VB Films/CNRS Images Media
A grasshopper was tricked into jumping into water by a hairworm that had infected it and had eaten most of its
insides. In the water, the worm left the insect to start the next portion of its life. The grasshopper drowned.
Posted on 09/06/2005 2:59:45 AM PDT by Pharmboy
VB Films/CNRS Images Media
A grasshopper was tricked into jumping into water by a hairworm that had infected it and had eaten most of its
insides. In the water, the worm left the insect to start the next portion of its life. The grasshopper drowned.
Only in science fiction do people's minds get possessed by alien beings. For grasshoppers, zombification is an everyday hazard, and it obliges them to end their lives in a bizarre manner.
Biologists have discovered and hope to decipher a deadly cross talk between the genomes of a grasshopper and a parasitic worm that infects it.
The interaction occurs as the worm induces the grasshopper to seek out a large body of water and then leap into it.
The parasite, known as a hairworm, lives and breeds in fresh water. But it spends the early part of its life cycle eating away the innards of the grasshoppers and crickets it infects.
When it is fully grown, it faces a difficult problem, that of returning to water. So it has evolved a clever way of influencing its host to deliver just one further service - the stricken grasshopper looks for water and dives in.
The suicidal behavior of the infected grasshoppers has been studied by a team of biologists from the French National Center for Scientific Research in Montpellier, France, led by Frédéric Thomas and David Biron.
They did their fieldwork around a swimming pool on the border of a forest near Avène les Bains in southern France. Hordes of infected grasshoppers - more than 100 a night - arrive at the pool during summer nights at the behest of the parasites.
The biologists captured grasshoppers before their suicidal plunge and removed the worms.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
File this one under "truth is stranger than fiction."
Think of all those poor hairworms who thirsted to death before one of them thought up this trick.
KHAAAAAN!!!!!
Night of the Living Grasshoppers...
I've often wondered how some otherwise intelligent people could vote for a democrat. They must have some sort of a 'wild hair' worm some where that makes them seek out a polling place.
"Hordes of infected grasshoppers - more than 100 a night..."
So is it 100 hordes or 100 grasshoppers? Is 100 grasshoppers a "horde"?
Whatever. It certainly gives a new meaning to the phrase "have a wild hair up your..."
Why does this story remind me of my ex-wife
That is not unusual. Women do that to men all the time.
Even the NYT is worth reading - if they would just stick with facts and science.
Wow that's amazing.
Them Intelligent Designers have a sense of humor.
It's probably worth noting that the rabies virus does much the same thing to its host. It also manipulates the host's behavior - an infected animal flies into a rage and attempts to bite virtually any other animal it encounters, which works out nicely for the rabies virus, insofar as it's spread through saliva. There is also, IIRC, a species of fluke that manipulates the behavior of the ticks it infects.
Much like the MSM who eat their readers minds and then get them to buy the stuff they advertise.
A "Zombie Bug" ping.
Saving the world one grasshopper at the time :)
Interesting, but not worth a ping to the list. We have a couple of active ID threads going already.
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