-wasps-parasites-new-species/
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Ed Bracey answered on 16 Nov 2017:
I know of a couple of parasites that can change human behaviour.
There’s one called the guinea worm that lives in your body, but needs to get into water to lay its eggs.
So it creates a painful blister on your skin that makes you think it’s burning.
You put the skin in water and the parasite pops a part of it out and releases eggs into the water!
The video is not for the faint-hearted:
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There’s another one called toxoplasma gondii, which makes you more fearless and outgoing!
It’s often found in rats and cats.
It gets into rats and mice, and causes them to be fearless.
Rather than running away from cats, they’ll go right up to them and get eaten!
That way the parasite gets into the cat and continues its lifecycle.
It’s thought that up to a third of humans have this parasite and it makes us more outgoing, and sociable.
Now that you know that, if you found out you had it, would you get rid of it?
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Oli commented on :
Oh, and it’s not like wasps are the only awesome parasite of insects and other animals – there’s a kind of zombifying fungus called Cordyceps as well. Check out this video of it attacking one of the jungle’s meanest creatures, the bullet ant! https://youtu.be/XuKjBIBBAL8
(And if you don’t believe me about the bullet ant being mean, an expert in insect stings rated it the most painful in the world, saying it caused him “pure, intense, brilliant pain… like walking over flaming charcoal with a three-inch nail embedded in your heel.” Here’s a video of an idiot putting on bullet ant gloves for a dare. https://youtu.be/it0V7xv9qu0)