Nature's Little Monsters: Voodoo Wasps and Zombie Cockroaches

I have a couple of phobias, and one of them is entomophobia, the fear of insects. All insects. Not just spiders (arachnophobia), but any kind of insect or bug, or anything resembling one. Worms too, put them on there. Anything that can be called a bug, or even be incorrectly called a bug but is generally called a bug, I want nothing to do with. They freak me out. I don't like them on me, and I certainly don't like them causing me to wake up by buzzing around my hand when it may or may not be a wasp when I'm busy dreaming important things. Thankfully, that thing I heard about eating spiders while you sleep appears to be a myth, but the thought is unnerving enough.

One part of my hatred of bugs (and my reasons are countless) is that they are simply nature's monsters to me, and I'm not alone in this. Our popular culture is full of evil insects, from the insectoid monsters of Them to Jeff Goldblum. Then, of course, there's T.H. White's analogy between ants and totalitarianism in The Once and Future King and the fact that the Borg were based on and intended to be an insect species. Fiction doesn't hold a candle to fact though, as we've learned time-and-time again, and the darkest parts of human creativity can't compete with nature's.

Possibly vying with the candiru (it's not a myth that it can swim up your urethra, making it the most terrifying fish I have ever heard of) in scariness in concept, is the Emerald cockroach wasp. The short version is this: the wasp preys on cockroaches, makes them into zombies, and plants their eggs in them until their little wasplings burst out of the cockroach in nature's reenactment of Ridley Scott's Alien.

The longer version is that the wasp stings a cockroach and paralyzes it, and then does it's own little form of neurosurgery, rendering the cockroach into its own personal slave. The cockroach's willpower and defense mechanisms are destroyed, allowing the wasp to do whatever it pleases to it. Since the wasp cannot carry a cockroach, it uses the wasps antennas to steer the cockroach to the wasp's little lair; like I said, zombie cockroaches. The funny doesn't end there though, because the wasp plants its egg inside the roach, and when that egg hatches, that larva will feast on the cockroach's innards for the next four weeks, feasting and burrowing its way out. When it's time, a full-grown wasp bursts out of the cockroach, and the cycle of life begins again.

Nature is a very scary place.

You can go here for a more thorough look at the Emerald cockroach wasp, complete with pictures.

Well, there goes my ability to sleep without fear of nightmares tonight.