Parasites brainwash grasshoppers into death dive

[emad]

Parasites brainwash grasshoppers into death dive
12:02 31 August 2005
NewScientist.com news service

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.
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7927&feedId=online-news_rss20

Lemmings!

[Skink]

1. Mad Grasshopper disease..

[TlalocW]

2. Wow, if only Peter Graves had known this in

the movie, "The Beginning of the End" (1957). Then he wouldn't have had to have Chicago evacuated while the military was out in Lake Michigan trying to draw them into the water with radio waves designed to mimic their mating call.

TlalocW

[niceypoo]

3. Replace¨parasites¨ with Limbaugh and ¨grasshoppers¨with republicans....

and it describes the republican party to a tee....

[RaleighNCDUer]

4. Maybe we should start checking * voters for parasites. nt

[moggie]

5. Nonsense!

My brain slug tells me that sort of thing doesn't happen.