My daughter loves horror movies, including the vast zombie oeuvre. But who needs zombie fiction when, as usual, the truth is far more strange. In a real lab, real bespectacled, earnest scientists in white lab coats, found real wasps that implant their larvae in an innocent spider, which as they grow they zombify, control and then eat their spider victims. (Where’s Sigourney Weaver when you need her).
Discovery reports: “a recently discovered species of wasp is found to use the spider’s engineering prowess to it’s own advantage. Through a not yet understood chemical process, the wasps are able to, quite literally, enslave the unsuspecting spiders to build a nest for their larva, and after all that hard work, become their first meal. Sure, it seems pretty dastardly, but researchers say it’s evolution.” Whoa! Don’t believe it? Take a look at these photographs of the spider’s webs before and after zombification.
A normal web, left, compared to one built by an enslaved spider, right.
Read the whole thing…. if you dare.
