Zombie Snail Fungi aren’t the only zombie masters. So is a kind of flatworm. It hijacks a snail. T e results aren’t pretty. Like the fungus, the worm is a parasite. It harms the snail. T is adaptation helps the flatworm survive. T e trouble for the snail starts as it searches
for food. It slowly crawls across the ground, leaving a trail of slime. It’s looking for bird droppings to eat. Little does it know, flatworm eggs are in the droppings. T e snail eats the droppings, eggs and all.
Inside the snail, the eggs hatch. T e young flatworms start to grow. Soon, they move into the snail’s eyestalks. T at makes its eyestalks swell. T ey grow bigger and more colorful. T en the snail starts acting odd. Usually,
it hides in the shadows to avoid predators. Now, though, the flatworms have taken over its brain. T ey make the snail crawl into the open. T e snail wriggles its swollen eyestalks. T ey look like caterpillars. A bird sees the moving eyestalks and swoops in. It rips the eyestalks off the snail. T e doomed snail crawls away. Inside the
bird’s gut, the flatworms finish growing. T ey lay eggs. Soon, these eggs may become food for more snails.
zombie snail
jewel wasp
Zombie Cockroach A female jewel wasp needs a zombie for her young, too. So she searches for a cockroach. She spots one. Before the roach can scurry away, the wasp sinks her stinger into its brain. She pumps venom into it. T e venom doesn’t kill the roach. It makes
it behave diff erently. Normally, roaches run and hide. T is one doesn’t. It’s lost its instinct, or natural reaction, to escape. T e wasp grabs one of the roach’s antennae
and leads the bug to her nest. T ere, she lays her eggs on the roach’s abdomen. T e roach is still alive, but the wasp controls it. It can’t run away. T ings get worse. When the eggs hatch, the young wasps eat the roach alive.
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