Mother nature can be a cold-hearted bitch sometimes, and she must have been having really bad PMS when she introduced this creature of unrelenting horror.
The Emerald Cockroach Wasp is a brightly coloured parasitic wasp that utilizes a combination stings and poisons to inject its eggs into a host to incubate. When it comes time for the female wasp to lay her egg, she searches out a cockroach, lands on top of it, and stings it twice. The first sting mildly paralyzes the front legs of the cockroach, and the second sting into the roach’s brain neutralizes its normal escape responses. Now for the cool bit – the wasp chews off parts of the roach’s antennae and uses them like a leash to lead the zombified roach to a burrow! Why walk when you can drive right?
Once they reach the burrow the real horror begins – the wasp lays an egg on the roach’s abdomen and fills in the burrow entrance with pebbles to prevent escape. Once the larva hatches, it chews its way into the abdomen, and eats the roach’s internal organs in an order which guarantees that the roach will stay alive-ish. The larva then forms a cocoon inside the roach’s body, and after about four weeks, a fully-grown Emerald Cockroach Wasps emerge from the roach’s body to begin its adult life.
More horrifying parasites found HERE.