RESEARCH: Parasites brainwash grasshoppers into death dive

This article from New Scientist goes hand in hand with the research I have been checking out for my Stargate Stargate Atlantis cross over comic book script. Science Fiction is a hoot, but this real shit scares me more than anything that I can come up with out of my sick imagination.
L



Parasites brainwash grasshoppers into death dive

* 12:02 31 August 2005 by Shaoni Bhattacharya

"A parasitic worm that makes the grasshopper it invades jump into water and commit suicide does so by chemically influencing its brain, a study of the insects' proteins reveal.

The parasitic Nematomorph hairworm (Spinochordodes tellinii) develops inside land-dwelling grasshoppers and crickets until the time comes for the worm to transform into an aquatic adult. Somehow mature hairworms brainwash their hosts into behaving in way they never usually would - causing them to seek out and plunge into water.

Once in the water the mature hairworms - which are three to four times longer that their hosts when extended - emerge and swim away to find a mate, leaving their host dead or dying in the water. David Biron, one of the study team at IRD in Montpellier, France, notes that other parasites can also manipulate their hosts' behaviour: "'Enslaver' fungi make their insect hosts die perched in a position that favours the dispersal of spores by the wind, for example."

But the "mechanisms underlying this intriguing parasitic strategy remain poorly understood, generally", he says."

The article continues here: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7927-parasites-brainwash-grasshoppers-into-death-dive.html


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