reverie in the theatre of her mind

Religious perspective –
This is evidence of God showing his handiwork. A species that exists by such simple and elegant means. How could such chemicals cause the spider to build such a web and then encase itself ready to be eaten! This is not something it ever does on its own….it is clearly very deftly being controlled by the tiny wasp larvae (who, one could draw the conclusion, cannot possibly be intelligent enough to be aware of what it is doing to its host). Clearly this could not possibly have “evolved” to be this way…it must have been very clearly designed to function as such.

Scientific viewpoint:
Despite the religious nut’s Point of View, the probability of this occuring has the same probability as any successful genetic mutation. Clearly the probability, despite the numerical odds against is 1. It is there, therefore it must have evolved to this stage as there is no other observable model to explain this. Surely there will be a similar species who almost has this same genetic makeup showing a step closer to another related species and hence we see the evidence of slight changes over time resulting in this phenominal specimen.
Fast forward 15 years. Science has discovered how the chemical signals work and have successfully cause a sheep to spin a web of wool and let itself be eaten by a pack of moths. Now, because science can observe and explain how something works, it MUST mean that there is no God behind it…yup!

HEHE.

Sorry, I had to.

This will all be understood someday. We humans don’t know squat about the universe or our earth. Good to be living today rather than in 1000 A.D.

Interesting, this creature also seems to invoke some maternal mind control, from the parastite section of the site:

—Body Snatcher—

Sacculina, a type of barnacle, begins its life in the ocean as a free-swimming larva. When the female locates a crab, however, she actually discards most of her own body, leaving a gelatinous blob that enters the crab and begins to grow. It sprouts rootlike tendrils which spread through the crab like a plant, even wrapping around its eyes. Eventually it forms a small hole on the crab’s back, through which male Sacculina can enter and permanently join the female. The crab stops growing and stops mating, devoting all of its energy into caring for the parasite’s millions of eggs and larvae as if they were its own. Male crab hosts are altered by the parasite to think and act like females, even changing physically to better carry the barnacle’s young.