all talk and no action

I've always thought that wasps were nasty creatures, but the Ampulex compressa wasp is the baddest of the bad. When the female wants to lay an egg, it first hunts down a cockroach, before stinging it to cause brief paralysis and then, while the roach is unable to move, it stings it again -- IN THE BRAIN.

Science author Carl Zimmer provides a grisly account of the events that take place:

She apparently uses sensors along the sides of the stinger to guide it through the brain, a bit like a surgeon snaking his way to an appendix with a laparoscope. She continues to probe the roach's brain until she reaches one particular spot that appears to control the escape reflex. She injects a second venom that influences these neurons in such a way that the escape reflex disappears.

From the outside, the effect is surreal. The wasp does not paralyze the cockroach. In fact, the roach is able to lift up its front legs again and walk. But now it cannot move of its own accord. The wasp takes hold of one of the roach's antennae and leads it -- in the words of Israeli scientists who study Ampulex -- like a dog on a leash.

The wasp then steers the cockroach into its burrow, plugs the door with pebbles and lays an egg on the underside of the roach. The egg hatches, the larva chews its way into the roach and there it lives, snacking on the innards of its host. A month later, out pops an adult wasp, all ready to start the cycle again. Nice!

[via Boing to the Boing, and thanks to Dope on the Slope for the image, which isn't a cockroach-brain-injecting wasp as far as I know, but it's still a wasp]

I like your new policy of using CAPITAL LETTERS for COMEDY.

It is my UNIQUE SELLING PROPOSITION.