- Science
- The Loom
Crawling Through The Brain Without Getting Lost
If you’ve never met the emerald jewel wasp, let me introduce you to my little friend.
The wasp (Ampulex compressa) lives the first stage of its life as a parasite, growing inside the body of a living cockroach. That’s absorbingly horrific on its own, but how it gets into the cockroach in the first place is an especially gruesome delight. Its mother has to play neurosurgeon.
A female wasp seeks out a cockroach host and ambushes it. She inserts her stinger into its thorax and delivers a paralyzing shot of venom that immobilizes the insect for a few minutes. She pulls her stinger out and then delivers a second injection. This one goes into the cockroach’s head, delivering more chemicals to two