Parasite Induces Host Suicide After Eating Innards

A grasshopper was tricked into jumping into water by a hairworm that had
infected it and had eaten most of its insides. In the water, the worm left
the insect to start the next portion of its life. The grasshopper drowned.

Only in science fiction do people’s minds get possessed
by alien beings. For grasshoppers, zombification is an everyday hazard,
and it obliges them to end their lives in a bizarre manner.

The parasite, known as a hairworm, lives and breeds
in fresh water. But it spends the early part of its life cycle eating
away the innards of the grasshoppers and crickets it infects.

When it is fully grown, it faces a difficult problem, that of returning
to water. So it has evolved a clever way of influencing its host to
deliver just one further service – the stricken grasshopper looks for
water and
dives in.

Being highly suggestible, the Dowbrigade immediately
commences examining every single hair on his body for worms. Why do we have this strange urge to go swimming…..

from the New York Times