It may seem challenging to pity a cockroach, let alone a zombie cockroach. When a jewel wasps eggs are fertilized, she needs to discover one cockroach host for each egg.
A cockroach is significantly bigger than a jewel wasp, and likewise has that hard exoskeleton. The wasp handles this by first stinging the cockroach on its abdominal area, immobilizing it. When the young wasp hatches, it now has its first, and still fresh, cockroach dinner.
A gem wasp dragging a cockroach. Image © Deven Dadbhawala/ Flickr
Pest Zombies
Being become a zombie is a deeply ingrained human worry, one that is currently experiencing a popular culture increase. For bugs and other invertebrates, though, turning into a zombie is a very genuine, and extremely disturbing, fate.
It may seem hard to pity a cockroach, let alone a zombie cockroach. Consider what happens when a cockroach meets a parasitic wasp.
There are many types of parasitic wasps, and their numerous parasitizing strategies apparently influenced the Alien movies. The gem wasp provides a particularly chilling example. When a jewel wasps eggs are fertilized, she needs to discover one cockroach host for each egg.
A cockroach is substantially larger than a gem wasp, and also has that tough exoskeleton. The wasp manages this by very first stinging the cockroach on its abdominal area, immobilizing it.
This triggers the cockroach to compulsively groom itself. It gets a jolt of dopamine, which Scientific American author Christine Wilcox hopes makes the roach feel euphoric: “It simply appears too gruesome for the animal to get no pleasure from the horrible end it is about to fulfill.”
The wasp, out and about stinging other cockroaches, returns. The cockroach physically has the ability to walk away (or run!). It does not. The zombie roach is under complete control of the wasp, and behaves, according to one source, “like a dog on a leash.” This is effort for a wasp, so she pulls off the roachs antennae and consumes the permeating liquid.
She leads the roach by the antennae nubs into a burrow shes excavated. She deposits a single egg on the roachs leg, then buries it alive with pebbles. The nightmare is far from over.
The venom keeps the roach alive and healthy by slowing its metabolic process. When the young wasp hatches, it now has its first, and still fresh, cockroach dinner. Check out more stories of insect zombies.
