Here's another example of Nature as Gothic monster: rhizocephalan barnacles. One of these little parasites injects itself into crabs to take them over, using brain control to turn the victim into a spawning platform.
There are all sorts of horrors involved, starting with how precisely the name describes the creature:
the adult female...mostly consists of a network of thread-like extensions penetrating the body of the host.
Or this stage of the takeover, as the article imagines the reader is a crab:
Just when it seems it couldn’t be worse, your abdomen explodes. You’re now sterile, and her gonads are erupting out from where your genitals are.
And the mind control bit:
She has woven her threads through your brain. She’s been secreting chemicals to control you–you’ve forgotten who you are. You now believe you are female, and the bulge in your abdomen is a brood of your own eggs. Moreover, you are about to give birth. You care for and clean these eggs, as if they were your own.
Read on! There's more. Pleasant dreams.
(thanks to Mike Sellers at Facebook)
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