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Wasp creates zombies out of roaches via brain surgery

Fucking creepy, almost as creepy as gravity or electromagnetism, or even quantum.

http://loom.corante.com/archives/20...f_parasites.php

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I collect tales of parasites the way some people collect Star Trek plates. And having filled an entire book with them, I thought I had pretty much collected the whole set. But until now I had somehow missed the gruesome glory that is a wasp named Ampulex compressa. As an adult, Ampulex compressa seems like your normal wasp, buzzing about and mating. But things get weird when it's time for a female to lay an egg. She finds a cockroach to make her egg's host, and proceeds to deliver two precise stings. The first she delivers to the roach's mid-section, causing its front legs buckle. The brief paralysis caused by the first sting gives the wasp the luxury of time to deliver a more precise sting to the head. The wasp slips her stinger through the roach's exoskeleton and directly into its brain. She apparently use ssensors along the sides of the stinger to guide it through the brain, a bit like a surgeon snaking his way to an appendix with a laparoscope. She continues to probe the roach's brain until she reaches one particular spot that appears to control the escape reflex. She injects a second venom that influences these neurons in such a way that the escape reflex disappears. From the outside, the effect is surreal. The wasp does not paralyze the cockroach. In fact, the roach is able to lift up its front legs again and walk. But now it cannot move of its own accord. The wasp takes hold of one of the roach's antennae and leads it--in the words of Israeli scientists who study Ampulex--like a dog on a leash. The zombie roach crawls where its master leads, which turns out to be the wasp's burrow. The roach creeps obediently into the burrow and sits there quietly, while the wasp plugs up the burrow with pebbles. Now the wasp turns to the roach once more and lays an egg on its underside. The roach does not resist. The egg hatches, and the larva chews a hole in the side of the roach. In it goes. The larva grows inside the roach, devouring the organs of its host, for about eight days. It is then ready to weave itself a cocoon--which it makes within the roach as well. After four more weeks, the wasp grows to an adult. It breaks out of its cocoon, and out of the roach as well. Seeing a full-grown wasp crawl out of a roach suddenly makes those Alien movies look pretty derivative. I find this wasp fascinating for a lot of reasons. For one thing, it represents an evolutionary transition. Over and over again, free-living organisms have become parasites, adapting to hosts with exquisite precision. If you consider a full-blown parasite, it can be hard to conceive of how it could have evolved from anything else. Ampulex offers some clues, because it exists in between the free-living and parasitic worlds. Amuplex is not technically a parasite, but something known as an exoparasitoid. In other words, a free-living adult lays an egg outside a host, and then the larva crawls into the host. One could easily imagine the ancestors of Ampulex as wasps that laid their eggs near dead insects--as some species do today. These corpse-feeding ancestors then evolved into wasps that attacked living hosts. Likewise, it's not hard to envision an Ampulex-like wasp evolving into full-blown parasitoids that inject their eggs directly into their hosts, as many species do today. And then there's the sting. Ampulex does not want to kill cockroaches. It doesn't even want to paralyze them the way spiders and snakes do, since it is too small to drag a big paralyzed roach into its burrow. So instead it just delicately retools the roach's neural network to take away its motivation. Its venom does more than make roaches zombies. It also alters their metabolism, so that their intake of oxygen drops by a third. The Israeli researchers found that they could also drop oxygen consumption in cockroaches by injecting paralyzing drugs or by removing the neurons that the wasps disable with their sting. But they can manage only a crude imitation; the manipulated cockroaches quickly dehydrated and were dead within six days. The wasp venom somehow puts the roaches into suspended animation while keeping them in good health, even as a wasp larva is devouring it from the inside Scientists don't yet understand how Ampulex manages either of these feats. Part of the reason for their ignorance is the fact that scientists have much left to learn about nervous systems and metabolism. But millions of years of natural selection has allowed Ampulex to reverse engineer its host. We would do well to follow its lead, and gain the wisdom of parasites.

