Insect and critter zombies...the new fight

[The Bear's Key]

Martin had posted a bit about mind-controlling wasps and zombie spiders here a few years ago.

 

Interesting stuff. But I'd like to expand on this scenario, as it's possibly only the beginning of a larger one.

 

All the time we've been focused on preparing against human zombies (and on Iraq)....a new threat has brewed, and we might now be encountering an unforseen kind of zombie: little buggers craving our flesh and likewise transforming us into mindless creature versions of themselves.

 

Yes, we've been distracted, and thus haven't kept much of an eye on the (real) ball.

 

Now two questions face us: are we screwed, or was there no ball to keep an eye on in the first place? (i.e. could the worry be over-hyped?)

 

Don't know about you though, but if a dead-looking insect approaches me with hunger in its beady eyes, I'm grabbing my customized insect shooter and blasting its head clean off. Remember to aim for their heads, everyone. It might be a difficult shot, but it's the only way to ensure they'll stay down. (Get yourself a custom insect-locating scope, it helps a fair bit)

 

The insects aren't yet targeting humans, but we've all seen the zombie movies -- how long is that going to really last, before they make the switch to us?

 

For now, we must study them. Good places to begin....

 

 

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/12/071206-roach-zombie.html

 

Scientists say hairworms, which live inside grasshoppers, pump the insects with a cocktail of chemicals that makes them commit suicide by leaping into water. The parasites then swim away from their drowning hosts to continue their life cycle

........

But other parasites also control the behavior of their hosts, said David Richman, curator of the Arthropod Museum at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, who was not involved in the new study.

 

"This is not uncommon. There are a tremendous number of parasites, and they all have different strategies for survival and for propagation of their species," Richman said.

 

The behaviors of land snails, grasshoppers, and types of ants, for example, can all be affected by parasites.

 

 

 

http://a.abcnews.com/Technology/DyeHard/Story?id=2288095

Toxoplasma, he notes, is "frighteningly amazing."

 

It can change the personality of a rat so much that the rat surrenders itself to a cat, just as the parasite wanted.

 

The parasite's eggs are shed in a cat's feces. A rat comes along, eats the feces, and becomes infected. The behavior of the rat undergoes a dramatic change, making the rat more adventuresome and more likely to hang out around cats.

 

The cat eats the rat, and the parasite completes its life cycle.

 

That manipulation of the local ecology is not unusual for a parasite, Lafferty says.

 

"This is something that many parasites do," he says. "Many manipulate hosts' behavior."

 

 

And closer to home....

 

The parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, has been transmitted indirectly from cats to roughly half the people on the planet, and it has been shown to affect human personalities in different ways.

 

Research has shown that women who are infected with the parasite tend to be warm, outgoing and attentive to others, while infected men tend to be less intelligent and probably a bit boring. But both men and women who are infected are more prone to feeling guilty and insecure.

 

 

Can the common brain parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, influence human culture?

 

A link between culture and T. gondii hypothetically results from a behavioural manipulation that the parasite uses to increase its transmission to the next host in the life cycle: a cat.....though the results only explain a fraction of the variation in two of the four cultural dimensions, suggesting that if

T. gondii

does influence human culture, it is only one among many factors.

 

 

Can a parasite carried by cats change your personality?

...infected people showed different personality traits to non-infected people - and that the differences depended on sex. Infected men were more likely to be aggressive, jealous and suspicious, while women became more outgoing and showed signs of higher intelligence.

 

 

 

(All kidding and ) the natural threats aside, it sounds like another potential tool in warfare: genetically modifying the right parasite to create a flesh-eating zombie population amidst the enemy. So we might have to prepare against human zombies as well as those of insectoid origin

 

(By the way, not all of the links I've quoted above show good sources for their claims)