Despite my phobia, I can't stop watching videos of crickets. Here's how it works: many crickets have a parasitic worm living inside of them (horsehair worm). When the cricket is big, the worm completely takes over the cricket's brain and convinces the cricket to kill itself by jumping into water. The worm then exits the cricket's body and swims away to make a love connection with another horsehair worm. I think this is somewhat fascinating--the cricket doesn't WANT to kill itself, but the worm completely takes over the cricket's brain. Kind of a like a zombie. See for yourself. The first one is OK. The next one is kind of gross.
Friday, August 24, 2007
it's true!
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5 comments:
That is totally f'ed up. Thanks for sharing!
That thing is HUGE!!!!!!!
This happens with a lot of different creatures.
Mice eat poop that has a parasite in it. The parasite attacks the mouse's brain thus making it not afraid of cats. Cats catch, kill, eat the mouse. The parasite reproduces in the cat's stomach, poops it out and the process starts all over again.
Then there is a parasite that lives in crane's feces. The feces lands in the water, the parasite attaches to a plant until it has grown enough to attach to a tadpole. It harms the tadpole in such a way that as a frog it has 0-15 legs. This makes it impossible for the frog to jump, thus making it easier for the crane to eat it.
I saw this on the discovery channel. They showed a frog with 15 legs! Seriously. And the only reason the parasites do this is so they can live and reproduce. It is just shocking. The parasites don't add to the life cycle at all. It is amazing to me.
I saw a squashed cricket on the sidewalk today and I bent down to to see if there were any worms crawling out of it.
I told some of my coworkers about the horsehair worm, and they got pretty grossed out.
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