This Fly Hijacks an Ant’s Brain — Then Pops Its Head Off

[n2doc]

O hai! A newborn Pseudacteon litoralis male emerging from a fire ant's disembodied noodle. Image: S.D. Porter, USDA-ARS



We humans were just so proud of ourselves when we invented the guillotine after millennia of experimenting with how best to take heads off shoulders. Maybe a bit too proud, what with that whole Reign of Terror thing. Unbeknownst to those over-enthusiastic revolutionaries, evolution already had produced its own perfect beheader — a tiny fly whose larvae burrow into ants, take control of their minds, and eventually sever their heads from the inside.

These are nature’s flying guillotines: the epically named ant-decapitating flies of the genus Pseudacteon.

Twenty years ago, Sanford Porter, then an entomologist with the University of Texas, was in South America studying fire ants and discovered their numbers were a fraction of those of their invading comrades to the north. Here in America, these two introduced species, the red and black fire ants, cause billions of dollars each year in agricultural damage, pest control costs, and sweet, sweet profits for hospitals treating their excruciating stings.

So Porter searched for a natural enemy that might be keeping southern populations in check. Following a tip from a colleague, he began seeking out fire ants fending off attacks from tiny flies. He gathered some of these besieged individuals and returned to the United States, where he soon began finding maggots in the ants’ bodies. “And around about two weeks [after that] I found that the heads would fall off,” he told WIRED, “and lo and behold I could see the pupa inside the ant’s head.”

more
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/12/absurd-creature-of-the-week-this-fly-burrows-into-an-ants-brain-then-pops-its-head-off/

[pangaia]

1. Wonderful. Made my day.

Good thing I finished dinner.

[longship]

2. Nature is fucked up.

And nothing in nature is more fucked up than parasites.

Here's Daniel Dennett about a fluke of fucked up nature (and memes, too).

Parasites are fucked up. And the lancet fluke is one example.

[Warpy]

4. TED talks usually keep people from being bores by severely limiting their time

but I wish they'd given Dennett at least double the usual time. He is fascinating.

[longship]

5. Yup! Only at the end does he get into his main theme.

It's one he develops fully in his book, Breaking the Spell which is a great read.

The theme is, as an atheist Dennett does not want to see religion eliminated -- not that anybody could credibly argue that such a thing could even happen. But, like fighting a viral infection (albeit a memetic one), our goal should be to help religion to evolve into avirulence.

Indeed, 15 minutes does not allow people to fully develop, state, and argue ones position.

[Warpy]

6. I agree about that, which is why I'm not "out" to many people

I would prefer people assume I'm just like them in my beliefs so I can ask uncomfortable questions that get them thinking.

Sometimes it even works.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

3. I like the website!!!

The guy who writes this Weird Animal column is funny. 'Course, I'm a big fan of anthropomorphization.....