IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2019 - 25

Convenience is the most underestimated and least understood
force in the world today. ... In the developed nations of the 21st century, convenience - that is, more efficient and easier ways of doing
personal tasks - has emerged as perhaps the most powerful force
shaping our individual lives and our economies. This is particularly
true in America, where despite all the paeans to freedom and individuality, one sometimes wonders whether convenience is in fact
the supreme value.
-Tim Wu [1]

A
The Jewel Wasp

ccording to William E. Rees, "[a] parasite is an organism that gains its utility by sapping the vitality of its host
[2]." A vivid illustration of this can
be seen in WIRED science writer,
Matt Simon's latest book, Plight
of the Living Dead: What RealLife Zombies Reveal about Our World - and Ourselves. Simon fastens on the startling machinations of
"real" parasites and how they turn their hosts into
agents of their own propagation. In his opening chapter, Simon zeroes in on Ampulex compressa, the
jewel wasp, its "hypnotizing beauty - with big eyes
and a precious green sheen to its body - [belying] its
belligerence [3]." The unlucky target of her design is a
roach. In her first move, the wasp injects her venom
loaded stinger between the roach's front legs. Included in the venom's more than two hundred compound
brew is the weaponized central nervous system inhibiting neurotransmitter, gamma-aminobutyric acid
(GABA). For five minutes, GABA paralyzes the roach's
ability to block the wasp's next move with its front
legs. The now unobstructed wasp removes her stinger
and redeploys it to penetrate the now defenseless victim's neck and from there moves into its brain. The
wasp, for now at least, is not trying to kill her prey as
she feels around for the right spot [actually two spots]
in the brain to inject her mind-control potion [3].
These precise locations govern the roach's means of
movement. After discharging her venom, the wasp
again removes her stinger and lo and behold, in a few
minutes the roach, instead of flooding with fear,
begins grooming itself as though it hadn't a care in
the world.
Ten minutes after the brain penetrating injection,
while the roach continues its grooming, the wasp
SEPTEMBER 2019

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begins phase two of her modus operandi, chopping off
her victim's antennae and refreshing herself with its
blood. Next comes phase three. Though the once
again fully mobile roach could certainly walk away
from its impending doom, it doesn't. The wasp grabs
and yanks the base of the roach's removed antenna
and thanks to the venom in the roach's brain, it follows
her into her den whereupon she lays her egg on its
belly. She then plugs up the den's entrance to keep
"the neighborhood opportunists from consuming her
prisoner" [3, p. 5].
Unlike brute force stinging like that of an enraged
bee, Simon observes that the jewel wasp's stinger "is
far more precise, a rapier to the honeybee's claymore
sword" [3, p. 10]. The chemical that turns the victim
into a docile dupe is the same chemical that gives us
humans pleasure: Dopamine. Interestingly, as an
added plus, what the wasp has done by stinging the
roach's brain in precisely the right spots is desensitize
it, putting it into a sleep-like state that allows the wasp
to do her work while getting no complaints from her
drowsy prey.
Though Simon, like most of us, has no love for roaches, watching its step by step, while still alive, evisceration made him feel a touch of sadness. "It's just how the
parasite," he writes, "pounces and methodically drives
its stinger into the roach's brain and lingers, with the
victim's head bent in a silly way, staring at [him as if]
asking for help" [3, p. 5].
The key component in the wasp's brain swaying
venom injected straight into the roach's central nervous system - dopamine - is interestingly, also at
work in our ongoing affairs with technology - applying
especially, but not only to the slot-machine-in-hand,
smartphone head-bending hooks. Though manipulation of we humans seems far removed from that of a
parasitic wasp on a roach (the jewel wasp harbors no

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IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2019

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