Here’s an awesome bit on come clever parasitism from the NY Science Times. Some dudes published a paper on nematodes worms that make ants look like berries. How cool is that?

The worm eggs come out in bird feces, which contains minerals and undigested seeds that ants like to eat. So the ants (C. atratus), grab up the feces and take it back to feed their larvae, which ingest and host the worm eggs. As the larvae grow into ants, the worms hatch, migrate to the gaster (rear segment) of the ants, mate, and lay eggs. The ant’s exoskeleton around the gaster becomes thinner and translucent, and happens to look bright red in the sunlight (nice pictures at ScienceDaily and UC Berkeley). Bright red like berries that birds in Central and South American rainforests like to eat. In addition, the infected ants tend to hold their gasters high and become sluggish (you would too if your ass were full of worm eggs), making their gasters look like easy berry pickin’s for the birds, who wouldn’t knowingly eat the ants. The eggs go straight through to the bird feces. Rinse (or not) and repeat.

Talk about eking out a niche. It’s really amazing the ways different parasites find ways to spread and then get back to a good host. Sometimes it’s scary too- take Toxoplasma gondii, which may be implicated in the ‘crazy cat lady‘ phenomenon, and perhaps (though controversially) even schizophrenia. It migrates to the brain. It causes rats to become attracted to (or at least ambivalent toward) the scent of cat urine, theoretically making them more likely to be eaten by a cat, Toxo’s host species. Kinda scary.