This kind of gene-stealing, brain-hacking behaviour is extremely rare in the animal kingdom. It’s more common in bacteria, ...

For a praying mantis, eating the wrong insect can be a one-way ticket to a watery grave. Some of its typical bug prey contain horsehair worms, Chordodes fukuii, which grow in a mantid's gut—and ...

After being eaten by praying mantises and crickets ... performed a genetic analysis of the worms before, during and after they manipulated their mantis hosts. The scientists discovered that ...

and single-celled parasites that make rodents sexually attracted to cat pee. Researchers have now uncovered how a parasite called the hairworm manipulates their praying mantis hosts into leaping ...

Parasites that manipulate their hosts are ... laboratory experiments to see whether or not mantids (the Asian praying mantis species Hierodula patellifera, hereafter referred to as 'infected ...

Once this is done, and the worm is in control, it makes the praying mantis jump into water. This is, of course, fatal for the mantis; however, it is necessary for the parasite, as they need water ...

The worms had occupied the mantis - their host ... creatures often wind themselves into coils and tangles. But praying mantis’s themselves are hardly bottom of the food chain either.

Meanwhile, researchers observed minimal change in the genes of the mantis. This gave the scientists a key clue to discover how the worms take control: If the only changes happened within the ...

Experts shown the video by German newspaper Bild said it was clearly a parasite that had been eating alive the praying mantis. They said it appeared to be a horsehair worm or Nematomorpha.

This photo shows a mantis and its parasitic horsehair worm. (Photo courtesy of Takuya Sato, associate professor at Kyoto University) TOKYO -- Parasitic horsehair worms use genes they have taken ...

Praying mantises — with their angular features ... Glaw was reminded of “parasites that eat the animal from the inside,” having seen such fatally parasitized insects before.

Experts shown the video by German newspaper Bild said it was clearly a parasite that had been eating alive the praying mantis. They said it appeared to be a horsehair worm or Nematomorpha.