Re: Wasp creates zombies out of roaches via brain surgery

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Originally posted by Tranc3 Fucking creepy, almost as creepy as gravity or electromagnetism, or even quantum. http://loom.corante.com/archives/20...f_parasites.php

Sweet!

All that evolution rubbish at the end though.... an animal is suddenly going to evolve to instinctly sting a cockroaches head,with sensors so precise it can tell where it is in the roaches brain,THEN send a sting that neutralises that part of brain?

What would you say the chances of that happeneing are?

Cool yet a tad disturbing.

Re: Re: Wasp creates zombies out of roaches via brain surgery

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Originally posted by sakabatou What would you say the chances of that happeneing are?

Over a wery long period of time. Preety good i would say.

Re: Re: Re: Wasp creates zombies out of roaches via brain surgery

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Originally posted by Moongoose Over a wery long period of time. Preety good i would say.

Explain.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Wasp creates zombies out of roaches via brain surgery

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Originally posted by sakabatou Explain.

im dont know that much about stats, but given the thousands of thousands of years theyre's been for many different types of wasps in this case to evolve and either succesfully reproduce or die off, theyre's probably been quite a many,

that was a fantastic read, a lil creepy in the sense. but interesting.

Re: Re: Wasp creates zombies out of roaches via brain surgery

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Originally posted by sakabatou Sweet! All that evolution rubbish at the end though.... an animal is suddenly going to evolve to instinctly sting a cockroaches head,with sensors so precise it can tell where it is in the roaches brain,THEN send a sting that neutralises that part of brain? What would you say the chances of that happeneing are?

well.. it did happen. this type of evolution doesn't suddenly just occur in a day or two.. it takes hundreds of thousands of years.. gradually.. one(several?) mutation at a time..

Re: Re: Wasp creates zombies out of roaches via brain surgery

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Originally posted by sakabatou Sweet! All that evolution rubbish at the end though.... an animal is suddenly going to evolve to instinctly sting a cockroaches head,with sensors so precise it can tell where it is in the roaches brain,THEN send a sting that neutralises that part of brain? What would you say the chances of that happeneing are?

Pretty good. This is analgous to the eye. It didn't start off as an eye it started off as a light receptor ... then it evolved into something that could vaguely distinguish shapes ... then it involved into something that could distinguish spatial orientation ... etc,etc.

Just because something is complex doesn't mean it's irreducably complex.

Re: Re: Re: Wasp creates zombies out of roaches via brain surgery

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Originally posted by occrider Pretty good. This is analgous to the eye. It didn't start off as an eye it started off as a light receptor ... then it evolved into something that could vaguely distinguish shapes ... then it involved into something that could distinguish spatial orientation ... etc,etc. Just because something is complex doesn't mean it's irreducably complex.

in fact, scientists claim the eye evolved independently up to 40 times.


evolution is very simple to understand - a creature has a trait A that helps it live longer and reproduce more (i.e., an eye to spot predators, or venom that zombifies its prey)

the trait is passed on to the offspring and the offspring in which the trait has mutated more favorably are suited best for survival and again pass on their genes. small steps over thousands of years.

kickass

Re: Re: Wasp creates zombies out of roaches via brain surgery

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Originally posted by sakabatou Sweet! All that evolution rubbish at the end though.... an animal is suddenly going to evolve to instinctly sting a cockroaches head,with sensors so precise it can tell where it is in the roaches brain,THEN send a sting that neutralises that part of brain? What would you say the chances of that happeneing are?

Higher than the chances of an omnipotent, omniscient ever present old man in the sky engineering the whole thing.

If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down." (Origin of Species, 6th ed. (1988), p. 154) � Darwin

An everyday example of an irreducibly complex system is the humble mousetrap. It consists of (1) a flat wooden platform or base; (2) a metal hammer, which crushes the mouse; (3) a spring with extended ends to power the hammer; (4) a catch that releases the spring; and (5) a metal bar that connects to the catch and holds the hammer back. You can't catch a mouse with just a platform, then add a spring and catch a few more mice, then add a holding bar and catch a few more. All the pieces have to be in place before you catch any mice. [1]

According to evolution, you should be able to reduce every biological system, piece by piece, down to its beginning. Evolution then could not be the scientific origin of the mouse trap, there must have been some intelligent hand involved. As Darwin admits in the opening quote, if you can demonstrate a complex biological system along the same line of reasoning, then his theory would break down.

