![]() ![]() Up until now, other traditional examination techniques couldn't show this, hindering scientists' understanding of how the parasite manipulates the behaviour of the ant. The scanner is capable of 'dissecting' an ant's brain in a non-invasive way, allowing scientists to see inside the brain from various angles. ![]() Scientists used the Museum's Imaging and Analysis Centre to scan the ant's decapitated heads and bodies using a micro-CT scanner. Getting the image hasn't been easy, because the ants have hard heads and fragile brain tissue. These muscles are the ones which the ants use to clamp on to grass. It is a picture of the specific region where the neurons responsible for the mandibular closure muscles are found. 'However, the mechanisms that parasites use to manipulate the ants' behaviour are unknown – partly because until now we haven't been able to see the physical relationship between the parasite and the ant's brain.' A look into the brainįor the first time, Museum scientists have an image of what is happening when the flatworm lodges in the ant's brain. This kind of behaviour has fascinated biologists for years. Adult liver flukes reproduce inside the animal's bile duct and eggs are excreted out with the dung, starting the whole process again.Ĭo-author of the paper Dr Martin Hall says, 'This is an extraordinary lifecycle, and a classic example of a parasite manipulating a host to its own advantage. This will happen every night until the ant is eaten by a host in which the parasite can fully mature. In this position, they are most likely to be eaten by herbivores in the early morning. At dusk, the ant will be compelled to walk to the top of blades of grass or other vegetation and lock their jaws to it. The mind control extends to leading the ant directly into harm's way. The rest of the parasitic individuals wait in the ant's abdomen. One of the flatworms lodges itself inside the ant's brain and effectively takes over, controlling the helpless ant's behaviour. This is the parasite's second host, and the one in which things take a weird turn. The parasite is eventually ejected in the snail's slime ball, which is in turn eaten by an ant. The egg lodges inside the snail's gut, where larvae hatch and develop. That waste is eaten by a snail, which becomes the parasite's first host. The lancet liver fluke starts life like many other parasites: as an egg living in the dung of sheep and cattle. The results have been published in the journal Scientific Reports. Museum scientists have been studying how it interacts with one of its host's brains, and have captured the relationship on camera for the first time. And although it is miniscule, it is capable of mind control. Dicrocoelium dendriticum (or the lancet liver fluke) is a parasitic flatworm.ĭuring the course of its remarkable life cycle it inhabits snails, ants and herbivorous mammals such as cattle. ![]()
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