The deep ocean is a scary place full of bizarre creatures and vicious predators. Although most humans will never personally encounter these creatures, knowing that they are down there is a little spooky. The harp sponge, discovered in 2012 by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, is a rather beautiful organism, but its delicate appearance and musical name belie its sinister personality.

The harp sponge is so named because its graceful physical structure is shaped somewhat like a harp. It has horizontal branches that support a number of vertical branches, each of which terminates in a swollen ball. All along the vertical branches are jagged hooks that the sponge uses to ensnare its prey. When an unsuspecting crustacean wanders a bit too close to the hooks, it will find itself hopelessly stuck in the sponge’s grasp. The innocuous-looking sea creature then forms a digestive membrane that surrounds the prey and dissolves it so the sponge harp can absorb the meal through its pores.

Since there are few rocks in the spaces that the harp sponge occupies, it has developed root-like structures known as rhizoids to hold it on the soft mud-like sediment. Scientists believe that the sponge’s unusual fanned-out structure evolved over time to help it capture as much food as possible. Some sponge harps have been observed with only two horizontal branches, but others have been known to sport as many as six. This physical framework, as well as the number of vertical branches, also helps the sponges procreate.

The swollen spheres atop each vertical branch hold packets of sperm, which are released to float off to fertilize other harp sponges. Since the sponges are found in fairly deep waters – 10,800 to 11,500 feet – there aren’t strong currents to carry the seeds far and wide. The fertilized sponges are therefore usually quite close to the ones that released the sperm. When the seeds reach the host sponge, the the fertilized eggs form the swollen areas partway up the vertical branches as seen in the images above.

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Remember the hookah-smoking, puzzle-talking caterpillar from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland? It turns out that that animated butterfly lava wasn’t the only insect that enjoys a few puffs now and then – but the hornworm caterpillar doesn’t do it for kicks. It emits little puffs of tobacco to ward off its natural predator, the wolf spider.

The caterpillar eats the leaves of the tobacco plant, a practice that would kill a human (and probably most other insects). It’s a fortunate choice of diet since the bug has a gene that allows it to eat the plant without dying. In fact, the tobacco provides an interesting defense against spiders. [WARNING: the video below contains some arachnid-on-insect violence.)

When confronted with a wolf spider, the hornworm caterpillars emit a foul-smelling puff of tobacco through tiny holes in their sides. The terrible smell is a warning to predators – a tactic that researchers are calling “defensive halitosis.” The discovery is significant because after researchers isolated the gene responsible for this interesting trick, they were able to develop a strain of tobacco that cancelled out the gene’s function.

After the caterpillars ate the genetically altered tobacco, they were unable to produce the little puffs of bad breath that scared the wolf spiders away. Researchers believe that they can use this knowledge to produce crops that will address specific human nutritional or health needs by canceling out certain genes in our own bodies.

The post Smoking Caterpillar Blows Nicotine to Ward Off Predators first appeared on Gajitz.

We all love a good zombie movie, but the idea of an illness that can turn us into mindless flesh-eaters is all fiction, right? Well, maybe we aren’t as safe as we would like to think. Nature is full of animals, parasites and other organisms that can turn other living things into mindless, powerless minions. These are three of nature’s little Rage Viruses: zombie masters that exist firmly in the realm of reality. WARNING: The images, videos and information below might be disturbing to some readers.

The Euhaplorchis californiensis is one bad mofo – so bad, in fact, that it takes three unsuspecting host organisms to keep this little guy alive. The adult parasites live in the bellies of shorebirds and lay eggs that are transmitted through the birds’ droppings. The droppings are swallowed by freshwater horn snails, and once in the bellies of the snails the eggs hatch and render the snails sterile. As horrifying as that sounds, it’s not even the worst part: eventually the parasites leave the snails and catch a ride on the killifish that live nearby. After entering the fish bodies, the parasites form a layer on their brains and take their places as zombie masters. The parasites direct the fish to swim to the surface and make themselves as visible as possible to predator birds by splashing, jerking around and flashing their reflective undersides toward the sky. The infected fish who act in this way are 30 times more likely to be eaten by a bird than uninfected, normal-acting fish. Once the fish are snapped up, the parasites re-enter the birds’ bellies and the whole disturbing cycle begins again.

In Central and North America, a horrifying scenario plays out over and over. Adult female Glyptapanteles wasps lay up to 80 eggs inside the body of a young caterpillar. The caterpillar continues to grow and live as normal (as normal as you can be when filled up with wasp eggs) until the little wasp larvae burst out of its body Alien-style. Up to 80 of these squirmy little things then form cocoons and settle in to pupate. But the caterpillar is far from being released from service. A couple of the larvae stay behind in the host (giving up their chance to pupate and reach maturity) to control its body, forcing it to take up guard near the cocoons and to lose the desire to eat or move. It remains totally motionless unless a predator threatens to come near the cocoons, at which point it thrashes around violently to scare off the offender. Once the adult wasps hatch, the zombie caterpillar dies. Cocoons not protected by zombie caterpillars are significantly more likely to be consumed by predators, but there is no conceivable benefit to the caterpillar in this whole arrangement – a fact that tells scientists the Glyptapanteles wasps have evolved into their role as zombie masters.

The female jewel wasp doesn’t mess around when it comes to laying her eggs: she acquires a living, mindless incubator/food source for them. She does this by finding a cockroach and injecting poison into its thorax and brain. The poison paralyzes the roach’s front legs and shuts off its escape reflex. With the roach suitably subdued, the female wasp grabs one of its antennae and leads it back to her nest. She then lays an egg on the roach’s thorax and seals the egg securely to its host. Still paralyzed, the roach lies there helplessly until the egg hatches and the larva eats the still-living roach. Seems like a rather fitting end for a cockroach, doesn’t it?

The post Nature’s Zombies: 3 Real-Life Tales of Animal Mind Control first appeared on Gajitz.