The concept of irreducible complexity, even if successful would not prove intelligent design, it would merely disprove Darwinian evolution. While evolution is a scientific hypothesis based on initial observation and consisting of positive assertions about the way things are, and backed by some evidence indicating its veracity. Irreducible complexity merely attempts to disprove evolution, or to demonstrate the way things aren't without demonstrating any positive proof of an intelligent designer. The intelligent designer part is seemingly an a priori assumption.

Secondly, several mechanisms have been identified, by which gradual, small changes overtime can lead to the formation of an irreducibly complex system.

Thirdly just because you can't think of a way that a functional mousetrap could be reduced in complexity does not mean that it's irreducible - it could simply mean that you (or rather Michael Behe) can't think of it. Indeed examples of a mousetrap's reducibility have already been demonstrated.

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Originally posted by sakabatou As Darwin admits in the opening quote, if you can demonstrate a complex biological system along the same line of reasoning, then his theory would break down.

However, a mouse trap is not a complex biological system and WAS designed by an intelligent being which means whoever came up with that argument was using a straw man.

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Originally posted by whiskers However, a mouse trap is not a complex biological system and WAS designed by an intelligent being which means whoever came up with that argument was using a straw man.

To be fair Michael Behe (the guy that came up with thi new wave of creationism, relabelled "intelligent design" and supported by his "theory" of irreducible complexity) only used the mousetrap example as an analogy to explain the idea, in his writing he then goes on to give examples of complex biological systems that he believes demonstrate irreducible complexity.

Again there is no way of measuring the reducibility of complexity scientifically so really it is a case of him saying, "i can't think of a way this can be reduced therefore it can't be and if it can't be therefore evolution is false, and if evolution is false then there must have been an intelligent designer" (scientific reasoning if i've ever seen it )... the guy's actually a qualified molecular biologist if you can believe it.

Then there's the fact that instead of taking his theory and publishing it in a peer-reviewed scientific journal he writes a book aimed squarely at the creationists. I have never understood how people even slightly familiar with scientific theory and method could sit there and call intelligent design science.

Darwin wrote his theory back in 1850. A long time ago when you had to be afraid of the church and cristian people.

Darwin's theory doesn't explain everything though. Most of the mutations are lethal, so there were NEVER radical changes in the genes of animals. Even now, we have 60% of the genes that flies have... But that doesn't mean we're 60% fly. Genes interact with eachother to create complex organisms. The more genes interact with eachother, the more complex your animal will be. Now it can't be TOO hard to believe that in the evolution from plants to animals, the interaction of genes increased now can it?

God created evolution.

But who or what created god

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Originally posted by Moongoose But who or what created god

Chuck Norris.

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Originally posted by Moongoose But who or what created god

he evolved from a plant

considering that 99.9% of mutations are harmful i find it hard to believe that my eye was once a light receptor. I also find it hard to believe that we are glorified apes. Deep down what really gets in the way for people to believe in intelligent design is their own ego. If intelligent design were somehow to be proven this would imply several consequences that most people would want to avoid. for example trying to understand who this "creator" is and why he created us? and why we are here/purpose. Most people would rather have a darwinian worldview/secular humanist point of view and believe that we are here randomly by the effect of thousands of mutations, have no inherent value or worth and our purpose of existence is only to further our species and survive oh and to seek pleasure.

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Originally posted by miamitrance04 considering that 99.9% of mutations are harmful i find it hard to believe that my eye was once a light receptor. I also find it hard to believe that we are glorified apes. Deep down what really gets in the way for people to believe in intelligent design is their own ego. If intelligent design were somehow to be proven this would imply several consequences that most people would want to avoid. for example trying to understand who this "creator" is and why he created us? and why we are here/purpose. Most people would rather have a darwinian worldview/secular humanist point of view and believe that we are here randomly by the effect of thousands of mutations, have no inherent value or worth and our purpose of existence is only to further our species and survive oh and to seek pleasure.

