Humans have been trying to control each other's minds for centuries, but have only succeeded in getting people to buy more tortilla chips and hand cream. Meanwhile, in the animal kingdom, absurd comic-book style mind-control plots have been coming true for millennia.

5 Glyptapanteles (Zombie-Caterpillar-Creating Wasps)

Merle Shepard, Gerald R.Carner, and P.A.C Ooi

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

Wasps are horrible, awful, pointless creatures, and we hate them. If you want to go tell them we said that, go ahead. We don't care. But some of them are inexplicably worse than others: Enter the Glyptapanteles. These wasps are not content to sting and kill their prey (in this case, the gypsy moth caterpillar), but actually inject their eggs inside of the victim's body. So their victims aren't just killed and eaten, but are first impregnated via interspecies wasp-rape. And yes, did you even need to ask? Of course the wasp babies eat the caterpillars from inside.

Prof. JosÃ© Lino-Neto

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

They eat them from inside like crazy.

And yet, still, the caterpillars do not die (though there is some rigorous scientific debate as to whether or not a caterpillar can beg for the sweet release of death; we are going to assume they do so incessantly from this point forward). Some of the larva hatch and burrow out of the caterpillar's skin, sure, and that's horrible, but others stay behind ... to take control of its brain. The mind-controlling pupa inside manipulate the caterpillar into standing guard and protecting their vulnerable brethren outside, occasionally even forcing it to spin protective silk over them. So the caterpillar not only gets stung, raped and hollowed out, but also actually has to sit there and guard its attackers against all predators (by thrashing around like a spaz if anybody comes near).

PloS ONE

Above: Insect judo.

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

There's just ... there's no way this is the most effective way to procreate, right? At least some element of that whole procedure -- the spaz-thrashing, for example -- simply has to be for pure and simple spite.