Green-Eyed Wasp

The green-eyed wasp turns ladybugs into zombie babysitters. Three weeks after a wasp lays its egg inside the hapless beetle, a wasp larva bursts from her belly and weaves itself into a cocoon between her legs. The ladybug doesn’t die but becomes paralyzed, involuntarily twitching her spotted red carapace to ward off predators until the adult wasp emerges a week later. Researchers have found that the wasp uses a virus to attacks the beetle’s brain.