Roaches Kick Wasps in the Head to Avoid Becoming Zombies
A wasp that preys on
cockroaches turns them into mind-controlled zombies by stinging them in the
brain, and roaches were thought to be all but defenseless against this
zombifying attack.
But it turns out that
cockroaches have a defensive move that can protect them from becoming members
of the walking dead.
Scientists recently
discovered that roaches lash out at their would-be zombie-makers with powerful
karate-like kicks to the attacking insect's head. Their strategy doesn't kill
the wasp, but it's usually enough to send them looking for an easier victim, according
to a new study.
Zombification in this
wasp-cockroach scenario is a little different than that suffered by human
zombies in pop culture. The human "undead condition" usually seems to
spread through bites; as in certain contagious diseases, an infusion of tainted
bodily fluid passes on the "infection," turning the victim into an
animated corpse with a taste for brains
However, cockroaches
zombified by emerald jewel wasps aren't dead (at least, not at first). A first
sting paralyzes their legs, and a second sting to their brain delivers a
neurotoxin that hijacks their nervous system, enabling the wasp to control the
roach's body and behavior, according to the study.
After becoming a
zombie, the roach's fate takes an even more gruesome turn. The wasp snips off
the tips of the roach's antennae and drinks its blood. Quite refreshed, it
takes hold of the remaining antenna stumps and steers the roach to its nest.
Next, it lays an egg on the cockroach's body and entombs it inside the
subterranean lair. Once the egg hatches, the newborn wasp eats its way into the
roach's abdomen — while its zombified host is still alive.
Pitted against these
parasites, a cockroach's only hope is evading the first sting — once that
paralyzing pinch was delivered, a roach had little hope of preventing the
second, zombifying stab to the brain, the scientists discovered. For the new
study, Ken Catania, a professor of Biological Sciences at Vanderbilt University
in Tennessee, staged 55 bouts between wasp and roach, to see if the roaches had
any defensive moves that would work.
Video shot at 1,000
frames per second revealed that about half of the roaches were ambushed by the
wasps without mounting any defense at all. But the roaches that defended
themselves did so by rising high on their legs — "stilt-standing" —
and delivering a kick with one of their spiky hind legs. The kick often
connected squarely with the wasp's head and sent the smaller insect
"careening into the walls of the filming chamber," Catania wrote.
Roaches' kicking power
came from an energy-storing windup before the leg was released, similar to the
swinging of a baseball bat, according to the study. Though the roaches' kicks
didn't always discourage the wasps, about 63 percent of the adult roaches that
kicked for their lives successfully avoided being zombified. Younger roaches
were not so lucky — whether they kicked or not, they almost always wound up as
a wasp's zombie slave, Catania reported.
Roaches' behavior —
assuming an "en garde" position in the face of an attack — isn't so
different from the defensive strategy practiced by a zombie's human victims in
horror films, Catania said in a statement. The unusual stance "allows the
roach to move its antenna toward the wasp so it can track an approaching attack
and aim kicks at the head and body of the wasp," similar to the way that a
human might follow a zombie's moves with their eyes before taking a swing at
its rotting corpse, Catania said.
"It's reminiscent
of what a movie character would do when a zombie is coming after them," he
added.
source:
https://www.livescience.com/63980-roach-kicks-prevent-zombification.html
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