No your eye was not once a light receptor. Hundreds of millions of years ago, the "eye" of an extremely primitive organism was a light receptor. It eventually lead to the spawning of a number of organisms that found the concept and phsyiology of an "eye" somewhat useful ... including you.

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Originally posted by miamitrance04 considering that 99.9% of mutations are harmful i find it hard to believe that my eye was once a light receptor. I also find it hard to believe that we are glorified apes. Deep down what really gets in the way for people to believe in intelligent design is their own ego.

I'd say that what really gets in teh way is a lack of scientific proof of intelligent design and a wealth of scientific data supporting evolution.
Conversely what i think really gets in the way of people accepting evolution is a narrow-minded approach to scripture which leads them to the belief that evolution somehow cuts God out of the process, together with a stubborn faith based purely on a set of a priori assumptions that have been drummed into them from childhood by their parents and community, and entirely devoid of any rational basis.

The point is that if you take the scientific, rational approach to the world then there does not currently exist a better hypothesis for the origin of species than the theory of evolution. If, you wish to take a fundamentalist religious aproach then scripture should only be interpreted literally and all else is herecy. But for goodness sake if you do take the latter approach don't try to bring science into it.

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If intelligent design were somehow to be proven this would imply several consequences that most people would want to avoid. for example trying to understand who this "creator" is and why he created us? and why we are here/purpose. Most people would rather have a darwinian worldview/secular humanist point of view and believe that we are here randomly by the effect of thousands of mutations, have no inherent value or worth and our purpose of existence is only to further our species and survive oh and to seek pleasure.

Philosophically a view of a divine creator is in fact the easier option to accept. It instantly (especially if backed by scripture of some form) provides a purpse to life that is beyond question, provides a concrete system of morality and the unique ability to decide what is right and what is wrong without any advertance to personal responsibility.
A far more difficult position for man, philosophically speaking, is to find himself alone, without a God or scripture by which to judge his actions. In a state of existential abandoment man can not follow a written guideline knowing that it is right path. Instead he has to consider the consequences of every action and choice he makes and decide for himself what the correct path is. If the religious right accepted that evolution is right and that scripture should notbe interpreted literally, they'd be forced to reckon with the freedom that God gave them, and have to finally take responsibility for their actions (a scary prospect for any fundamentalist). They could no longer point to the bible and say "this justifies all my actions".

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Originally posted by miamitrance04 Deep down what really gets in the way for people to believe in intelligent design is their own ego. If intelligent design were somehow to be proven this would imply several consequences that most people would want to avoid. for example trying to understand who this "creator" is and why he created us? and why we are here/purpose.

actually, rather than bothering to try and understand this "creator" and why i was created, i prefer to just enjoy life. to think that I myself and no one else is responsible for my life, for my actions, and their consequences as opposed to writing things off on fate or some other divine creature. even if god exists, and he/she/it may or may not, i still wouldn't believe he/she/it plays an active role in our lives. that creature would be an observer.

and as our purpose goes, if not pleasure or anything else, is to serve this divine creature...? well, one of them.

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Originally posted by astroboy Philosophically a view of a divine creator is in fact the easier option to accept. It instantly (especially if backed by scripture of some form) provides a purpse to life that is beyond question, provides a concrete system of morality and the unique ability to decide what is right and what is wrong without any advertance to personal responsibility. A far more difficult position for man, philosophically speaking, is to find himself alone, without a God or scripture by which to judge his actions. In a state of existential abandoment man can not follow a written guideline knowing that it is right path. Instead he has to consider the consequences of every action and choice he makes and decide for himself what the correct path is. If the religious right accepted that evolution is right and that scripture should notbe interpreted literally, they'd be forced to reckon with the freedom that God gave them, and have to finally take responsibility for their actions (a scary prospect for any fundamentalist). They could no longer point to the bible and say "this justifies all my actions".

ah, ok. exactly what i was saying. "fate" is just a weak person's scape goat.

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