Welcome to
our daily Bitachon. We're in Shaar Habechina, looking into the
wonders of creation, and we're talking about insects now. There's a certain
wasp that's called a jewel wasp that is almost like a neurosurgeon. It turns a
cockroach into a zombie to serve as a living, fresh food source for its larvae.
How does
this happen? It delivers a precise sting directly into the cockroach's brain,
targeting the exact cluster of neurons that controls the escape reflex. So this
disables the host's will to move while keeping it alive and walking so it could
be led to a burrow like a dog on a leash. Now, there's more wisdom than just
sticking the needle in, because it has to be a probe. As the stinger enters the
cockroach's head, the wasps use sensors on the tip to feel for the brain, and
once it's in there, it has to find a certain part of the brain and gives a dose
of venom that targets the dopamine receptors inside of the cockroach's brain.
And
therefore it loses its motivation to run. It can still walk but it can't run.
And actually the wasp is saving energy by walking its prey home rather than
carrying it. And this is not the only creature that God gave this ability to,
so to say, hijack another animal and turn it into a zombie.
This is
really a subject on its own. There are many, many examples of this. We'll give
you one other example. There's a type of hairworm which can grow up to four
times longer than its cricket hosts.
It begins
life as a microscopic larva that the cricket accidentally consumes while
drinking water. Once inside the cricket's body, the worm develops over several
weeks, eventually occupying most of the host's body cavity. The infected
cricket continues to behave normally for most of this period. But as the worm
nears maturity, something sinister occurs.
The parasite
begins producing proteins that affect the cricket's nervous system, compelling
the normal insect that is used to being on the ground to seek out water
sources. When the cricket reaches a pond, stream, or even a swimming pool, it
plunges in despite being unable to swim. Once in the water, the mature worm
bursts from the cricket's body and begins its aquatic reproductive phase. The
cricket, now fatally injured and waterlogged, typically drowns.
Science has
discovered that these worms can alter their host's behavior so precisely that
infected crickets are three times more likely to jump into water than healthy
ones, even when presented with the same environmental cues. So this is again a
wonder of wonders. In order to keep this hairworm continuing to reproduce, Hashem
gave it the ability. Again, it's got to get back to the water.
It starts in
the water. The cricket drinks it as a larva in the water. It grows in the
cricket and then brings the cricket back to the water for it to once again
start its reproductive system. So we have two zombie examples where one
creature takes over the brain of the other one. And there are many such
examples, but this is just a little flavor of what God can do.
We will now
talk about the flea. Everyone heard of the statement: if you lie down with
dogs, you get up with fleas. What are fleas? There are actually 2,500 species
of these small flightless insects that live as external parasites on mammals
and birds.
Fleas live
by ingesting the blood of their hosts. They lack wings as we said, they are
flightless insects. So if they lack wings, how do they move around? We'll get
to their hind legs that are very well adapted for jumping. We'll get there in a
minute.
But they
have special skin-piercing parts in their mouth and they're great at sucking
blood. They carry disease and they're responsible for a famous disease called
the bubonic plague. It was responsible for the Black Death that swept through
Asia and Europe and Africa in the 14th century and killed an estimated 50
million people. This is all the different plagues that happened over the years.
So what
makes the flea so deadly is you can't swat him. He just moves so fast. He jumps
200 times its body length at tremendous speed. Now, how do they jump? What
gives him the ability? Muscles alone couldn't do it.
So what does
it do? In the flea's knee joint is a pad of resilin, which is an elastic
protein. The flea cocks its legs and locks them with a latch, which compresses
this resilin pad. When the latch is released, the energy is put into this jump
in a fraction millisecond creating a launch speed that no muscle could achieve.
So, again, this flea needs blood.
He's got to
move around. So and he's got to be swat free. He's
got to be unstoppable to get around.
And that's
the flea, this common flea that's on dogs and all over the place. He has to
have this special design to make him successful. And we continue with
