Matt Simon - The Wasp That Brainwashed the Caterpillar: Evolutions Most Unbelievable Solutions to Lifes Biggest Problems

W e need to talk about the wasps. I dont mean the little yellow and black things that menaced your childhood summers. Those are lambs, quite frankly. No, I mean, in no particular order: the one with a sting so powerful a scientist who has experienced it recommends lying down and screaming until the pain subsides, lest you run around in a panic and hurt yourself; the one that stings a cockroach in its brain and drags the zombie into a den, where the wasps larva devours it alive; the one that opts instead to inject caterpillars with its young, which consume the hapless crawler alive from the inside out. Wasps are unparalleled in their ability to inflict suffering on other creatures, insects so cruel that Charles Darwin insisted a beneficent creator could never have thought them up.

But the thing is, in the animal kingdom, life sucks and then you dieas the saying goes. And out there, its easy to die immediately. Its been that way for billions of years. For pretty much every creature (save humans), theres no slipping away peacefully in a comfy deathbed, because at any given moment some animal is trying to pull its head out of another animals mouth. And I can guarantee you that something somewhere has a wasp larva consuming it from the inside out. Hell, a tree probably just fell on some kind of critter. A tree.

Nature is indifferent to death and suffering, and thats unsettling to us humans. We dont like thinking about an animal trying to pull its head out of another animals mouth. Theres no decency in that, for Petes sake. But really, its more than decent. Its beautiful. The predators and prey that grace this planet are the culmination of millennia after millennia of glorious evolution. From a single, ultrasimple organism all those years ago an explosion of life has radiated across the planet, and that life doesnt, well, always get along. And creatures dont have to worry about just each other: harsh climates and floods and tornadoes and asteroids are also cause for some concern.

Simply put, animals got problems. But at its core, evolution is the most majestic problem-solving force on planet Earth. Where it gets complicated is that it also creates all the problems. So things in the animal kingdom get a bit... involved.

Lets take, as an example, the plight of the zombie ant. It begins life as a normal ant in the rain forests of South America, foraging with its comrades along the colonys trails when, unbeknownst to the ant, it picks up a passenger: the spore of a fungus. Sticking to the ants cuticle, the spore works its way into the hosts bodyand its mind. Here it releases chemicals that hijack the ants brain, ordering it away from the colony and onto the underside of a leaf, always at a specific time of day at a specific height off the ground where the fungus can best grow. The parasite commands the ant to bite onto the vein of the leaf, then kills it and bursts out of the back of its head as a stalk to shower spores on the colony shuffling below. And thus the cycle repeats itself.

First of all, I didnt make that all up (well see the zombie ant in all its glory in chapter 4). And second, its an unsettling illustration of nature creating and solving its own problems. At the base of it, to disperse its spores, a fungus would do well to have wind, which is lacking in the thick rain forest. So over millennia the fungus evolved a solutionuse ants as vehicles. Yet the ants have their own solution to this problem: They instinctually grab individuals that look sick and drag them out of the colony and into a mass grave. But, alas, the fungus in turn has a solution to this problem: By manipulating the zombified ant out of the colony, it can avoid discovery. Thus one side evolves an offense and the other a defense, year after year, millennia after millennia. Push and pull, push and pull.

As if organisms didnt have enough to worry about with predators and even malicious fungi, the push and pull of problem and solution can bring conflict even between the sexes of a given species. You see, males and females dont have the same interests when it comes to sex. Males tend to take notice of anything that moves, while females have to be choosier. And then, randy fellas can come in conflict with other randy fellas. The males of one species of toad, for instance, have gone so far as to develop weaponized mustaches to battle each other for the right to mate. Even hermaphroditic species like some varieties of flatworm will clash among themselves, for when two individuals come together to mate, neither wants to get pregnant. Their solution? Penis fencing, obviously (coming up in the very first chapter, because I assume youre intrigued).

So what gives with all the conflict in the animal kingdom? Well, its the system, man, the system. Specifically, Charles Darwins idea of natural selection. Organisms must compete for food and water and often shelter, both with other species and with their own kind, and these individuals of course vary, due to errors during DNA replication and the unique way parents genes mix for each offspring. Because there isnt always enough food to go around, not everyone is going to make it. If the ones that do make it have lucky genetics that help them win those resources, they can breed and pass down the primo genes, thus continuing the family line.

And food is just part of it. Those best equipped to escape predators, perhaps because theyre that much faster than their peers, survive to pass down their genes. Those that can better tough it out in a harsh environment survive to pass down their genes. And those that are particularly impressive to the opposite sex, perhaps with exceptional feathers or dancing skills, win the right to pass down their genes. Conflict is everywhere, between predator and prey, brother and sister, sexed-up male and sexed-up female. A species may gain an edge, but any sort of edge is answered.

Weakness in the animal kingdom is dealt with accordingly, as creatures at times literally keep each other on their toes. Which is all to say that over the billions of years of life on Earth, evolution has created many a problem but also found many a solution. Push and pull, push and pull. And more often than not, things get really creative and really weird. This book is a journey through the strangest of the strangea bestiary of sorts. And not a single one of these animals will die at the hands of a tree. A murderous fungus, maybe, but never a tree. You have my word on that.

CHAPTER 1

You Absolutely Must Get Laid

In Which Marsupials Hump Until They Go Blind and Die and Flatworms Stab Each Other with Their Penises

Y oure fond of sex, and thats okay. Everyone iseverything isbecause living beings have to be. Its why were on this planet: to pass down our genes to the next generation. Youve got your tired pickup lines or that thing you do with your hair, or maybe, if youre feeling bold, both at the same time. And thats nothing to be ashamed of, because sex in the animal kingdom is far more ridiculous than anything you could possibly dream up. Id guess, for instance, that youve never had so much sex that you died. Just a guess.