September 6, 2005
Bizarre Hairworm Reproduction Strategies
First of all, I would just like to say that I knew about this ages ago and if you're interested in finding out even more about the hairworm and other strange organisms, JUST YOU WAIT, becasue "Even More Bizarre Earthlife Reproduction Strategies" by yours truely and Stuart Crawford will be out any day now, that is, any day we get around to starting it....but it will be done soon, by Christmas.
So, the worms, they are aquatic, but they infest grasshoppers, no one knows how, and they slowly eat them and grow and grow. They somehow create protines that cause the grasshopper to only eat what it wants the grasshopper to eat. THEN, when the grasshopper is but a head and an exoskeleton, and the worm is litterally four times the length of the grasshopper, the worm causes the grasshopper to jump into a body of water, so the worm can escape, which it does, and the grasshopper drowns. AMAZING! You can see the grasshopper poised for suicide in the picture.
They also mention another awesome reproduction strategy, that of a wasp that parasitizes an orb-weaving spider in Costa Rica.
"The night before the wasp larva kills its host, it somehow reprograms the spider's web-building activity so that instead of its usual temporary web, the spider constructs a durable platform ideal for the larva to pupate on.
Somehow the larva reprograms the spider into executing, over and over again, just the first two steps in a five-step subroutine from the early phase of web-building.
If the larva is removed just before it can kill its host, the orb weaver will spin a platform-style web that and the following night, but revert to its usual web on the third night, as if it has shaken off some mesmerizing chemical the wasp has injected into its nervous system."
Posted by bluprnt at September 6, 2005 08:19 PM